Diesel engines are used in heavy duty applications because of their high efficiency and reliability. However, their high diesel particulates and NOx emissions remain major concerns.
An eight cylinder direct injection diesel engine was connected to a partial flow particulate sampling mini-dilution tunnel. Six different grades of diesel fuels were studied for their regular emissions as well as smoke and particulate emissions. Each fuel was tested at three engine speeds and full load. This paper presents the results of these tests which includes analysis of the effects of load, cetane number, 90% distillation temperature, and density for steady state conditions.
A correlation was developed for converting smoke numbers in Hartridge Smoke Units (HSU) to the specific particulate emissions by evaluating results of all fuels tests. Another correlation was also developed for diesel particulates and NOx emissions trade-off.
The authors studied the effect of oxygen-enriched combustion to reduce the particulate emissions. However, oxygen addition leads to increase in NOx emissions. An oxygen-enriched diesel combustion model and NO emissions model were developed to get better understanding of NO formation mechanism.