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NOx emission control in SI engine by adding argon inert gas to intake mixture
Hany A. Moneib a,b, Mohsen Abdelaal c, Mohamed Y.E. Selim d,*, Osama A. Abdallah e
a
Industrial Education College, Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt
b
Mech. Power Engg., Mattaria College of Eng., Cairo, Egypt
c
Mechanical Eng., Faculty of Engineering, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt
d
Mech. Eng. Dept., College of Eng. UAE University, P.O. Box 17555, Al-Jimi, Al-Ain, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
e
Sharjah Institute of Technology, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: The Argon inert gas is used to dilute the intake air of a spark ignition engine to decrease nitrogen oxides
Received 21 March 2008 and improve the performance of the engine. A research engine Ricardo E6 with variable compression was
Received in revised form 27 October 2008 used in the present work. A special test rig has been designed and built to admit the gas to the intake air
Accepted 30 May 2009
of the engine for up to 15% of the intake air. The system could admit the inert gas, oxygen and nitrogen
Available online 26 July 2009
gases at preset amounts. The variables studied included the engine speed, Argon to inlet air ratio, and air
to fuel ratio. The results presented here included the combustion pressure, temperature, burned mass
Keywords:
fraction, heat release rate, brake power, thermal efficiency, volumetric efficiency, exhaust temperature,
Petrol engines
Inert gas
brake specific fuel consumption and emissions of CO, CO2, NO and O2.
Argon-exhaust emissions It was found that the addition of Argon gas to the intake air of the gasoline engine causes the nitrogen
Artificial air oxide to reduce effectively and also it caused the brake power and thermal efficiency of the engine to
increase. Mathematical program has been used to obtain the mixture properties and the heat release
when the Argon gas is used.
Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction use of noble material and other gases or liquids. They also require
oxygen to be available in the exhaust gases i.e. to run the engine
Due to increasing mobility especially in large cities, environ- always lean.
mental protection has advanced to become a topic of central con- Using EGR in spark ignition engines always required the addi-
cern. Emission control regulations have been introduced in all tion of piping and valve systems to recirculate some of the exhaust
industrialized countries in order to reduce the emissions of vehi- gases back into the intake air. The power output and/or thermal
cles powered by internal combustion engines. efficiency have to be sacrificed. Similar scarify has to be given for
There have been a number of methods to reduce the exhaust water addition into the combustion chamber.
emissions from spark ignition engines as well as diesel engines. The promising approach for reducing the NOx gases is to add
Some of these methods deal with the exhaust gases directly and small amount of an inert gas. There have been many references
try to reduce the concentrations of the dangerous gases. These in the use of intake air dilution of diesel engine to reduce the
are called after treatment devices e.g. catalytic converters. Some NOx emission e.g. using enriched oxygen [1] and carbon dioxide
of the methods used are cutting down the level of those gases from [2].
forming in the first place. These methods include the use of ex- To compensate for the smaller specific heat ratio value of CO2,
haust gas recycle (EGR), the use of water in combustion chamber an inert gas with higher specific heat ratio can be added to the in-
or admitting inert gases inside the combustion chamber of the take gas, and argon which has a specific heat ratio value of 1.667 at
engine. room temperature can be used [3,4].
For spark ignition engines, the most dangerous pollutants emit- The compression temperature for the case of oxygen–argon–he-
ted are the nitrogen oxides NOx which cause fatal diseases. For lium mixture has been found to be 300 K higher than that of the
these gases (NO and NO2), the following converters are being case when air is used [5–7]. Also the gas temperature during com-
developed and improved: three way catalyst system, NOx storage bustion period is 300–400 K higher for the case of oxygen–argon–
catalysts, selective catalytic reduction systems. They require the helium mixture.
