Optimum Combustion Chamber Geometry for a Compression Ignition Engine Retrofitted to Run Using Compressed Natural Gas (CNG)

Abstract

The use of natural gas as an alternative fuels are motivated from the impact in deteriorating quality of air and the energy shortage from petroleum products. Through retrofitting, CI engine runs on CNG, will be able to reduce the negative impact mainly on the use of petroleum products. However, this required the modification of the combustion chamber geometry by reducing the compression ratio to value that suits combustion of CNG. In this present studies, four different shapes and geometries of combustion chamber were designed and simulate using CFD package powered by Ansys workbench, where k-ε turbulence model was used to predict the flow in the combustion chamber. The results of turbulence kinetic energy, velocity vectors and streamline are presented. The enhancement of air-fuel mixing inside the engine cylinder can be observed, where the design with re-entrance and lower center projection provide better results compared to other combustion geometries designs.