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Motivation, definition and history of HCCI/CAI engines

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HCCI and CAI engines for the automotive industry

Table 1.1 Current and future EU and CARB legislated emission levels for passenger

cars [1, 2]
















Euro III











Euro IV











Euro V































(CARB) for passenger cars [1, 2].

the most stringent in the world. The US legislation is significantly different

from the EU standards in that it operates a ‘fleet-averaged’ system, where

the average emissions output from the total sales of a manufacturer’s product

range must be within the prescribed limits. In this way, a manufacturer can,

for example, use sales of SULEVS to offset the higher emissions from TLEVS

to keep within the required limits. In addition, differences in the test drive

cycle and the measurement method of VOC’s make direct comparison of the

‘Euro’ and CARB standards impossible. Johnson [3] has shown, through

normalisation of the US and European standards, that the levels of uHC

permitted by the US LEV II and EURO IV standards are roughly similar.

However, he also concluded that the US standard permits approximately half

the amount of NOx emissions, which was likely to seriously limit the

penetration of HSDI Diesel and GDI engines into this market until adequate

exhaust gas after-treatment systems are developed.

In addition to standards concerned with limiting local pollution, government

policy is used to reduce global climate change by attempting to limit vehicle

CO2 emissions. In the UK and much of Europe this takes the form of heavy

taxation of fuel, discounts on Road Fund Duty for small capacity vehicles

and, most recently, the introduction of a sliding scale of ‘company car tax’

that heavily penalises the operation of vehicles with high CO2 emissions. As

part of this, CO2 emission levels for all new passenger cars and LGVs must

be published. Driven by this strong desire to reduce CO2 emissions, a voluntary

agreement has been reached between many of the major European car

manufacturers to reduce their fleet average fuel consumption from the current

160g/km to 120g/km by the year 2012, equivalent to a 25% reduction. In the

Motivation, definition and history of HCCI/CAI engines


US, legislation was introduced in the 1970s that required manufacturers to

achieve certain levels of fleet average fuel consumption for passenger cars

and light trucks, though the motivation for this was based largely on concerns

regarding the supply of oil, rather than the consequences of high CO2 emissions.


Current automotive engines and technologies

The ultimate target of emissions legislation is to push technology to the point

where a practical, affordable zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) with acceptable

performance becomes a reality. Although the technology exists to produce

true ZEVs, powered by a fuel cell that consumes hydrogen produced from

water by electricity generated from renewable sources, it is highly unlikely

that the resulting vehicle would even come close to meeting any of the other

criteria listed above in the short and medium terms. For this reason, the bulk

of vehicle research and development resources are still being applied to the

IC engine.

Weiss et al. [4] used the ‘well to wheels efficiency’ concept to quantify

the total ‘energy cost’ and subsequent environmental impact of different

vehicle technologies. The study attempted to assess and compare current and

emerging technologies, with developments projected to 2020. In each case,

the total energy cost was evaluated, including vehicle production, fuel

processing and running costs. They concluded that, in terms of energy

consumption per unit distance travelled, diesel/electric and gasoline/electric

hybrids offered the best solution. Fuel cell vehicles, that use a reformer to

produce their hydrogen fuel from gasoline, were found to be least energy

efficient. The added problems of poor range and performance suffered with

today’s batteries, plus the major problems that must be solved before the

introduction of a hydrogen supply infrastructure, also added weight to the

conclusion that IC engines will be the dominant means of powering transport

for the foreseeable future. Since this report, both Honda and Toyota have

introduced gasoline/electric hybrids onto the world-wide market. As the

technology inevitably decreases in price and consumers become more aware

of the need to reduce fossil fuel use, their popularity can be expected to


While hybrid vehicles may prove to be a stepping-stone to a ZEV, recent

developments in traditional SI gasoline and CI diesel engine technology

have allowed large improvements in emission and fuel consumption to be

made. In terms of emissions, the adoption of the 3-way catalytic converter in

SI gasoline engines has allowed engine-out emissions of CO, uHC and NOx

to be reduced by over 90%. But, in order to maintain these conversion

efficiencies, this unit, can only be used with an engine operating within a

few percent of stoichiometry [5]. Such a requirement for continuous

stoichiometric operation prevents the engine from operating with a lean AFR


HCCI and CAI engines for the automotive industry

at part load, leading to a small but significant increase in overall fuel


However, high speed direct injection (HSDI) diesel engines, and stratified

charge gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines permit lean combustion by

allowing fuel flow rate (and hence load), to be varied independently of

airflow. These approaches can therefore achieve significant reductions in

fuel consumption, particularly at part load. However, their operation away

from stoichiometry prevents the effective use of traditional exhaust aftertreatments for reducing NOx emissions. Though the technology to achieve

