HCCI experiments with gasoline surrogate fuels modeled by a semidetailed chemical kinetic model

Experiments in a homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine have been conducted with four gasoline surrogate fuel blends. The pure components in the surrogate fuels consisted of n-heptane, isooctane, toluene, ethanol and diisobutylene and fuel sensitivities (RON-MON) in the fuel blends ranged from two to nine. The operating conditions for the engine were p in = 0.1 and 0.2 MPa, T in = 80 and 250 °C, ϕ = 0.25 in air and engine speed 1200 rpm. A semidetailed chemical kinetic model (142 species and 672 reactions) for gasoline surrogate fuels, validated against ignition data from experiments conducted in shock tubes for gasoline surrogate fuel blends at 1.0 ⩽ p ⩽ 5.0 MPa , 700 ⩽ T ⩽ 1200 K and ϕ = 1.0 , was successfully used to qualitatively predict the HCCI experiments using a single zone modeling approach. The fuel blends that had higher fuel sensitivity were more resistant to autoignition for low intake temperature and high intake pressure and less resistant to autoignition for high intake temperature and low intake pressure. A sensitivity analysis shows that at high intake temperature the chemistry of the fuels ethanol, toluene and diisobutylene helps to advance ignition. This is consistent with the trend that fuels with the least Negative Temperature Coefficient (NTC) behavior show the highest octane sensitivity, and become less resistant to autoignition at high intake temperatures. For high intake pressure the sensitivity analysis shows that fuels in the fuel blend with no NTC behavior consume OH radicals and acts as a radical scavenger for the fuels with NTC behavior. This is consistent with the observed trend of an increase in RON and fuel sensitivity. With data from shock tube experiments in the literature and HCCI modeling in this work, a correlation between the reciprocal pressure exponent on the ignition delay to the fuel sensitivity and volume percentage of single-stage ignition fuel in the fuel blend was found. Higher fuel sensitivity and single-stage fuel content generally gives a lower value of the pressure exponent. This helps to explain the results obtained while boosting the intake pressure in the HCCI engine.