Study of the Combustion Process inside an Ethanol-Diesel Dual Direct Injection Engine Based on a Non-Uniform Injection Approach

The use of ethanol is a promising method to reduce the emissions of diesel engines.The present study has been based on the installation of a gasoline electronic injection system in a single-cylinder diesel engine to control the amount of ethanol entering the cylinder during the compression(while diesel has been injected into the cylinder by the original pump injection system).The injection time has been controlled by crank angle signal collected by an AVL angle indicator.In the tests ethanol and diesel each accounted for half of the fuel volume,and the total heat energy supply of the fuel was equivalent to that of the diesel under the operating conditions of the original engine.A three-dimensional combustion model of the diesel engine has been implemented by using the CFD software FIRE.Simulations have been carried out assuming uniform and non-uniform injections rate for the different holes and the different results have been compared.According to these results,a non-uniform injection rate can produce early ignition and cause an increase in the maximum in-cylinder pressure and the maximum average incylinder temperature.Moreover,in such conditions NO emissions are larger while soot emission is slightly lower.