IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v16y2023i5p2420-d1086541.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Modelling the Impacts of Hydrogen–Methane Blend Fuels on a Stationary Power Generation Engine

Author

Listed:
  • Kimia Haghighi

    (School of Sustainable Energy Engineering, Simon Fraser University, Surrey, BC V3T 0N1, Canada)

  • Gordon P. McTaggart-Cowan

    (School of Sustainable Energy Engineering, Simon Fraser University, Surrey, BC V3T 0N1, Canada)

Abstract

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas use, utilities are investigating the potential of adding hydrogen to their distribution grids. This will reduce the carbon dioxide emissions from grid-connected engines used for stationary power generation, and it may also impact their power output and efficiency. Promisingly, hydrogen and natural gas mixtures have shown encouraging results regarding engine power output, pollutant emissions, and thermal efficiency in well-controlled on-road vehicle applications. This work investigates the effects of adding hydrogen to the natural gas fuel for a lean-burn spark-ignited four-stroke, 8.9 liter eight-cylinder naturally aspirated engine used in a commercial stationary power generation application via an engine model developed in the GT-SUITE TM modelling environment. The model was validated for fuel consumption, air flow, and exhaust temperature at two operating modes. The focus of the work was to assess the sensitivity of the engine’s power output, brake thermal efficiency, and pollutant emissions to blends of methane with 0–30% (by volume) hydrogen. Without adjusting for the change in fuel energy, the engine power output dropped by approximately 23% when methane was mixed with 30% by volume hydrogen. It was found that increasing the fueling rate to maintain a constant equivalence ratio prevented this drop in power and reduced carbon dioxide emissions by almost 4.5%. In addition, optimizing the spark timing could partially offset the increases in in-cylinder burned and unburned gas temperatures and in-cylinder pressures that resulted from the faster combustion rates when hydrogen was added to the natural gas. Understanding the effect of fuel change in existing systems can provide insight on utilizing hydrogen and natural gas mixtures as the primary fuel without the need for major changes in the engine.

