Academic literature on the topic 'Combustion control, Ion current measurements, Exhaust gas measurements'

Solid-state electrochemical technology, embodied in the IGR process, is used to reduce nitrogen oxides (NOx) to nitrogen and oxygen, and thereby control NOx emissions from natural gas powered engines. The IGR deNOx process is based on solid-state, flow-through, high surface area, porous oxygen ion conductive ceramic electrolytes. Recent bench-scale experiments conducted for the Gas Research Institute have demonstrated NOx reduction in multicomponent gas streams, the inert portion of which simulate natural gas combustion products. The reduction products were analyzed by in situ gas chromatography to verify NOx reduction rates inferred from electrochemical measurements. IGR process advantages compared with existing NOx control technologies are reviewed.

This work covers investigations of the static and dynamic behaviour of a confined, co-swirled and liquid-fuelled airblast injection system. The focus lies on the application of ion current sensors for the qualitative measurement of the heat release rate or for flame monitoring purposes in complex technical combustion processes. The ion current sensor is to operate in a feedback control loop in order to react on combustion dynamics in real time. The first part of the work analyses experimental data, which were obtained with different techniques, e.g. dynamic pressure, chemiluminescence, fine-wire thermocouples and ion current. The results show that the thermo-acoustic instability and the precessing vortex core generate an interaction mode. The frequency of this interaction mode is the difference of the other two modes. This has not yet been observed for partially premixed and liquid-fuelled injection systems before and also was not detected by the chemiluminescence of the flame. The ion current measurement technique is able to detect the helical mode of the precessing vortex core as well as the interaction frequency, leading to the conclusion that the chemical reactions are influenced by this helical structure. Contour maps of the frequencies reveal this influence in the outer shear layer. The second part of the study focused on the ion current probe as a method to predict static combustion instabilities, such as lean blowout. According to the results, the ion current is a fast responding method to detect lean blowout, provided that the detector is mounted at a suitable position. Measurements at different positions in the flame were compared with phase-locked chemiluminescence measurements. Precursors in the ion current signal for lean-blowout prediction were found using a statistical approach, which is based on ion peak distance. The precursor events allow for the use of this approach with a feedback control loop in future applications.

Large marine two-stroke diesel engines are widely used as propulsion systems for shipping worldwide and are facing stricter NO x emission limits. Exhaust gas recirculation is introduced to these engines to reduce the produced combustion NO x to the allowed levels. Since the current number of engines built with exhaust gas recirculation is low and engine testing is very expensive, a powerful alternative for developing exhaust gas recirculation controllers for such engines is to use control-oriented simulation models. Unfortunately, the same reasons that motivate the use of simulation models also hinder the capacity to obtain sufficient measurement data at different operating points for developing the models. A mean value engine model of a large two-stroke diesel with exhaust gas recirculation that can be simulated faster than real time is presented and validated. An analytic model for the cylinder pressure that captures the effects of changes in the fuel control inputs is also developed and validated with cylinder pressure measurements. A parameterization procedure that deals with the low number of measurement data available is proposed. After the parameterization, the model is shown to capture the stationary operation of the real engine well. The transient prediction capability of the model is also considered satisfactory which is important if the model is to be used for exhaust gas recirculation controller development during transients. Furthermore, the experience gathered while developing the model about essential signals to be measured is summarized, which can be very helpful for future applications of the model. Finally, models for the ship propeller and resistance are also investigated, showing good agreement with the measured ship sailing signals during maneuvers. These models give a complete vessel model and make it possible to simulate various maneuvering scenarios, giving different loading profiles that can be used to investigate the performance of exhaust gas recirculation and other controllers during transients.