NOx reduction from lean burn engines is available [6], it is currently very

expensive and will require either ultra-low super fuel in the case of NOx

storage catalyst or on-board system and infrastructure of Urea supply for a

DeNOx catalyst. Another problem with diesel engines is their tendency to

produce high levels of particulate matter (PM). The emissions legislation

beyond EU V and US Tier 2 demands levels of PM control that can only be

achieved with the use of particulate filters within the exhaust. Furthermore,

both lean-burn NOx after-treatment and PM filter will each incur a fuel

consumption penalty of 3–4%.

Over the last decade, an alternative combustion technology, commonly

known as homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) or controlled

auto-ignition (CAI) combustion, has emerged that has the potential to achieve

efficiencies in excess of GDI units and approaching those of current CI

engines, but with levels of raw NOx emissions up to two levels of magnitude

lower than either, and with virtually no smoke emissions. Their abilities

offer the potential to meet current and future emissions legislation, without

the need for expensive, complex and inefficient exhaust gas after-treatment


While the potential benefits of this new combustion technology are

significant, this combustion mode faces its own set of challenges, such as

difficulty in controlling the combustion phasing, a restricted operating range,

and high hydrocarbon emissions. Over the last decade, efforts have been

made with not only better understanding of the physical and chemical processes

involved in this combustion mode but also technical solutions for practical

applications which have led to the incorporation of this new combustion

mode in certain production DI diesel engines.


Historical background of HCCI/CAI type

combustion engines



Amongst the numerous research papers published over the last decade, the

homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) or controlled auto-ignition

Motivation, definition and history of HCCI/CAI engines


(CAI) combustion has often been considered a new combustion process in

reciprocating internal combustion engines. However, it has been around perhaps

as long as the spark ignition (SI) combustion in gasoline engine and compression

ignition (CI) combustion in diesel engines. In the case of diesel engines, the

hot-bulb 2-stroke or 4-stroke oil engines or diesel engines were patented and

developed over 100 years ago [7], wherein kerosene, or raw oil was injected

onto the surface of a heated chamber (hot-bulb), which was separated from

the main cylinder volume, very early in the compression stroke, giving plenty

of time for fuel to vaporise and mix with air. During the start-up, the hotbulb was heated on the outside by a torch or a burner. Once the engine had

started, the hot-bulb was kept hot by the burned gases within. The bulb was

so hot that the injected fuel vaporised immediately when it got in contact

with the surface. Later design placed injection through the connecting passage

between the hot-bulb and the main chamber so that a more homogeneous

mixture could be formed, resulting in auto-ignited homogeneous charge


In the case of gasoline engines, the auto-ignited homogeneous charge

combustion had been observed and was found responsible for the ‘after-run’/

‘run-on’ phenomenon that many drivers had experienced with their carburettor

gasoline engines in the sixties and seventies, when a spark ignition engine

continued to run after the ignition was turned off. The same type of combustion

was also found to be the cause of ‘dieseling’ or hot starting problems

encountered in the early high compression gasoline engines. In fact, the

most recognised original work on HCCI/CAI by Onishi et al. [8] and Noguchi

et al. [9] was motivated by their desire to control the irregular combustion

caused by the auto-ignition of cylinder charge to obtain stable lean-burn

combustion in the conventional ported 2-stroke gasoline engine.


