Research Article IJAAT 2016 1

International Journal of Advances on Automotive and Technology

http://dx.doi.org/10.15659/ijaat.16.07.351
Promech Corp. Press, Istanbul, Turkey Manuscript Received May 25, 2016; Accepted June 16, 2016.
Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 46-52, October, 2016

This paper was recommended for publication in revised form by Co-Editor Yasin Karagoz

CFD ANALYSIS OF COMBUSTION IN A SINGLE CYLINDER CI ENGINE FOR

DIESEL AND DUEL FUEL

Sunil Kumar R. S. R. Hotti Omprakash Hebbal

Thermal Power Engineering, Department of Department of Automobile Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Mechanical Engineering, PDA College of PDA College of Engineering Kalaburagi- PDA College of Engineering
Engineering, Kalaburagi-585102 VTU 585102, INDIA Kalaburagi-585102, INDIA
Belagavi, INDIA

Keywords: CFD, Diesel engine, Duel fuel, Combustion, NOx emission, non-premix combustion model.
E-mail: glbsunil @gmail.com, hottisr@gmail.com, hebbalod@rediffmail.com

ABSTRACT
The Internal Combustion (IC) engines play a dominant
role in the fields of transportation of goods, passengers,
agricultural and industry. They develop power by consuming
precious fossil fuels and cause pollution. Efforts have been put
to improve exhaust emissions and fuel economy continuously.
Gaseous fuels are attributed as clean, economical and abundant,
which can improve the lean operating limits and decrease cyclic
variations of an engine. Running the engine on gas is a prospect
which is on offer for greener environment. In this present work
an effort being made to evaluate combustion and emission
characteristics by numerical method using CFD with
experimental datas available in the literature to optimize the
emission characteristics. The work involves CFD analysis of
combustion in CI engine for diesel and duel fuel. Combustion
analysis is carried out in ANSYS14.5 Workbench using the non-
premixed combustion model which describes the combustion
process in terms of a single transport equation for a progress
variable. For the turbulence, k- model is used. The combustion
chamber used in this work comprises a flat cylinder head and the
bowl in piston. Here two cases are compared, engine fueled with
diesel and with duel fuel(Methane as primary fuel and diesel as
pilot fuel). Combustion and emission characteristics are studied
in a 30 sector of an engine cylinder. Contours of pressure,
temperature, NOx are plotted. The pressure variations,
temperature variations and mass fractions of species CO, CO2,
and NOx with respect to crank angle are drawn for both the cases
for one complete cycle is presented.
INTRODUCTION
Internal combustion reciprocating engines have
integrated into societal service in the last century. Their use has
improved the quality of life substantially, but at the cost of
degradation to the environment, certainly in several countries
with insufficient environmental consciousness. Therefore, large
impetus is being given to improve the efficiency and thereby
reduce the emissions by using two approaches namely,
improvement in engine design and use of alternate fuels in place
of fossil fuels. In the recent times, gaseous fuels are gaining
prominence as cleaner fuels for power generation via IC engine
route, the power generation package including both
reciprocating engines and gas turbine machinery [1]. Complete
combustion with minimal emission is the key feature of gaseous
fuels and this feature is currently being exploited the world-over
for power generation purposes. Methane is one such eco-friendly
gaseous fuel. While natural gas is the most used one, next one
being the land fill gas or biogas, which is diluted natural gas
(with 20-30% CO2) biomass based producer gas is perhaps the
least used fuel.
Two different methods have been developed to convert
a direct injection diesel engine into a natural gas engine, namely
CNG dedicated and Dual Fuel [2]. In the first case, ignition is
performed with the use of a spark plug like in a gasoline engine
while the dualfuel mode uses Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as
the primary fuel and small quantities of diesel pilot-fuel for
ignition. In the CNG-dedicated conversion, the diesel injector is
no more used and it is usually replaced by a spark-plug after a
 Research Article
proper redesign of the cylinder head. Moreover, the intake
manifold has to be modified to include the gas injector, the
control valve and its control unit. The conversion from diesel to
CNG causes a reduction of brake power [3]. In the case of dual
fuel conversion, the cylinder head is not modified since the spark
plug is not required and the injection of the liquid fuel is still
performed with an in-cylinder injection system.
Dual-fuel engines deriving from the conversion of
conventional diesel engines usually operate un-throttled, with