The advancement of modern injection systems of diesel engines is related to a constant increase in the injection pressures generated by injection pumps. This translates into an improvement of the engine operation indexes, including the emission-related ones. Such an approach brings a series of problems related to the design, construction and durability of the injection system. Therefore, the authors asked whether the current market trend in injection systems is the only appropriate path to be taken. When searching for the answer, the authors decided to propose an innovative concept consisting of dissolving exhaust gas in diesel fuel with the use of an injection pump. Such a saturated solution, when flowing out of the injection nozzle, begins the process of releasing the gas dissolved in the fuel. This has a positive impact on the atomization process, hence the process of combustion. The aim of this paper stems from the previously performed research. Due to the nature of the phenomenon, it was necessary to propose a new design for the injection pump. For correct selection of the dimensions of the pumping section, it was of key importance to determine the coefficient of solubility and the bulk modulus of the solution of diesel fuel and exhaust gas. Aside from the description of the applied method and the results of the direct measurements, this paper presents the yet undescribed results of the measurements of the coefficient of solubility of different concentrations of exhaust gas in diesel fuel. The authors also investigated the influence of the amount of exhaust gas dissolved in the fuel on the bulk modulus of the solution. The final part of the paper is a description of a proprietary design of a hypocycloidal injection pump. The application of the innovative drive allows a correct dissolution of exhaust gas in the fuel.

The chemical composition of the trapped fuel-air-residual gas mixture controls the nature of combustion in internal combustion engines and thus serves as a key determinant of the ensuing emissions and work production processes. A frequently used trapped composition metric for engine control is the trapped equivalence ratio. Unfortunately, in two-stroke engines, it is unfeasible to accurately determine this using traditional intake flow and exhaust emissions measurements because of the simultaneous occurrence of intake and exhaust processes, which causes: (1) exhaust emissions to be diluted by the slippage (short-circuiting) of fresh air through the exhaust ports, i.e., trapping inefficiencies, and (2) high residual combustion product retainment, i.e., scavenging inefficiencies. The current paper supplements scavenging efficiency data obtained in a previous study for a cross-scavenged, natural-gas, two-stroke engine with experimental trapping efficiency data from the same engine, and characterizes the overall gas-exchange (scavenging + trapping) behavior of the engine at two engine loads, three speeds, and three spark timings. The trapping efficiency experiments use natural gas as a tracer for fresh charge and the total gas-exchange data is used to compute the trapped equivalence ratio. The trapping performance of the engine – which improves with speed and load increase, and spark retardation – along with scavenging, volumetric, thermal, and combustion efficiency changes determine the trapped equivalence ratio of the engine. The relationship between trapped equivalence ratio and NOx emissions is presented and the importance of accounting for scavenging and trapping inefficiencies in accurately determining equivalence ratio is discussed.

Homogenous charge compression ignition (HCCI) combustion is a low temperature combustion process which combines high combustion efficiency with ultra-low [Formula: see text] raw emissions. Steep increases of the in-cylinder pressure and unstable combustion sequences at the limits of the operating range can damage the engine and limit the use of HCCI to part load operation. This can be done using closed loop combustion control based on combustion parameters like the indicated mean effective pressure and the combustion phasing. Since in-cylinder pressure sensors are expensive components and therefore not suitable for series application, ion current sensors can be used as an additional source of information about the combustion. Combustion analysis using methods similar to those used in pressure based measurements can be implemented using an online analysis of the ion current signal. In this study, the ion current sensor will be examined for its suitability for combustion control under HCCI conditions with lean air/fuel ratios and high compression ratios. Research has found that the ion current signal is strongly depended on the boundary conditions. Especially the air/fuel ratio which plays an important role for signal strength during the combustion process. When using valve timings with negative valve overlap in combination with a fuel pre-injection, a further peak of the ion current signal close to the gas exchange top dead center can be found in addition to the one during combustion. At the same time, it is hard to extract information from the cylinder pressure signal during NVO. Under lean conditions this peak even exceeds the signal during combustion. This study analyzes the ion current signal during NVO and its potential to be used for future combustion control concepts. The ion current signal shows potential to stabilize HCCI combustion at high loads. However, the prediction of late combustion cycles is still challenging.