Argon has been also used in a diesel engine to dilute the intake
mixture and has been varied up to 10% [8,9]. At the argon concen-
* Corresponding author. On leave from Helwan University, Egypt. Tel.: +971
504494723; fax: +971 37623158.
tration 0f 10% the mixed gas takes a specific heat ratio value of
E-mail address: mohamed.selim@uaeu.ac.ae (M.Y.E. Selim). 1.405 which is the same as that of air. As specific heat ratio
0196-8904/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2009.05.032
2700 H.A. Moneib et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 50 (2009) 2699–2708
increased, the peak cylinder pressure increased and it occurred at Air Filter
earlier crank angle. Diluents are found to be effective way in reduc- Atmospheric Ar + O2 (0-15)%
ing NOx emissions. Air
2 AR
Although dilution of intake air especially with argon gas has
Meter
Viscous Flow
been used before, it appears that it was used only in diesel engine. 21% O2
Mixer
The objective was always to decrease the exhaust emission of NOx
and slightly improve the engine power and thermal efficiency.
However, it has not been used before for dilution in spark ignition
Rotameter Rotameter
engines to reduce the exhaust emission of NOx. The effects of add-
ing argon gas to the intake air of spark ignition engines perfor- Pressure Pressure
regulating Valveregulating Valve
mance are also lacking.
Therefore, it is the main objective of the present work to inves-
tigate in details the effects of diluting the intake air with argon gas
as an inert gas on the performance and emissions of a single cylin-
der spark ignition engine.
The present study was carried out on a Ricardo E6 variable com- Carburetor
pression spark ignition (SI) engine. The scope of the present work
included the investigation of the thermodynamics properties of
Ar
the intake gas mixture when argon is added, the effects of adding Mixture
argon on the performance of the engine and the exhaust emissions,
Ricardo
and finally the heat release rate analyses.
O2
E6 Engine
2. Experimental set-up
The present work aims at studying the effect of diluting inlet air
Table 1
with argon gas in gasoline engine. For this purpose, the experimen-
Research engine Ricardo E6 technical details.
tal program was designed and may be divided into two categories.
Number of cylinders 1
Bore, mm 76.2
(a) Experiments on gasoline engine running on diluted intake
Stroke, mm 111.125
Capacity, cc 507 air with argon at constant engine speed.
Maximum speed, rpm 3000 (b) Experiments on gasoline engine running on diluted intake
Max. cylinder pressure, bar 150 air with argon At different engine speeds.
Compression ratio 8
Ignition timing, deg. BTDC 20
In the first set of tests, the engine has been running on mixture
Throttle opening WOT
of oxygen, argon and nitrogen on preset ratios. These ratios have
H.A. Moneib et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 50 (2009) 2699–2708 2701
1.36
The maximum error in the flow rate of air measured by the rota- 0 2 4 6 8 10
meter was 1.58 10 4 m3/s and a relative error of 1% while the Argon(%)
maximum error of measuring the fuel flow rate was 1 cm3 and
10 ms in measuring the time of flow and this gives a relative error Fig. 2. Calculated mixture specific heat ratio (c) variation with argon percentages at
of about 0.7% in the mass flow rate. The relative error in measuring and of compression.
the argon gas flow rate was 5% .
The maximum error in measuring the engine speed was 0.1 rev/
s which gives a relative error of about 0.4% in the speed measure-
ment. The engine torque was measured with an error of 0.1 Nm 1.26
that gives a relative error of 4% in the brake power and 3% in the
Mixture density (kg/m 3)at T intake=300 K
brake specific fuel consumption. The maximum error in exhaust Mixture density at 300 K
gas temperature measurement was 0.1 °C which gives 0.1% relative 1.24
error. The exhaust gas concentration was measured with an abso-
lute error of 1 ppm for NO and N2 and 0.1 for CO, CO2 and O2.