the load regulated by the admission of natural gas in the intake
manifold. The dual fuel technology has been much more
successfully used in engines with slow variation of load, where
the engine speed varies in a small range [4]. Ahmad [5] showed
that dual-fuel engines generally suffer from the problem of lower
peak brake power and lower peak engine cylinder pressure due
to lower volumetric efficiency; although an improvement in
brake specific energy consumption is observed compared to pure
diesel mode. Dual fuel engines have lower emissions of smoke
and nitrogen oxides than conventional CI engines while
maintaining their high thermal efficiencies.
Availability of high speed computers now days CFD has become
modern tool to study the complicated process of combustion in
engines, instead of using high cost experimental setup. In this
paper the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code FLUENT
14.5 is used to model the complex combustion phenomenon for
engine for diesel and duel fuel, which could play a very
important role in engine design, research, development and
comparative analysis of pressure variation, temperature variation
and mass fraction of species CO, CO2 and NOx. In duel case
methane is used as primary fuel and diesel as pilot fuel. Objective
of application of duel fuel is to reduce the formation of NOx by
reducing the local reaction temperature therefore in this paper
CFD analysis of combustion for diesel and duel fuel is studied
and presented. The combustion chamber are modelled a sector
geometry of 30 using ANSYS WORKBENCH and analysis part
are carried out using ANSYS Fluent 14.5 package. Banapurmath
et al [6] conducted an experiment on 5.2 kW single cylinder
engine rated load and at a speed of 1500 rpm. In the present work
the engine specification available in Banapurmath et al ., are
being used for the analysis.
The main objective of this study involves CFD analysis
of single cylinder, four stroke direct injection CI engine operated
on single as well as dual fuel mode using methane with pilot
injection of diesel.
FUEL PROPERTIES
Methane is increasingly used as an alternative
automotive fuel for different reasons. Methane has higher
hydrogen to carbon ratio than gasoline which results in reduced
CO2 emissions. Natural gas or biogas consists mainly of
methane (CH4). One important difference of bio-methane to
other bio-fuels is that it can be produced very efficiently from
almost any biogenic source (green waste, wood, liquid manure)
and it does not compete with food production. Methane is a
colour and odour less fuel and very well suited to be used in
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spark ignited internal combustion engines. Furthermore,
methane has a high octane number which allows higher
compression ratios which in turn increases the maximum
achievable efficiency. There are other advantages, among them
reduced cold-start and low temperature emissions and
compatibility with lean-burn technology.
One of the more established an alternative fuel is
natural gas. Natural gas is a gaseous fossil fuel, consisting of
various gas species. A detailed typical composition is shown
above. Fossil Natural gas is found either together with other
fossil fuels (such as crude oil in oil fields, as well as with coal in
coal beds) or on its own. The properties of natural gas are very
similar to those of methane, which is its primary constituent. One
of the reasons why natural gas is the focus of this work is its
significantly larger proven reserves compared with crude oil.
The average natural gas composition by volume is shown in the
Table 1, while chemical properties and physical characteristics
of some fuels (Methane) are shown in Table 2 [7].
Table 1: Natural gas composition by volume [7]
Table 2: Chemical properties and physical characteristics of
some fuels at standard atmospheric conditions [7]
METHODOLOGY
A CFD combustion Simulation has been carried out for
a four stroke single cylinder DI engine. Due to complexity of
problem only a 30 sector of a model is modelled in 3D software
as shown in Figure 1. Meshing is performed in ANSYS meshed
tool as shown in Figure 2. Grid independence study is carried out
to find optimum grid to reduce computational time and improve
accuracy of results. Model is defined with various zones to
define the boundary conditions and interfaces; dynamic mesh is
carried out In-cylinder simulation. Due to the non-premixed
nature of the combustion occurring in such engines, non-
premixed combustion model of ANSYS FLUENT 14.5 can be
used to simulate the combustion process.
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Total energy entering control volume = Total Energy leaving

control volume.
Energy equation is given in equation (1.5)
(e)
t
+ . (ue) = P . u + . kT + + Se (1.5)