Controlled auto-ignition gasoline engines

Although it is generally accepted that the first systematic investigation on

the new combustion process was carried out by Onishi [8] and Noguchi [9]

in 1979, the theoretical and practical roots of the HCCI/CAI combustion

concepts are attributed to the pioneering work carried out by the Russian

scientist Nikolai Semenov and his colleagues in the field of ignition in the

1930s. Having established his chemical or chain theory of ignition, Semenov

sought to exploit a chemical-kinetics controlled combustion process for IC

engines, in order to overcome the limitations imposed by the physicaldominating processes of SI and CI engines. By subjecting entire cylinder

charge to the thermodynamic and chemical conditions similar to those of

cool flames of hydrocarbon air mixtures, a more uniform heat release process

should be reached. This led to the first ‘controlled-combustion’ engine utilising

the LAG (Avalanche Activated Combustion), developed by Semenov and


HCCI and CAI engines for the automotive industry

Gussak et al. in the 1970s [10]. This system employed a lean intake charge

to limit the rate of heat release, supplemented by a partially burned mixture

at high temperature discharged from a separate prechamber. As this rich

mixture traversed into the main combustion chamber, it was extinguished

and became thoroughly mixed with the main charge, providing active species

and thermal energy for more homogeneous combustion.

Following the pioneering work by Onishi and Noguchi, research and

development on 2-stroke gasoline engines has culminated in the introduction,

by Honda, of the first production CAI automotive engine, the 2-stroke ARC

250 motorbike engine [11]. With this unit, which uses the thermal energy of

residual gases to promote CAI, Honda claims to reduce fuel consumption by

up to 29% while simultaneously halving uHC emissions.

The apparent potential of this type of combustion process to reduce emissions

and fuel consumption, coupled with serious shortfalls of the ported 2-stroke

engine as an automotive power unit, led to an investigation into the application

of the new combustion process to a 4-stroke single cylinder engine by Najt

and Foster in 1983 [12]. The work was later extended by Thring to examine

the effect of external EGR and air/fuel ratio on the engine’s performance

[13]. In this work, Thring introduced the terminology homogeneous charge

compression ignition (HCCI) that has since been adopted by many others to

describe this type of combustion process both in gasoline and diesel engines.

In 1992, Stockinger et al. [14] showed for the first time that a four-cylinder

gasoline engine could be operated with auto-ignition within a very limited

speed and load range by means of higher compression ratio and pre-heating

the intake air.

The largest gasoline engine with auto-ignition combustion in the late

1990s was demonstrated by Olsson et al. [15]. The engine was based on a

12-litre six-cylinder diesel engine. By employing combinations of isooctane

and heptane through a closed loop control, as well as turbo-charging, highcompression ratio, and intake air heating, auto-ignition combustion was

achieved over a large speed and load range.

While the above work demonstrated the feasibility and potential of CAI

in 4-stroke gasoline engines, they do not represent a practical implementation

of the auto-ignition combustion concept in a production engine. In order to

develop a production viable gasoline auto-ignition combustion engine for

automotive applications, it is necessary to operate without external charge

heating or extremely high compression ratios, or special fuel blends.

Perhaps the most significant progress in the adoption of CAI to 4-stroke

gasoline engines took place in Europe around the year 2000. Following the

principle of auto-ignition combustion in 2-stroke gasoline engines, three

independent studies showed that the CAI combustion could be achieved in

4-stroke gasoline engines over a range of speed and load by early closure of

the exhaust valve(s) or negative valve overlap [16–19]. At Lotus and Volvo

Motivation, definition and history of HCCI/CAI engines


Cars, the negative valve overlap method was realised by employing fully

flexible variable valve actuation systems. Meanwhile, IFP and Brunel

University demonstrated that CAI combustion could be readily achieved in

a production four-cylinder engine over a reasonable speed and load range

with only the use of modified camshafts.

Over the last few years, the residual gas trapping and exhaust gas rebreathing [20] for initiating and controlling CAI has proved to be increasingly

popular with researchers, since it appears to offer the best chance of

incorporating CAI combustion operation in a production gasoline engine in

the short to medium term, requires no radical (expensive) changes to vehicle

or engine architecture.


