Fuel-Specific Effect of Exhaust Gas Residuals on HCCI Combustion: A Modeling Study

A modeling study was performed to investigate fuel-specific effects of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) components on homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) combustion at conditions relevant to the negative valve overlap (NVO) strategy using CHEMKIN-PRO. Four single-component fuels with well-established kinetic models were chosen: n-heptane, iso-octane, ethanol, and toluene. These fuels were chosen because they span a wide range of fuel chemistries, and produce a wide compositions range of complete stoichiometric products (CSP). The simulated engine conditions combined a typical spark ignition engine compression ratio (11.34) and high intake charge temperatures (500-550 K) that are relevant to NVO HCCI. It was found that over the conditions investigated, all the fuels had overlapping start of combustion (SOC) phasing, despite the wide range in octane number (RON = 0 to 120). The effect of the EGR components CO₂ and H₂O was to suppress the compression temperature because of their higher heat capacities, which retarded SOC. For a concentration of O₂ higher than the stoichiometric amount, or excess O₂, there was an effect of advancing SOC for n-heptane, iso-octane, and toluene, but SOC for ethanol was not advanced. Low temperature heat release (LTHR) for n-heptane was also found to be highly dependent on excess O₂, and mild endothermic reaction was observed for cases when excess O₂ was not present.