On the Effects of Injection Strategy, Exhaust Gas Recirculation, and Intake Boost on TSCI With Wet Ethanol

Using a split injection of wet ethanol, where a portion of the fuel is injected during the compression stroke, has been shown to be an effective way to enable thermally stratified compression ignition (TSCI), an advanced combustion mode that aims to control the heat release process by enhancing thermal stratification, thereby extending the load range of low temperature combustion (LTC). Wet ethanol is the ideal fuel candidate to enable TSCI because it has a high latent heat of vaporization and low equivalence ratio sensitivity. Previous work has shown "early" compression stroke injections (-150 to -100 deg aTDC) have the potential to control the start of combustion (SOC) while "mid" compression stroke injections (-90 to -30 deg aTDC) have the potential to control in-cylinder thermal stratification, thereby controlling the heat release rate. In this work, a mixture of 80% ethanol and 20% water by mass is used to further study the injection strategy of TSCI combustion. Additionally, the impact of external, cooled exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), and intake boost on the effectiveness of a TSCI with wet ethanol to control the heat release process are investigated. It was found that neither external, cooled EGR, nor intake boost level has any impact on the effectiveness of the compression stroke injection(s) at controlling the burn rate of TSCI. External, cooled EGR has the potential to increase the overall tailpipe combustion efficiency, while intake boost has the potential to decrease NO(x)emissions at the expense of combustion efficiency by lowering the global equivalence ratio.