HCCI diesel engines

As mentioned in the introduction, some of the very early 2-stroke and 4stroke diesel engines had been operated with compression ignition of premixed

air and fuel mixtures through early injection onto the hot surface of a heated

chamber. However, the best, but little known, example of homogeneous

charge compression ignition diesel engines ever developed is the 2-stroke

diesel model airplane engine developed since the 1940s by a small British

company called Progress Aero Works (PAW). The fuel is a special blend of

kerosene, oil, ether, and an ignition improver and it is fed into the engine’s

intake through a carburettor so that a premixed air/fuel mixture is formed in

the cylinder. In order to get the engine firing, it is necessary to screw in the

compression screw on the top of the engine to set the engine to a higher

compression ratio. After the engine has started, it is necessary to unscrew the

compression to achieve maximum power output. These little PAW engines

produce power from 0.06 bhp to 1.2 bhp at speeds from 10,000 rpm to over

20,000 rpm and are readily available from the manufacturers.

However, it was not until the mid-1990s that systematic investigation had

began of the potential for diesel fuelled HCCI engines for automotive

applications, due to the need for substantial reductions in both NOx and PM

emissions. The research and development of HCCI diesel engines had been

pursued along three main technical routes, depending on the mixture preparation

process involved. The first approach involves injecting the fuel into the

intake air, upstream of the intake valve, similar to a conventional port-fuelinjection (PFI) SI engine. This method has been used in the past for diesel

fumigation wherein diesel or often other more volatile fuels are injected in

the manifold together with direct injection of diesel into the cylinder. Most

recently, research on this premixed HCCI diesel combustion has been mostly

performed to demonstrate the strong potential of HCCI to substantially reduce

NOx and smoke emissions as well as to understand the fundamental

characteristics of HCCI diesel combustion [21]. However, this approach is


HCCI and CAI engines for the automotive industry

unlikely to be developed into a practical solution due to poor vaporisation of

the diesel fuel, high fuel consumption, and high uHCs.

With the advent of fully flexible high-pressure electronic fuel injection

systems, in particular the common rail (CR) fuel injection system, direct fuel

injection into the cylinder well before TDC has been the most popular approach

to achieve HCCI combustion in diesel engines [22–24]. By injecting all or

part of the fuel early in the compression stroke, the higher cylinder temperature

and densities can facilitate the fuel vaporisation and promote its subsequent

mixing with air. In addition, the flexibility of fuel injection timing and multiple

injections can be employed to control and optimise the combustion phasing.

However, the most successful HCCI diesel system in production to date is

achieved through the employment of the late injection after TDC developed

by the Nissan Motor Company [25]. Known as MK (Modulated Kinetics),

this combustion process has been used at part load and low to medium

speeds in their production diesel engines since 1998. Further enlargement of

HCCI combustion operation was achieved in their second-generation system

in 2001 to include the entire range of the Japanese 10–15 mode test.

One of the difficulties with very early injection is the cylinder wall wetting

due to over penetration of the fuel, which leads to increased uHCs and CO

emissions as well as the washout of lubricants on the cylinder wall. Although

the cylinder wall wetting can be prevented by employing the injection nozzle

of a smaller cone angle [26], a variable geometry nozzle would be necessary

if conventional diesel combustion is to be restored for higher load operations.

With the advancement in the high pressure CR fuel injection system, multiple

injections have been investigated as a means to achieve near homogeneous

charge combustion in a diesel engine without the cylinder wall wetting due

to the reduced penetration depth of each fuel injection [27, 28]. In fact,

multiple injection, up to five injections, has now been incorporated in the

production engines [29].

Although it has been demonstrated recently that HCCI diesel combustion

can be obtained at more than 15 bar BMEP [30], hybrid HCCI/diesel

combustion operation will remain to be the approach for production car

engines in the short and medium terms. For medium and heavy duty truck

applications, significant advances are required to extend HCCI combustion

to high load operations which constitute the majority of their driving cycle.


