Investigation of burn duration and NO emission in lean mixture with CNG and gasoline

The results of experiments performed by gasoline and natural gas fuels in a single cylinder research engine were evaluated in this study. The main objective of this study is to compare exhaust gas emissions, efficiency, and burn durations for both fuels in stoichiometric and lean mixture. At the same time, cycle to cycle variation in these operating conditions should not exceed an acceptable value. In the ultra-lean mixture, gasoline fuel exceeded this determined limit before Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). Therefore, the reduction in NO was restricted by cyclic variations. In combustion analysis, although the burn duration of the gasoline in stoichiometric conditions was shorter than CNG, this situation reversed in favor of CNG in the ultra-lean mixtures. Contrary to some studies in the literature, the spark advance and ignition delay for CNG were the same or shorter than gasoline in this study. The primary reasons for this change are the high compression ratio and the different combustion chamber geometry. The increase in turbulence intensity has different effects on CNG and gasoline. As a result, it has been observed that NO emissions can meet the limits without a loss of efficiency for this engine operated with CNG under the ultra-lean mixture.