An Experimental and Modeling Study on the Combustion of Gasoline-Ethanol Surrogates for HCCI Engines

As an effective clean fuel, ethanol has the characteristics of improving antiknock quality and reducing emissions. It is an ideal antiknock additive for Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engines. The oxidation of gasoline-ethanol surrogates in HCCI engines is a very complex process which is dominated by the reaction kinetics. This oxidation process directly determines the performance and emissions of HCCI engines. Coupling the computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model with the gasoline-ethanol surrogate mechanism can be used for fuel design, so the construction of a reduced mechanism with high accuracy is necessary. A mechanism (278 species, 1439 reactions) at medium and low temperatures and experiments in a HCCI engine for the oxidation of gasoline-ethanol surrogates were presented in this paper. Directed relation graph with error propagation (DRGEP) method and quasi-steady-state assumption (QSSA) method were used in order to get a reduced model. Then, the kinetics of the vital reactions related to the formation and consumption of H and OH were adjusted. To validate the model, the HCCI experiments for the oxidation of gasoline-ethanol surrogates were conducted under different operating conditions. The verification result indicated that the present model can predict the oxidation process of gasoline-ethanol effectively.