Development of Predictive Model for Hydrogen-Natural Gas/Diesel Dual Fuel Engine

Faced with environmental issues and depleting oil reserves, engine research is venturing into novel paths, such as the dual-fuel engine. This has motivated the development of numerical models that provide highly accurate predictive tools. In this context, 0D/quasi-D modeling is necessary, with a compromise between control of computation time and acceptable prediction level, which will certainly enable the various studies on the dual fuel mode to be explored at reduced cost. The aim of the present study is to develop a combustion model adapted to the hydrogen-natural gas (HNG)/diesel dual fuel engine to ensure 0D/1D simulations over a wide load range and under different gas mixture compositions. This model is based on the separation of the different types of combustion in this mode, by first treating the combustion of the pilot fuel by jet modeling, then the combustion of the gas mixture (HNG) by a mathematical model based on the Gaussian function. This phase separation is carefully combined with a mathematical treatment of the heat release rate, in order to determine ignition delays for both phases and model each of them separately. The modeling approach unveiled in this work is based on a phenomenological aspect, where the distinction between pilot and primary fuel combustion is ensured with phase separation allowing precise monitoring of the combustion sequence with the detection of the start and end of each phase and the contribution of each to the overall heat release rate. The results confirm the predictive power of the model developed with a maximum error of around 2%. This accurate prediction is particularly evident at high loads with high hydrogen enrichment, where the combustion sequence becomes complicated.