Combustion of liquid ammonia and diesel in a compression ignition engine operated in high-pressure dual fuel mode

This study investigates the characteristics of a compression ignition engine fuelled by ammonia and diesel in high-pressure dual fuel mode. The study focuses on the effect of injection strategies on engine performance and important emissions like NH3, NO/NO2 and N2O. The engine was operated with fixed intake air conditions and at an engine speed of 1500 rpm for all operating points, and liquid ammonia was directly injected at 180 bar using a GDI injector. The ammonia energy shares tested were 40 %, 50 % and 60 %. Various combustion modes were achieved by fixing the diesel injection timing at -15 CAD aTDC and varying the ammonia injection timing between -80 and 2.5 CAD aTDC. Injecting ammonia early (-80/-60 CAD aTDC) led to premixed-type combustion with very high ammonia slip (65 %). Delaying the ammonia injection to -30 CAD aTDC, i.e. 15 CAD before the diesel injection, yielded a very long ignition delay due to the strong influence of the ammonia injection on the diesel injection, resulting in premixed combustion of ammonia and diesel. Injecting ammonia simultaneously or after diesel did not affect the diesel ignition, yielding stable combustion where the ammonia burned during the mixing-controlled phase. Temporally overlapping injections of ammonia and diesel resulted in the highest combustion efficiency, lowest ammonia slip, highest NOx emissions, and lowest N2O emissions, i.e., the optimal cases found. For temporally overlapping ammonia and diesel injections, extending the ammonia injection to after the end of diesel injection was found to increase ammonia slip compared to injecting ammonia before diesel, due to the limited time for liquid ammonia to vaporise, mix and combust in the expansion stroke. The NOx and N2O emissions were found to have opposite trends, where the highest NOx and lowest N2O concentrations were achieved for the operating points with the highest combustion efficiency. Delaying the combustion phasing improved the combustion efficiency for the 40 % and 50 % ammonia energy share cases, while for the 60 % cases, it deteriorated, which can be explained by the injection of ammonia after the end of diesel injection for the 60 % ammonia energy share cases.