1.22
3. Results and discussions
0.288 1600
Mororing pressure (kPa)
2 % Ar
Gas constant (KJ/Kg.K) 4 % Ar
6 % Ar
8 % Ar
12 % Ar
14 % Ar
0.28 800
0.276 400
0.272 0
0 4 8 12 100 200 300 400 500
Argon (%) Crank angle (Degrees)
Fig. 4. Mixture gas constant variation of intake air at intake temperature = 300 K Fig. 6. Motoring pressure variation with crank angle for different argon
with argon percentages. percentages.
mixture increases the mass flow rate of the intake air and hence Fig. 6 as a function of the crank angle. It may be seen from this fig-
the air/fuel ratio increases. ure that increasing the argon addition has increased the motoring
pressures at all crank angles and particularly at near the end of the
3.2. Effect of argon concentration on the engine performance compression stroke. The increase in the pressure is a result of the
increase in the specific heat ratio of the mixture. It has been shown
3.2.1. Volumetric efficiency above that the specific heat ratio increases with adding more argon
The increase in the mixture density and mass flow rate caused to the intake, and this will increase the pressures during the com-
by the argon density and molecular weight increases the volumet- pression stroke. It may be seen that the maximum motoring pres-
ric efficiency as may be shown in Fig. 5. The volumetric efficiency sure increased from about 1180 kPa at 0% argon to about 1450 kPa
has increased from approximately 81% at 0% argon, to about 90% at at 14% argon.
argon ratio of 16%. The engine appears to be supercharged by about
12.5% which may reflect later on the power output and specific fuel 3.2.3. Firing pressure
consumption. Fig. 7 shows the combustion pressure–crank angle variation for
different ratios of argon gas added to the intake air of the engine. It
3.2.2. Motoring pressure can be seen from this figure that the combustion pressure in-
The motoring pressure of the engine (cylinder pressure without creased with adding more argon. For argon addition ratio of 2%
combustion) at different ratios of argon gas added may be seen in
92 4000
Firing pressure (kPa)
2 % Ar
90 Volumetric effeciency 4 % Ar
Volumetric effeciency ηv (%)
6 % Ar
3000 8 % Ar
Motoring pressure (kPa)
10 % Ar
12 % Ar
88 14 % Ar
86 2000
84
1000
82
80 0
0 4 8 12 16 100 200 300 400 500
Argon (%) Crank angle (Degrees)
Fig. 5. Volumetric efficiency (gv) variation with argon percentages O2 = 21%, Fig. 7. Combustion pressure variation with crank angle for different argon
N = 35 rps. percentages.
H.A. Moneib et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 50 (2009) 2699–2708 2703
1600 6 % Ar
at 2% the bmf reached unity at about 400° ATDC while for 14% ar-
8 % Ar
10 % Ar gon it was about 365° ATDC.
12 % Ar
14 % Ar
1200 3.2.7. Brake mean effective pressure
It has been shown before that combustion pressure increases
with adding more argon with some advance in the maximum pres-
800 sure occurrence. It has been found that the bmep increases slightly
with adding more argon. It increased from 7.7 bar at 2% argon to
8.2 bar at 14% argon. The increase in the bmep may have been pos-
tulated to the fact the maximum pressure increases and occurs ear-
400 lier with increasing the argon which increases the net work
produced by each cycle. This increases the bmep as the engine is
running at the same speed and friction losses.
The increase in the bmep with adding more argon increases the
0
100 200 300 400 500 brake power output of the engine as the engine speed was kept
Crank angle (Degrees) constant. Fig. 11 shows the slight increase of the brake power with
adding more argon. It increased from 6.8 kW to 7.2 kW (5% in-
Fig. 8. Temperature variation with crank angle for different argon percentages. crease) with increasing the argon gas from 2% to 14%, respectively.
2704 H.A. Moneib et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 50 (2009) 2699–2708
1 288
8 % Ar
10% Ar
0.6 12% Ar 280
14% Ar
0.4 276
0.2 272
0 268
320 360 400 440 480 520 0 4 8 12 16
Argon (%)
Crank angle (Degrees)
Fig. 12. Brake specific fuel consumption variation with argon percentages,
Fig. 10. Burnt mass fraction variation with crank angle for different argon
N = 35 rps.
percentages.
