Abstract:
An experimental investigation of a conventional diesel engine with diesel, biogas and hydrogen as fuels has been carried out, while the engine is modified to operate in dual fuel mode using diesel as the pilot fuel and biogas as the main fuel respectively. In order to improve the biogas-diesel dual fuel engine performance and emission characteristics, small percentages of hydrogen supplementations, viz. 5%, 10%, 15% and 20%, in biogas were studied and the comparison was also made to that with the neat biogas-diesel dual fuel operation. Engine performance characterization has been done with exergy based approach, and major sources of irreversibilities in various engine processes are also investigated and compared for the above mentioned cases. The results show that hydrogen supplementations in biogas have lesser effect on the combustion characteristics at low load, while, at high load, the combustion patterns change significantly with higher heat release rates and peak combustion pressures. Furthermore, performance and emission characteristics are found nearly unaffected with 5% of hydrogen addition both at low and high loads. Nevertheless, further addition of hydrogen in biogas causes improvements in performance and emission characteristics of the dual fuel engine