Principle of HCCI/CAI combustion engines


Principle and combustion characteristics of

HCCI/CAI engines

Plate 1 (between pages 268 and 269) illustrates the salient features of the

SI engine, CI engine, and the CAI/HCCI engine. Similar to a conventional

Motivation, definition and history of HCCI/CAI engines


SI engine, in a HCCI/CAI engine the fuel and air are mixed together either

in the intake system or in the cylinder with direct injection. The premixed

fuel and air mixture is then compressed. Towards the end of the compression

stroke, combustion is initiated by auto-ignition in a similar way to the

conventional CI engine. The temperature of the charge at the beginning of

the compression stroke has to be increased to reach auto-ignition conditions

at the end of the compression stroke. This can be done by heating the intake

air or by keeping part of the hot combustion products in the cylinder. Both

strategies result in a higher gas temperature throughout the compression

process, which in turn speeds up the chemical reactions that lead to the start

of combustion of homogeneously mixed fuel and air mixtures. Although the

start of main heat release usually occurs when the temperature reaches a

value of 1050–1100K for gasoline or less than 800K for diesel, many

hydrocarbon components in gasoline and diesel undergo low temperature

oxidation reactions accompanied by a heat release that can account for up to

10% of the total energy released. The contribution of the low temperature

energy release to obtaining auto-ignition and heat release rate from the HCCI/

CAI combustion depends not only on the unique chemical kinetics of the

fuel used and the dilution strategy, but also on the thermal conditions or the

temperature-pressure history that the mixture goes through during compression.

In an idealised HCCI/CAI engine, the auto-ignition and combustion will

take place simultaneously throughout the combustion chamber, resulting in

a rapid rate of heat release. In order to prevent the runaway heat release rate

associated with the simultaneous burning of mixtures, HCCI/CAI engines

have to run on lean or/and diluted fuel and air mixtures with burned gases.

The heat release characteristics of the HCCI/CAI combustion can be

compared with those of SI and CI combustion using Fig. 1.1. In the case of

SI combustion, a thin reaction zone or flame front separates the cylinder

charge into burned and unburned regions and the heat release is confined to

the reaction zone. The cumulative heat released in a SI engine is therefore

the sum of the heat released by a certain mass, dmi, in the reaction zone and

it can be expressed as



q ⋅ dm i


where q is the heating value per unit mass of fuel and air mixture, N is the

number of reaction zones.

In an idealised HCCI/CAI combustion process, combustion reactions take

place simultaneously in the cylinder and all the mixture participates in the

heat release process at any instant of the combustion process. The cumulative

heat release in such an engine is therefore the sum of the heat released from

each combustion reaction, dqi, of the complete mixture in the cylinder, m,



Heat released

HCCI and CAI engines for the automotive industry

Heat released







q ⋅ dmi





m ⋅ dq i





Heat released







m p ⋅ dq i +




m j ⋅ dq j



1.1 Heat release characteristics of SI, CAI/HCCI and CI combustion.



m ⋅ dq i


where K is the total number of heat release reactions, and qi is the heat

released from the ith heat release reaction involving per unit mass of fuel and

air mixture. Whereas the entire heating value of each minute parcel of mixture

must be released during the finite duration spend in the reaction zone in a SI

engine, heat release takes place uniformly across the entire charge in an

idealised HCCI/CAI combustion. However, in practice, due to inhomogeneities

in the mixture composition and temperature distributions in a real engine,

the heat release process will not be uniform throughout the mixture. Faster

heat release can take place in the less diluted mixture and/or high temperature

region, resulting in a non-uniform heat release pattern as indicated by the

dashed lines.

In comparison, combustion in a diesel engine is more complicated. In a

typical direct injection diesel engine, soon after the start of fuel injection a

small amount of mixture is involved in the premixed charge compression

Motivation, definition and history of HCCI/CAI engines


ignition combustion process similar to HCCI/CAI, but most of the heat is

released during the mixing controlled diffusion combustion process. The

cumulative heat released may be expressed as a sum of the two processes:




m p ⋅ dq i +


m j ⋅ dq j


where the first part of the expression represents the premixed burning phase

and the second is the diffusion burning, during which the heating value of

each mixture varies according to the local mixture strength. In the above

equation, mp is the amount of premixed mixture taking part in the premixed

burning phase, mj and dqj are the mass and heating value of each parcel

being burned during diffusion burning.

Since the ideal HCCI/CAI process in IC engines involves the simultaneous

reactive envelopment of entire intake charges, it allows a much more uniform

and repeatable burning of fuel to proceed with respect to that of CI and SI

engines, resulting in very low cycle-to-cycle variations in the engine’s output

as will be shown in Chapter 2.