710
10
Exhaust temperature (°C)
9 700
Brake power (kW) T exh (° C)
Brake power(kW)
8
690
680
670
5 0 4 8 12 16
0 4 8 12 16 Argon (%)
Argon (%)
Fig. 13. Exhaust temperature variation with argon percentages, N = 35 rps.
Fig. 11. Brake power variation with argon percentages, N = 35 rps.
7 0.2
Emission Index for Nitrogen Oxide EINO(g /kg f )
EINO(g/kgf )
5 0.18
4 0.17
3 0.16
0 2 4 6 8 10 0 2 4 6 8 10
Argon (%) Argon (%)
Fig. 14. Emission index of nitrogen oxide variation with argon percentages, Fig. 15. Emission index of oxygen variation with argon percentages, N = 35 rps.
N = 35 rps.
92
Emission Index of Carbon Monoxide EICO(g /kg f)
Fig. 14 depicts both the measured nitrogen oxide and the calcu-
lated values as obtained from the FORTRAN equilibrium program. EICO
It can be seen from this figure that introducing argon gas in the in- Measured
90 Calculated
take has resulted in the drop of NO from 6.7 to 3 g/kg when argon
is increased from 0% to 10%, respectively (55% drop). It may be
mentioned here that the NO is generally formed and affected by
the following: (1) the existence of nitrogen and oxygen from the
atmospheric air, (2) the air/fuel ratio, (3) high temperature and 88
(4) the existence of a diluent. Here the addition of argon reduced
the molecular nitrogen in the intake air. The addition of argon re-
duced the N2 mole fraction by about 19% while the O2 has been
kept constant. Reducing the N2 mole fraction by 19% reduced the 86
emission of NO in the exhaust gases by 55% means there are other
factors that play an important role in the process. The other reason
for the reduction of NO in the exhaust gases is increasing the air/
fuel ratio as it plays important role in this reduction as has been
shown before [10]. The combustion temperature has been shown 84
0 2 4 6 8 10
above to increase with adding more argon as may be seen in Argon (%)
Fig. 8. Although the combustion temperature has increased but it
seems that it has been overwhelmed by the other factors. The Fig. 16. Calculated emission Index of carbon monoxide variation with argon
remaining factor that plays an important role in reducing the NO percentages, N = 35 rps.
in the exhaust is the existence of an inert gas which is the argon
here. The increase of inert argon in the combustion chamber leads
to the reduction of the NO as has been shown before for many 3.3.4. Exhaust carbon dioxide
other inert gases e.g. CO2, H2O and exhaust gases. Fig. 17 shows the variation of carbon dioxide (CO2) against the
argon added percentage. It may be seen that the CO2 slightly in-
3.3.2. Exhaust oxygen emissions creases from 0.177 to 0.195 g/kg up to 4% argon then it decreases
The measured and calculated oxygen concentration in the ex- to 0.16 g/kg with adding more argon up to 10%. Adding argon in
haust gases may be seen in Fig. 15. It may be seen from the figure the first range slightly increases the air–fuel ratio and this in-
that increasing the argon from 0% to 10% has resulted in the reduc- creases the CO2 as the fuel molecules can easily find the oxygen
tion of the emission index of O2 in the exhaust gases. It has been atoms. As the argon increases more the air/fuel increases and the
also mentioned above that the concentration of O2 in the intake exhaust oxygen reduces and CO increases then the CO2 decreases.
air was kept constant at 21% as the argon was increased.