Suggested Citation

  • Kimia Haghighi & Gordon P. McTaggart-Cowan, 2023. "Modelling the Impacts of Hydrogen–Methane Blend Fuels on a Stationary Power Generation Engine," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(5), pages 1-21, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:16:y:2023:i:5:p:2420-:d:1086541
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/5/2420/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/5/2420/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Park, Cheolwoong & Kim, Changgi & Choi, Young & Lee, Janghee, 2013. "Operating strategy for exhaust gas reduction and performance improvement in a heavy-duty hydrogen-natural gas blend engine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 262-269.
    2. Sen, Asok K. & Wang, Jinhua & Huang, Zuohua, 2011. "Investigating the effect of hydrogen addition on cyclic variability in a natural gas spark ignition engine: Wavelet multiresolution analysis," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 88(12), pages 4860-4866.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Grzegorz Szamrej & Mirosław Karczewski, 2024. "Exploring Hydrogen-Enriched Fuels and the Promise of HCNG in Industrial Dual-Fuel Engines," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(7), pages 1-51, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ji, Changwei & Wang, Shuofeng & Zhang, Bo, 2012. "Performance of a hybrid hydrogen–gasoline engine under various operating conditions," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 584-589.
    2. Djouadi, Amel & Bentahar, Fatiha, 2016. "Combustion study of a spark-ignition engine from pressure cycles," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 211-217.
    3. Feng, Yanbiao & Dong, Zuomin, 2019. "Optimal control of natural gas compression engine hybrid electric mining trucks for balanced fuel efficiency and overall emission improvement," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    4. Kouchachvili, Lia & Entchev, Evgueniy, 2018. "Power to gas and H2/NG blend in SMART energy networks concept," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 456-464.
    5. Wang, Shuofeng & Ji, Changwei & Zhang, Bo & Liu, Xiaolong, 2014. "Lean burn performance of a hydrogen-blended gasoline engine at the wide open throttle condition," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 43-50.
    6. Park, Cheolwoong & Kim, Changgi & Lee, Sangho & Lee, Sunyoup & Lee, Janghee, 2019. "Comparative evaluation of performance and emissions of CNG engine for heavy-duty vehicles fueled with various caloric natural gases," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 1-9.
    7. Yang, Jinxin & Ji, Changwei & Wang, Shuofeng & Wang, Du & Ma, Zedong & Zhang, Boya, 2018. "Numerical investigation on the mixture formation and combustion processes of a gasoline rotary engine with direct injected hydrogen enrichment," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 224(C), pages 34-41.
    8. Su, Teng & Ji, Changwei & Wang, Shuofeng & Shi, Lei & Yang, Jinxin & Cong, Xiaoyu, 2017. "Investigation on performance of a hydrogen-gasoline rotary engine at part load and lean conditions," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 683-691.
    9. Wang, Shuofeng & Ji, Changwei & Zhang, Bo & Cong, Xiaoyu & Liu, Xiaolong, 2016. "Effect of CO2 dilution on combustion and emissions characteristics of the hydrogen-enriched gasoline engine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 118-126.
    10. Woo, Seungchul & Lee, Kihyung, 2022. "Development and feasibility assessment of on-board catalytic reforming system for LPG engine to produce hydrogen in the transient state," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 327(C).
    11. Diéguez, P.M. & Urroz, J.C. & Marcelino-Sádaba, S. & Pérez-Ezcurdia, A. & Benito-Amurrio, M. & Sáinz, D. & Gandía, L.M., 2014. "Experimental study of the performance and emission characteristics of an adapted commercial four-cylinder spark ignition engine running on hydrogen–methane mixtures," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 1068-1076.
    12. Navarro, Emilio & Leo, Teresa J. & Corral, Roberto, 2013. "CO2 emissions from a spark ignition engine operating on natural gas–hydrogen blends (HCNG)," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 112-120.
    13. Donateo, Teresa & Tornese, Federica & Laforgia, Domenico, 2013. "Computer-aided conversion of an engine from diesel to methane," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 8-23.
    14. Ji, Changwei & Yang, Jinxin & Liu, Xiaolong & Wang, Shuofeng & Zhang, Bo & Wang, Du, 2016. "Enhancing the fuel economy and emissions performance of a gasoline engine-powered vehicle with idle elimination and hydrogen start," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 135-144.
    15. Chen, Zhanming & He, Jingjing & Chen, Hao & Geng, Limin & Zhang, Peng, 2021. "Experimental study on cycle-to-cycle variations in natural gas/methanol bi-fueled engine under excess air/fuel ratio at 1.6," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 224(C).
    16. Yang, Li-Ping & Song, En-Zhe & Ding, Shun-Liang & Brown, Richard J. & Marwan, Norbert & Ma, Xiu-Zhen, 2016. "Analysis of the dynamic characteristics of combustion instabilities in a pre-mixed lean-burn natural gas engine," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 746-759.
    17. Prasad, Rajesh Kumar & Agarwal, Avinash Kumar, 2021. "Development and comparative experimental investigations of laser plasma and spark plasma ignited hydrogen enriched compressed natural gas fueled engine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    18. Cinti, G. & Bidini, G. & Hemmes, K., 2019. "Comparison of the solid oxide fuel cell system for micro CHP using natural gas with a system using a mixture of natural gas and hydrogen," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 238(C), pages 69-77.
    19. Rudy, Wojciech & Zbikowski, Mateusz & Teodorczyk, Andrzej, 2016. "Detonations in hydrogen-methane-air mixtures in semi confined flat channels," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 116(P3), pages 1479-1483.
    20. Rahimi molkdaragh, R. & Jafarmadar, S. & Khalilaria, Sh & Soukht Saraee, H., 2018. "Prediction of the performance and exhaust emissions of a compression ignition engine using a wavelet neural network with a stochastic gradient algorithm," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 1128-1138.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:16:y:2023:i:5:p:2420-:d:1086541. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.