Performance Evaluation and Optimization of Diesel Fuel Properties and Chemistry in an HCCI Engine

The nine CRC fuels for advanced combustion engines (FACE fuels) have been evaluated in a simple, premixed HCCI engine under varying conditions of fuel rate, air-fuel ratio, and intake temperature. Engine performance was found to vary mainly as a function of combustion phasing as affected by fuel cetane and engine control variables. The data was modeled using statistical techniques involving eigenvector representation of the fuel properties and engine control variables, to define engine response and allow optimization across the fuels for best fuel efficiency.

In general, the independent manipulation of intake temperature and air-fuel ratio provided some opportunity for improving combustion efficiency of a specific fuel beyond the direct effect of targeting the optimum combustion phasing of the engine (near 5 CAD ATDC). High cetane fuels suffer performance loss due to easier ignition, resulting in lower intake temperatures, which increase HC and CO emissions and result in the need for more advanced combustion phasing. The FACE fuels also varied in T90 temperature and % aromatics, independent of cetane number. T90 temperature was found to have an effect on engine performance when combined with high cetane, but % aromatics did not, when evaluated independently of cetane and T90.