3.3.5. Exhaust nitrogen molecule
3.3.3. Exhaust carbon monoxide The variation of the emission index of molecular nitrogen
The variation of the carbon monoxide (CO) against the argon against the argon added percentage may be shown in Fig. 18. It
added ratio may be seen in Fig. 16. It can be seen that the CO emis- may be seen that increasing the argon in the intake leads to the
sion index slightly increases as the argon increases. This increase reduction of the molecular nitrogen in the exhaust gases. This is
may be postulated to the fact that the available oxygen decreases in accordance with the reduction of the molecular nitrogen added
with adding more argon; Fig. 15. with the intake air. The added argon caused slight reduction in the
2706 Emission Index of Carbon dioxide EICO 2(g/kg f) H.A. Moneib et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 50 (2009) 2699–2708
0.21 100
Volumetric effeciency
EICO2 N=24 rps
Measured N=30 rps
Calculated N=35 rps
Volumetric effeciency ηv ( %)
0.2 90 N=39 rps
0.19 80
0.18 70
0.17 60
0.16 0 2 4 6 8 10 50
Argon (%) 0 2 4 6 8 10
Argon (%)
Fig. 17. Calculated emission index of carbon dioxide variation with argon
percentages, N = 35 rps. Fig. 19. Volumetric efficiency variation with argon percentages and engine speeds.
124
12
Emission Index of Nitrogen (EIN 2)(g/kg f)
8
112
6
108
104 4
100
0 2 4 6 8 10 2
Argon (%) 0 2 4 6 8 10
Argon (%)
Fig. 18. Calculated exhaust emission index of nitrogen molecule variation with
argon percentages, N = 35 rps. Fig. 20. Brake power variation with argon percentages and engine speed.
intake nitrogen which reduced the exhaust nitrogen. It has been ing the argon has been already explained above. It may be seen
shown above too the NO emission has also reduced as the argon from the figure that increasing the engine speed from 24 to
increased. 39 rps has resulted in the increase in the volumetric efficiency. This
is expected trend as the volumetric efficiency is low at low engine
3.4. Effect of engine speed speed due to the charge heating and backflow possibilities [10].
Increasing the engine speed would then improve this trend and re-
The effects of increasing the engine speed from 24 to 39 rev/s duce the charge heating and backflow as the engine cycle occurs in
will be presented in the following sub-sections. The effects of a less time. If the engine speed has been increased more than
speed on the volumetric efficiency, brake mean effective pressure, 39 rps, the volumetric efficiency may have been reduced. If the vol-
brake power, brake specific fuel consumption, brake thermal effi- umetric efficiency increases, the mass flow rate of the intake air
ciency and exhaust temperature will be shown next. will increase and more power can be produced from the engine.
240 4. Conclusions
220
0 2 4 6 8 10 4.1. Effect of argon concentration on the thermodynamic properties
Argon (%)
Adding argon with different concentrations to the intake air had
Fig. 21. Brake specific fuel consumption variation with argon percentages and the following effects:
engine speeds.
(1) The specific heat ratio of the intake air increases, and the
specific heat capacities (at constant pressure and constant
760 volume) decrease.
Exhaust temperature (°C) (2) The intake air gas constant decreases and hence the intake
N=24 rps air density and the air/fuel ratio increase.
N=30 rps
N=35 rps
Exhaust temperature(°C)
(2) For the same amount of argon concentration, increasing the [5] No SH, Kobori S, Kamimoto T, Enomoto Y. High temperature diesel combustion
in a rapid compression–expansion machine. SAE paper no. 911845; 1991.
engine speed decreased the brake thermal efficiency and
[6] Volponi Joanne V, Branch Melvyn C. Flame structure of C2H2–O2–argon and
increased the exhaust temperature. C2H2–NO2–argon laminar premixed flames. In: 24th Symposium (int.) on
combustion. The Combustion Institute; 1992. p. 823–31.
[7] Ohigashi S, kuroda H, Hayashi Y, Sugihara K. Heat capacity changes predict
nitrogen oxides reduction by exhaust gas recirculation. SAE paper no. 710010;
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