Experimental Study of Performance, Combustion and Emission Behavior of Turbocharged CRDi Diesel Engine with Hydrogen Enrichment

Hydrogen energy has recently emerged as an alternative sustainable energy solution to the rising concerns regarding carbon footprint produced by internal combustion engine vehicles. The present investigation incorporates compressed hydrogen as secondary fuel in a turbocharged common rail direct injection diesel engine. The operating conditions in the study were kept as 1800 RPM, 1.5 bar BMEP, pilot fuel (diesel) injection timing and pressure of 15°BTDC and 500 bar respectively. Three fuel blends viz. neat diesel, hydrogen blended with pilot diesel fuel (on the basis of energy share) as 64% and 70% were utilized to determine the engine characteristics. It was observed that with 70% HES, BTE showed 21.94% improvement while BSFC and BSEC were significantly declined by 17.2% and 18% respectively compared to baseline diesel. Combustion parameters such as ICP and HRR for HES70 were found to be 70.8 bar and 81.92 J/°CA compared to 69.16 bar and 78.5 J/°CA for neat diesel operation. Combustion stability was analyzed using (COV<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">IMEP</inf>). Exhaust emissions such as NO<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">x</inf> and CO exhibited trade-off behavior with hydrogen induction to baseline diesel. At 70% HES, NO<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">x</inf> emissions rose to 728 PPM while CO emissions declined to 102 PPM as opposed to 650 PPM (NO<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">x</inf>) and 223 PPM (CO) emissions produced by neat diesel operation. From the study, it can be concluded that, hydrogen energy as a secondary fuel can pose as a sustainable energy solution for automotive applications.