Dual-fuel combustion experiments in CRU
Green Ammonia and Methanol are chosen as the most promising carbon neutral fuels for the future of marine propulsion. However, they are not well suited for compression ignition in a Diesel engine without using an additional mean of activation. One solution is to inject a smaller fraction pilot fuel like Diesel or other high cetane fuel.
The Dual-fuel CRU comes with two injection systems, a GDI type injector that works with for instance Gasoline, Methanol, LPG and Ammonia. The GDI fuel system has a sample reservoir for liquid fuels and a connection fitting for liquefied gas supplied from a gas bottle.
The pilot fuel system uses a common rail type Diesel injector.
The CRU Dual fuel setup enables experiments with varying injection strategies:
0-100% variable ratio between fuel A and fuel B.
Inject both fuels simultaneously or in a predefined order
Variable injection timing and delay between injections
Each injector may also be operated separately and a dual fuel CRU has the same functionality as a standard CRU
Example: Methanol and Diesel pilot fuel. Pressure development vs. time when using different fuel injection order and time delays.
The Dual-fuel CRU has proven to be a valuable and reliable tool for Ammonia combustion experiments. Until now, several thousand ammonia combustion cycles have been performed in our prototype instrument.