Performance and emission characteristics of

conventional combustion and HCCI/CAI


SI engines rely on a minute electric plasma discharge to ignite a premixed

near-stoichiometric air/fuel mixture within the cylinder, resulting in a singular

advancing flame front, with distinct burned, burning, and unburned regions

present. As the flame propagates within the cylinder, mixture that burns

earlier is compressed to higher temperatures after combustion, as the cylinder

pressure continues to rise. As a result, the temperatures of a gas element

burned just after spark discharge can reach over 2500K. Nitric Oxide (NO)

forms throughout the high temperature burned gases behind the flame through

chemical reactions involving nitrogen and oxygen atoms and molecules. The

higher the burned gas temperature, the higher the rate of formation of NO.

As the burned gases cool during the expansion stroke, the reactions involving

NO freeze, and leave NO far in excess of their equilibrium levels at exhaust

conditions. As a result, a large amount of NO is emitted from the SI engine.

As the SI combustion process involves the burning of premixed nearstoichiometric mixtures, SI engines are virtually free from soot emissions.

However, the need to keep the air/fuel ratio near stoichiometric throughout

the engine operating range warrants the use of a throttle valve to regulate the

amount of air according to the fuelling requirement of the engine, resulting

in significant pumping losses and hence poor engine efficiency at part-load

operations that constitute majority of a typical passenger car driving cycle.


HCCI and CAI engines for the automotive industry

CI engines differ significantly in their operation from SI engines. Fuels of

adequate cetane value are directly injected at high pressure later in the

compression stroke, and the combustion is then initiated by auto-ignition

after the ignition temperature has been reached. The rate at which fuel can

mix with air limits the overall rate of combustion in CI engines, as the

associated chemical reactions occur much faster than the mixing process.

During the premixed phase of diesel combustion immediately following the

ignition delay, near-stoichiometric air/fuel mixture burns due to spontaneous

ignition and flame propagation, resulting in a rapid pressure rise and a region

of high temperature burned gas. During the mixing controlled combustion

phase after the premixed burn period, both lean and rich burning mixtures

take part in the combustion process as mixing between already burned gases,

air, and fuel occurs. Mixture which burns early in the combustion process is

compressed to a higher temperature, increasing the NO formation rate, as

combustion process proceeds and cylinder pressure rises. As CI engines

always operate with an overall lean mixture, the formation of NO is noticeably

less than in SI engines. But the overall leaner mixture tends to freeze the NO

chemistry earlier, due to the faster drop in gas temperature as the high

temperature gas mixes with cooler air during the expansion stroke, leading

to much less decomposition of the NO in the CI engine than in the SI engine.

Overall CI engines emit a lower but still significant amount of NO emissions.

Furthermore, the high temperature combustion of fuel-rich mixture during

the mixing controlled combustion process leads to the formation of soot in

these regions and the subsequent emission of particulate matters. Unlike SI

engines, the output of a naturally aspirated CI engine is principally controlled

by fuelling at constant air supply, dispensing with the need for an intake

throttle. In order to achieve auto-ignition, CI engines are designed to operate

at higher compression ratios than SI engines. As a result, CI engines boast

higher engine efficiency than SI engines.

In contrast, the new combustion mode is the process in which a premixed

and highly diluted or lean air/fuel mixture is auto-ignited and burned

simultaneously across the combustion chamber. As the burning takes place

simultaneously, the compression effect on the burned gases is absent and

hence the maximum localised high combustion temperature region is removed.

More importantly, the overall combustion temperature is significantly reduced

by the presence of excess air or diluents (exhaust gases recycled or trapped

within the cylinder). As the peak combustion temperature can be kept below

1800K, above which the rate of NO formation increases exponentially, the

new combustion process produces ultra-low NO emissions. Furthermore, the

burning of premixed lean mixtures forms virtually no soot. For a HCCI/CAI

engine, the load can be altered by fuelling at constant airflow or by altering

the amount of exhaust gases going into the cylinder, dispensing with the

need for an intake throttle and hence the associated pumping losses at part

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