Recently, Combustion Science Progress highlighted Prof. Jianfeng Pan’s latest research, “Evaluation and analysis of injection strategy in a peripheral ported rotary engine fueled with natural gas/hydrogen blends under the action of apex seal leakage”, published in Fuel, an authoritative journal in combustion. Jiangsu University is the first affiliation. Associate Prof. Baowei Fan and Prof. Jianfeng Pan are the first author and the corresponding author, respectively. The WeChat official account Combustion Science Progress aims to publish the important academic activities, news, research trends and achievements, and popular science of the Chinese Section of the Combustion Institute and the Combustion Section of the Chinese Society of Engineering Thermophysics.

In the context of “carbon peak and carbon neutrality”, power mechanics such as reciprocating engines and rotary engines that burn traditional carbon-based fuels are facing major challenges. Based on the fuel activity design, this paper reports a mixture of natural gas and hydrogen as a clean alternative fuel for traditional rotary engines, which can effectively reduce the carbon emissions of rotary engines. Furthermore, to improve the combustion efficiency of the rotary engine with the alternative fuel, this paper firstly establishes a numerical simulation model of the rotary engine based on the chemical reaction kinetics and validates the model by the PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) flow field test and cylinder pressure test. Then, based on the established numerical simulation model, the influence of the injection timing and injection angle of the natural gas and hydrogen fuel mixture on the formation of the in-cylinder mixture and the flame propagation have been studied. Finally, an optimized injection strategy for efficient and clean combustion of the rotary engine is presented.

In addition, due to the structure and operation characteristics of the rotary engine, it is difficult to avoid the leakage of radial sealing in the actual operation. When the rotary engine uses two gas fuels, natural gas and hydrogen are more likely to leak with radial seal compared with traditional liquid fuels such as gasoline and diesel. Therefore, the radial seal leakage is also considered in this paper, which improves the calculation accuracy and makes the conclusions more practical.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, the “Qinglan Project” of Jiangsu Province, and the Sichuan Provincial Key Laboratory of Automotive Measurement, Control and Safety.

Report link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/gUw6Vyj41o8Dn0GY53Li_Q 

Paper link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2021.122315