Despite the public debate nowadays on the future of Internal Combustion Engines (ICE), which is impeding their development, one limitation towards further optimization of ICE in terms of fuel consumption and emissions can be seen in the current approach and more specifically in the transient engine operation and its control. The main drawbacks in the current approach source from: 1) complex structure of mechanization including sensors and actuators, 2) low time resolution and accuracy of sensing (cost driven), 3) complex Electronic Control Unit (ECU)-software architecture associated with huge calibration effort and 4) recently, funded research due to unsecure business model of ICE is becoming less. To overcome these difficulties unexploited potential should be utilized. Some of this potential lies in cycle-by-cycle and cylinder-by-cylinder accurate fuel and air control, and in the development of physical based virtual sensors with high time resolution and accuracy. One of the main motivations for this study was to develop a measurement technique that enables crank-angle resolved air mass flow rate measurements during engine operation in a dynamometer test cell. The measurement principle is quite simple and is based on gauging the dynamic pressure in both the intake and exhaust duct at the closest possible positions to the valves. To fulfill these requirements aerodynamic probes have been developed and manufactured utilizing 3D printing. The probes have been integrated in special developed flanges, which correspond exactly to the shape of the air channels in the cylinder head of the engine. Hence, they can be mounted either in front of the valves at the intake or behind the valves at the exhaust duct. Results at different engine operating conditions have been obtained, analyzed and correlated to other sensors like air-flow meter. Those post-processed results can be further used to validate 1-D gas exchange models, or 3-D Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) port flow models. The ultimate scope of these measurements is to calibrate fast physical-based gas exchange models that can be directly used in the engine control framework on an embedded system.

Abstract Low calorific value (LCV) gaseous fuels are generated as by-products in many commercial sectors. Their efficient exploitation can be a considerable source of primary energy. Typically, product gases from biomass are characterized by low lower heating values (LHV) due to their high concentration of inert gases and steam. At the same time, their composition varies strongly based on the initial feedstock and may contain unwanted components in the form of tars and ammonia. These properties make the design of appropriate combustion systems very challenging and issues such as ignition, flame stability, emission control, and combustion efficiency must be accounted for. By employing a proprietary gas turbine burner at the TU Berlin, the combustion of an artificial LCV gas mixture at stoichiometric conditions has been successfully demonstrated for a broad range of steam content in the fuel. The current work presents the stability maps and emissions measured with the swirl-stabilized burner at premixed conditions. It was shown that the flame location and shape primarily depend on the steam content of the LCV gas. The steam content in the fuel was increased until flame blow-out occurred at LHVs well below the target condition of 2.87MJ/kg (2.7MJ/Nm3). The exhaust gas is analyzed in terms of the pollutants NOx and CO for different fuel compositions, moisture contents, and thermal powers. Finally, OH* measurements have been carried out in the flame. A simple reactor network simulation was used to confirm the feasibility of the experimental results.

The efficiency of combustion processes is assuming nowadays a huge importance, since the energy production, many industrial processes, as well as building heating systems are still mainly based on the combustion of hydrocarbons. The performance of the combustion process depends on many factors and it is a crucial point for the reliability and the efficiency of a plant or a thermal machine that exploits combustion as a primary source of energy. Moreover, the constant increasing of carbon dioxide concentration in atmosphere makes more and more important reducing the emission of this gas as well as the other pollutant/toxic chemical compounds that are produced during combustion. An optimized combustion process allows reducing dramatically the production of chemical compounds like carbon monoxide or nitrogen oxides, and also to releasing in the atmosphere the minimum amount of carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced. There are many studies related to the optimization of the internal combustion of the engines, especially for automotive applications, whereas the literature is less exhaustive for burner combustion optimization. The focus of this work is the study and the development of measurement systems allowing to get information about the combustion characteristics in gas turbines, with the aim of providing tools for monitoring/controlling the combustion parameters and keeping the combustion efficiency as high as possible over time. This activity has been developed in collaboration with Beker Huges (Nuovo Pignone Tecnologie - Florence), one of the world leaders in the design and development of gas turbines. Two different sources of information on the state of the combustion process have been considered in this thesis, namely the density of ions produced by the flame in the combustion chamber and the composition of the exhaust gases. The measurement of the ionic density due to the flame has been used since several years, particularly in the automotive sector, to obtain information about the combustion process: from the postprocessing of the signal obtained using ionization sensors (or ionic current sensors), it is possible to determine, for example, the onset of the combustion, the air–fuel ratio (and therefore the pollutant concentration at the exhaust), as well as to get information about the flame stability and the occurrence of periodic pressure variations in the combustion chamber. On this basis, even if the relationship between combustion parameters and flame induced ion density is highly dependent on the type of fuel, there is room to exploit the information of the ion sensors also with gas turbines, to optimize the operation of the combustor (e.g. reducing instability) and to monitor the polluting emissions. Ion or ionization sensors, which are usually used to measure the ion density in a burning gas, are essentially conductive electrodes capable of generating signals for either the charge transferred to/from the ionized gas and/or the charge induced on the electrodes themselves. The challenging issue concerns the choice of the materials for the sensor (electrodes and electrical insulators) which, being placed in the combustion chamber, must operate in extreme conditions, i.e., for example, in presence of very high temperatures. On the other hand, the conditioning front-end electronics for this kind of sensors is not critical. As far as the measurement of the concentration of toxic/pollutant compounds in exhaust gases is concerned, the most relevant compounds to be considered are carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxides (NOx). Monitoring CO and NOx in the exhaust gases is important not only from the point of view of environmental pollution, but also because their concentrations are useful and reliable indicators about the combustion efficiency. The drawback is that, due to the measurement procedure, they cannot be used for a timely feedback control of the combustion process, the reason is that the exhaust gases must be sampled from the chimney and pumped to the measurement instrument (gas analyser), and this procedure introduces a significant delay between the instant in which the gases are produced by the combustion and the time at which they are analysed. From the standpoint of the measurement instruments, exhaust gas analysers with different accuracies and costs (which are usually relevant) are available on the market. These devices can be portable or fixed and can exploit different measurement principles. Besides cost, an issue of these devices is that accurate gas sensors need frequent calibration exploiting reference gas tanks, which can be a problem in specific industrial plants such as power generation or oil and gas plants. The possibility to use a more flexible gas analyser, with a better trade-off among cost, measurement accuracy, the calibration intervals and robustness, is a deeply felt need in the oil & gas sector, considering also that these instruments are required to operate in environments that can be severely harsh, especially in terms of temperature and humidity. In this thesis, the developed and tested, in laboratory and in actual real test rigs of two measurement instruments, one for ion current measurements and one for exhaust gas composition measurement is discussed. For the first instrument, a theoretical model of the ion sensor used was also developed, which significantly helped in interpreting the experimental data.

