Numerical Investigation of the Combustion Kinetics of Partially Premixed Combustion (PPC) Fueled with Primary Reference Fuel

This work numerically investigates the detailed combustion kinetics of partially premixed combustion (PPC) in a diesel engine under three different premixed ratio fuel conditions. A reduced Primary Reference Fuel (PRF) chemical kinetics mechanism was coupled with CONVERGE-SAGE CFD model to predict PPC combustion under various operating conditions. The experimental results showed that the increase of premixed ratio (PR) fuel resulted in advanced combustion phasing. To provide insight into the effects of PR on ignition delay time and key reaction pathways, a post-process tool was used. The ignition delay time is related to the formation of hydroxyl (OH). Thus, the validated Converge CFD code with the PRF chemistry and the post-process tool was applied to investigate how PR change the formation of OH during the low-to high-temperature reaction transition.

The reaction pathway analyses of the formations of OH before ignition time were investigated. It was found that in the case of PR0%, the second isomerization from C₇H₁₄OOH₂-4O₂ to NC7KET24 and the decomposition of NC7KET24 contributed 27.6% and 46.46% of OH formation respectively. The contribution of AC₈H₁₆OOH-B to the formation of OH was just 12.13%. It can be concluded that the low temperature oxidation reactions of n-heptane were key steps in producing OH. While in the cases of PR30% and PR50%, because of the higher in-cylinder temperature, most of OH derived from the decomposition reaction of H₂O₂ that contributed 54.47% and 54.63% of OH formation respectively. Besides, in the PR30% and PR50%, the oxidation reactions of IC₄H₇ contributed 31.95% and 33.84% of OH formation respectively, and the oxidation reaction of IC₄H₆OH contributed 19.08% and 22.22% of OH formation respectively, which indicated that the oxidation of iso-octane also contributed to the production of OH. In addition, the distributions of mass fraction, production rate and representative creation reaction (RCR) of OH showed that in the case of PR30% and PR50%, the formation of OH outside the spray periphery were dominated by the reactions R394 (H2O2 (+ M) <=> 2 OH (+ M)), while that in the spray periphery were predominantly controlled by the reaction R21 (NC7KET24 => NC3H7CHO + CH3COCH2 + OH) and R125 (IC₄H₆OH + HO₂ <=> CH₂CCH₂OH + CH₂O + OH). Premixed fuel from port injection changed the formation pathway of OH during the oxidation of direct injection fuel through the reaction R125.