Effects of hydrogenation of fossil fuels with hydrogen and hydroxy gas on performance and emissions of internal combustion engines

Abstract

Energy security is an important consideration for development of future transport fuels. Among the all gaseous fuels hydrogen or hydroxy (HHO) gas is considered to be one of the clean alternative fuels. Hydrogen is very flammable gas and storing and transporting of hydrogen gas safely is very difficult. Today, vehicles using pure hydrogen as fuel require stations with compressed or liquefied hydrogen stocks at high pressures from hydrogen production centres established with large investments. Different electrode design and different electrolytes have been tested to find the best electrode design and electrolyte for higher amount of HHO production using same electric energy. HHO is used as an additional fuel without storage tanks in the four strokes, 4 cylinder compression ignition engine and two-stroke, one-cylinder spark ignition engine without any structural changes. Later, previously developed commercially available dry cell HHO reactor used as a fuel additive to neat diesel fuel and biodiesel fuel mixtures. HHO gas is used to hydrogenate the compressed natural gas (CNG) and different amounts of HHO-CNG fuel mixtures are used in a pilot injection CI engine. Pure diesel fuel and diesel fuel + biodiesel mixtures with different volumetric flow rates are also used as pilot injection fuel in the test engine. The effects of HHO enrichment on engine performance and emissions in compression-ignition and spark-ignition engines have been examined in detail. It is found from the experiments that plate type reactor with NaOH produced more HHO gas with the same amount of catalyst and electric energy. All experimental results from Gasoline and Diesel Engines show that performance and exhaust emission values have improved with hydroxy gas addition to the fossil fuels except NO exhaust emissions. The maximum average improvements in terms of performance and emissions of the gasoline and the diesel engine are both graphically and numerically expressed in results and discussions. The maximum average improvements obtained for brake power, brake torque and BSFC values of the gasoline engine were 27%, 32.4% and 16.3%, respectively. Furthermore, maximum improvements in performance data obtained with the use of HHO enriched biodiesel fuel mixture in diesel engine were 8.31% for brake power, 7.1% for brake torque and 10% for BSFC. (C) 2018 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.