Due to strict emission legislation, the trend in the development of aero-engine gas turbine combustion is heading towards lean burning approaches. Lean combustion reduces the combustion temperatures and therefore also the nitrogen oxides emissions. Unfortunately, lean combustion suffers from instabilities and the operation close to the point of lean blowout increases the risk of imminent blowoff. Active stability control is therefore inevitable. The objective of this work is to evaluate the signal obtained from an ion current measurement technique to enable combustion control for aircraft propulsion applications in the near future. In the past ion current measurements have been used in several studies as flame turbulence analyzer and to detect the reaction rate. However, investigations in lean burning and swirl stabilized airblast injection combustors for future propulsion concepts are rare. The signal obtained from an ion current detector inside a combustor depends strongly on the measurement position. In this experimental investigation field measurements at atmospheric conditions of the ion concentration in a tubular combustor with a sampling rate of 8 kHz are compared with 4 kHz time resolved temperature and OH* chemiluminescence measurements in order to determine the position of the reaction inside the combustor. Variations were performed of the air to fuel ratio (AFR), the air preheating temperature and the pressure drop across the injection system to clarify the interpretation of the ion current signal. The results indicate a strong dependence of the ion current signal on the AFR and that the technique has distinct advantages compared to OH* chemiluminescence measurements: The measurement equipment is comparable non-expensive and the results reveal that the reaction rate is measured directly and are not interpreted from a 3D image. A transition in flame shape from a compact to a tornado flame can be clearly identified with the applied probe. Furthermore, regions with high temperature fluctuations do not necessarily reveal the reaction zone in a recirculating flow field.