Where,
= Partial derivative = Mass density
u = Velocity S = Source
t = Time = Viscous dissipation
g = Gravitational acceleration T = Temperature
e = Specific internal energy = Viscosity
Figure 1: Geometry created in ANSYS design modeler k = Thermal conductivity mom = Momentum
The parameters which are used for simulation are-
Flow rate: 7.4 10-6 kg/s.
Start crank angle: 300 degree, 360 degree CA (TDC).
Fuel injected at 10 degree before TDC, Stop crank
angle: 540 degree
Temperature: 300 K.
Dynamic mesh
Due to the transient nature of an internal combustion
engine, it is essential to model the motion of the components
inside the chamber [7]. This is accomplished by dynamic
meshing techniques in ANSYS Fluent. With these tools, it is
possible to model the piston motion over the course of a
combustion cycle, while maintaining mesh integrity and
simulation accuracy. In order to maintain mesh integrity with
Figure 2: Meshing performed in ANSYS meshed tool such motion, Fluent offers smoothing and remeshing options that
allow the elements in a mesh to stretch, break up, and remesh as
Governing equations in CFD the cylinder volume increases and decreases. Fluent offers in In-
There are mainly three equations we solve in computational fluid Cylinder options to substitute the engine specifications as
dynamics problem [6]. shown in Table 3.
They are: Table 3: Engine specifications
Continuity equation 1 Bore 87.5 mm
It is based on the principle of conservation of mass. 2 Stroke 110 mm
Net mass flow out of control volume = Time rate of decrease of 3 Fuel in both cases Diesel
mass inside control volume. 4 Crankshaft speed 1500 rpm
Mass conservation is given in equation (1.2) 7 Crank angle step size 0.5 deg

+ () = Sm (1.2) 8 Crank radius 55 mm

Momentum (Navier Stokes) equation 9 Connecting rod length 220mm
It is based on the law of conservation of momentum.
Which states that the net force acting in a fluid mass is equal to RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
change in momentum of flow per unit time in that direction.
The force acting on a fluid element mass m is given in equation
Pressure,(bars)

60
(1.3)
Newtons second law of motion is 40 Diesel(CFD)
F=mxa (1.3) Desel(Expe
Where a is the acceleration acting in the same direction as force. 20
Momentum equation is given in equation (1.4)
(u)
+ . (u) = P + . + g + Smom (1.4) 0
t
Energy equation 300 350 400
crank angle,(degree)
450
It is based on the principle that total energy is conserved. Figure 3: Validation of CFD results with experimental results

48
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Figure 3 shows the validation of CFD results with experimental

results. It can be observed that P- diagram of experimentation
and CFD values are well comparable and acceptable. This
validates the CFD results evaluated in this project.

In cylinder temperature and pressure variations

Figure 7: Contours of static temperature at 540 deg CA for

Figure 4: Contours of static pressure at 370 deg CA for diesel
and duel fuel
diesel and duel
Figure 4 to 7 shows the contours of static pressure and
temperature at 370 and 540 CA for diesel and duel fuel . It is
observed that for in case of duel fuel at 370 CA the pressure and
temperature found maximum and they are 41.5 bars against 69.4
bar with diesel and 2180 K against 2330 K with diesel
respectively. At the end of power stroke that is at 540 CA the
pressure and temperature are gradually reduced due to increased
in cylinder volume they are 3.7 bars against 2.44 bar with diesel
and 1600 K against 1629 K with diesel respectively
75
Comparison Diesel
Dual fuel
Pressure.(bar)
55

35

15
Figure 5: Contours of static pressure at 540 deg CA for diesel
and duel fuel -5
290 310 330 350 370 390 410 430 450
Crank angle,(degree)

Figure 8: Comparison of cylinder pressure with crank angle for

diesel and duel fuel

2700 Comparision
Tempareture, (K)

2400
2100
1800
1500
1200
Figure 6: Contours of static temperature at 370 deg CA for 900
Diesel
diesel and duel 600
300
0
330 350 370 390 410 430 450
Crank angle, (degree)

Figure 9: Comparison of temperature with crank angle for

diesel and duel fuel

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Figure 8 and 9 shows the variation of pressure and

temperature with crank angle for diesel fuel and duel fuel.It is
seen from the fig 8 there is variation in peak pressure because
dual fuel delays the start of combustion. Peak pressure for diesel
is maximum i.e. 69.4 bars against 41.5 bars with duel fuel shown
in Table 4. Peak pressure for dual fuel was decreased with the
addition of methane and initial rate of pressure was also
decreased.
The maximum temperature for diesel occurs at 390 CA
i.e.2500 K against 380 CA of that with duel fuel i.e.2272 K as
shown in Table 5. Throughout the combustion temperature of the
gas inside the cylinder is lower with duel fuel. The temperature Figure 11: Contours of mass fraction of CO2 at 540 degree CA
variation for duel is lower than that of diesel for all crank angles. for diesel and duel fuel
As crank angle increases temperature for both diesel and duel
fuel decreases. These plots also indicates that the dual fuel 0.2
combustion process the ignition delay period becomes longer

