Efficacy of EGR and Boost in Single-Injection Enabled Low Temperature Combustion

Exhaust gas recirculation, fuel injection strategy and boost pressure are among the key enablers to attain low NOx and soot emissions simultaneously on modern diesel engines. In this work, the individual influence of these parameters on the emissions are investigated independently for engine loads up to 8 bar IMEP. A single-shot fuel injection strategy has been deployed to push the diesel cycle into low temperature combustion with EGR. The results indicated that NOx was a stronger respondent to injection pressure levels than to boost when the EGR ratio is relatively low. However, when the EGR level was sufficiently high, the NOx was virtually grounded and the effect of boost or injection pressure becomes irrelevant. Further tests indicated that a higher injection pressure lowered soot emissions across the EGR sweeps while the effect of boost on the soot reduction appeared significant only at higher soot levels. Moreover, the peak soot values were observed to shift towards lower intake oxygen values. With high levels of EGR, the increased carbon monoxide emission largely followed the NOx-Soot trade-off (reduced oxygen concentration, 11∼14% of the working fluid), while the increased hydrocarbon emission was attributed to both the lowered flame temperature and the further reduced oxygen concentration (8∼12%).