A compact tubular-type fuel reformer was fabricated and operated under fuel-rich combustion conditions of methanol, focusing on the partial oxidation reaction (POR). Ceramic honeycomb strainer blocks were inserted in the reactor. In the authors’ previous study, Case-1 of only one honeycomb block insertion showed that the reaction region formed in the downstream of the block. This block worked as a reaction stabilizer. The other condition, Case-2, was operated with the secondary honeycomb block inserted in the downstream of the reaction region in addition to the first block. This geometrical structure sandwiched the reaction region between the two blocks, and the thermal energy possessed by the exhaust gas could be regenerated to the reaction region by radiation exchange between these two blocks, which resulted in enhancing the preheating of the premixed gas. By this effect, the methanol-conversion and hydrogen-production in Case-2 were enhanced by about 10% compared to Case-1. In the present study, the reaction characteristics of the fuel reformer were investigated in detail, by detecting the location of the reaction region. Detailed temperature profiles in the streamwise direction were measured with traversable thermocouples, and positive ion current distributions corresponding to the reaction region were measured with a Langmuir probe. It was confirmed by the both measurements that there exists a reaction region right after the first honeycomb block which accompanies with sharp temperature gradients. The estimated thickness of the reaction region, however, was as wide as several millimeters to a centimeter, which is believed to be a ‘mild reaction’ stabilized by the first honeycomb block. In Case-2, the high-temperature region became broader compared to Case-1, which indicates that the enhancement of preheating of premixed gas was achieved by the heat regenerated from the secondary honeycomb block.

Abstract Low calorific value (LCV) gaseous fuels are generated as by-products in many commercial sectors, e.g. as mine gas or bio-gas. Their efficient exploitation can be a considerable source of primary energy. Typically, product gases from biomass are characterized by low lower heating values (LHV) due to their high concentration of inert gases and steam. At the same time, their composition varies strongly based on the initial feedstock and may contain unwanted components in the form of tars and ammonia. These properties make the design of appropriate combustion systems very challenging and issues such as ignition, flame stability, emission control, and combustion efficiency must be accounted for. By employing a proprietary gas turbine burner at the TU Berlin, the combustion of an artificial LCV gas mixture at stoichiometric conditions has been successfully demonstrated for a broad range of steam content in the fuel. The current work presents the stability maps and emissions measured with the swirl-stabilized burner at premixed conditions. It was shown that the flame location and shape primarily depend on the steam content of the LCV gas. The steam content in the fuel was increased until flame blow-out occurred at LHVs well below the target condition of 2.87 MJ/kg (2.7 MJ/mN3). The exhaust gas is analyzed in terms of the pollutants NOx and CO for different fuel compositions, moisture contents, and thermal powers. Finally, OH* measurements have been carried out in the flame. A simple reactor network simulation was used to confirm the feasibility of the experimental results.

To achieve very low NOx emission levels, lean-premixed gas turbine combustors have been commercially implemented which operate near the fuel-lean flame extinction limit. Near the lean limit, however, flashback, lean blowoff, and combustion dynamics have appeared as problems during operation. To help address these operational problems, a combustion control and diagnostics sensor (CCADS) for gas turbine combustors is being developed. CCADS uses the electrical properties of the flame to detect key events and monitor critical operating parameters within the combustor. Previous development efforts have shown the capability of CCADS to monitor flashback and equivalence ratio, and progress has been made on detecting and measuring combustion instabilities. In support of this development, a highly instrumented atmospheric combustor has been used to measure the pressure oscillations in the combustor, the ultraviolet flame emission, and the flame ion field at the premix injector outlet and along the walls of the combustor. This instrumentation allows examination of the downstream extent of the combustion field using both the ultraviolet (mostly OH*) emission and the corresponding electron and ion distribution near the walls of the combustor. During testing the combustion dynamics were controlled using a fuel feed impedance control technique. This provided flame ionization measurements for both steady and unsteady combustion, without changing the operating parameters of the combustor. Previous testing in this combustor had fewer data acquisition channels, and did not include a full implementation of a CCADS centerbody. This testing included both the guard and sense CCADS electrodes installed on the nozzle centerbody, and an array of 14 wall mounted spark plugs to monitor the flame ionization downstream along the walls of the combustor. This paper reports the results of this testing, focusing on the relationship between the flame ionization, ultraviolet flame emission, and pressure oscillations. Tests were run over a matrix of equivalence ratios from 0.6 to 0.8, with inlet reference velocities of 20 and 25 m/s. The acoustics of the fuel system for the combustor were tuned using an active-passive technique with an adjustable quarter-wave resonator. Data processing included computing the logarithm of the real-time current signal from the guard electrode, to compensate for the exponential decay of the potential field from the electrode. The data show the standard deviation of the guard current to be the most promising statistic investigated for correlation with the standard deviation of the chamber pressure. This correlation could expand the capabilities of CCADS to allow for dynamic pressure monitoring on commercial gas turbines without a pressure transducer.