CO2, (g/kg fuel)

due to reduction in oxygen concentration methane gas

Mass fraction of
substitution to air.
0.1
Table 4: Comparison of pressure CO2
Engine Pressure at 370 CA Pressure at 540 CA Diesel
Diesel 69.4 bars 2.40 bars 0
Duel fuel 41.5 bars 3.7 bars 290
390 490
Crank angle,(degree)
590
Figure 12: Comparison of mass fraction of CO2 with CA for
Table 5: Comparison of temperature diesel and duel fuel
Engine Maximum Temperature at 540
Temperature CA Fig.12 shows variation of mass fraction of pollutant CO2
Diesel 2500 K 1620 K with crank angle for diesel and duel fuel. It describes the mass
Duel fuel 2272 K 1600 K fraction of pollutant of CO2 of duel fuel is lower than normal
diesel fuel. The peak value of mass fraction pollutant CO2 is
Exhaust emissions found to be 0.1978g/kg fuel for diesel from fig 11 and
Mass fraction of CO2 variation 0.1314g/kg fuel from fig 11 for duel fuel operated with diesel
and methane. Levels of pollutant CO2 released for diesel is
higher than duel fuel due to higher hydrogen to carbon ratio of
methane.
Mass fraction of CO variation

Figure 10: Contours of mass fraction of CO2 at 370 degree CA

for diesel and duel fuel

Figure 13: Contours of mass fraction of CO at 370 degree CA

for diesel and duel fuel

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Figure 14: Contours of mass fraction of CO at 540 degree CA Figure 17: Contours of mass fraction of NOx at 540 degree CA
for diesel and duel fuel for diesel and duel fuel
0.2
0.0008
Mass fraction of CO,

NOx

NOx, (g/kg fuel)

Mass fraction of
0.15
0.0006
(g/kg fuel)

Diesel
0.1
CO 0.0004 Dual Fuel
0.05 Diesel
Dual fuel 0.0002
0
300 400 500 600 0
Crank angle,(degree) 300 400 500 600
Figure 15: Comparison of mass fraction of CO with crank angle Crank angle,(degree)
for diesel and duel fuel Figure 18: Comparison of mass fraction of NOx with crank
angle for diesel and duel fuel
Fig 15 shows the comparison of mass fraction of CO with crank
angle for diesel and duel fuel. It was found that the mass fraction Figure 18 shows the comparison of mass fraction of
of CO higher nearer to TDC upon moving the piston TDC to NOx with CA for diesel and duel fuel respectively. It was seen
BDC the mass fraction of CO decreases in both cases. from fig.17 that for the both cases the mass fraction of NOx was
Comparing diesel and duel fuel the mass fraction of CO was high higher nearer to TDC; due to peak temperature is available at this
in case of diesel. point. NOx is emission which starts getting generated nearly at
the end of the combustion process. NOx is an highly toxic gas
Mass fraction of NOx variation which is harmful for the atmosphere hence more focus will be
given to the value of mass fraction of NOx. At the end of the
combustion process NOx gets produced due to incomplete
combustion and due to very high temperature inside the cylinder.
As shown in fig.18 dual fueling in CI engines reduces NOx
emissions significantly compared to normal diesel engine
operation, this is primarily because of lower combustion
temperatures. NOx formed during combustion of pilot fuel diesel
constitutes most of total NOx emissions of dual fuel combustion.

Figure 16: Contours of mass fraction of NOx at 370 degree CA
for diesel and duel fuel
CONCLUSION
A CFD combustion simulation has been carried out for
a four stroke, single cylinder DI engine, for diesel and dual fuel
using ANSYS FLUENT 14.5. Due to complexity of problem
only a 30 sector of a model is modelled in ANSYS
WORKBENCH. Variation (contours) of mass fraction of diesel
burnt, static pressure, temperature, velocity of flame front, CO,
CO2 and NOx for power stroke i.e. 360 to 540 CA were
presented with diesel and duel fuel.

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 Research Article
From this project following conclusions are drawn:
The CFD results validate the experimental results of the
engine conducted for p- diagram.
The magnitude of the pressure and temperature are
lower with dual fuel compared to diesel.
Static temperature is also lower for methane.
CO2 emission levels are lower for duel fuel when
compared with diesel
There is a considerable reduction in pressure and
temperature with duel fuel because of that there is
reduction in NOx formation.
Results obtained from the CFD analysis are quicker and
economical compared to experimentation. The CFD tool is most
useful in engine design, research development and optimization
of emissions.
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