Applied Energy 87 (2010) 16611669

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Applied Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy

CNG-diesel engine performance and exhaust emission analysis with the aid of articial neural network
Talal F. Yusaf a,*, D.R. Buttsworth a, Khalid H. Saleh a, B.F. Yousif b
a b

University of Southern Queensland, Faculty of Engineering and Surveying, Mechanical Engineering, Toowoomba, 4350 Queensland, Australia Mechanical Department, Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham, Symenih, Malaysia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
This study investigates the use of articial neural network (ANN) modelling to predict brake power, torque, break specic fuel consumption (BSFC), and exhaust emissions of a diesel engine modied to operate with a combination of both compressed natural gas CNG and diesel fuels. A single cylinder, four-stroke diesel engine was modied for the present work and was operated at different engine loads and speeds. The experimental results reveal that the mixtures of CNG and diesel fuel provided better engine performance and improved the emission characteristics compared with the pure diesel fuel. For the ANN modelling, the standard back-propagation algorithm was found to be the optimum choice for training the model. A multi-layer perception network was used for non-linear mapping between the input and output parameters. It was found that the ANN model is able to predict the engine performance and exhaust emissions with a correlation coefcient of 0.9884, 0.9838, 0.95707, and 0.9934 for the engine torque, BSFC, NOx and exhaust temperature, respectively. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 29 March 2009 Received in revised form 21 September 2009 Accepted 6 October 2009 Available online 6 November 2009 Keywords: CNG fuel ANN Engine performance Engine emission

1. Introduction Compressed natural gas (CNG) is one of the best alternative fuels for Internal Combustion engines (ICE). As reported by [1,4,8,16] and [16], the use of CNG in IC engines will signicantly contribute to reduce environmental pollution; it can also reduce the engine noise and vibration, and improve the engine brake thermal efciency [816]. Replacing diesel fuel with natural gas in passenger cars, buses and heavy truck has a number of further benets: (i) there is a signicant reduction in particulate matter (PM) emissions; (ii) engine wear and maintenance costs are reduced; and (iii) NOx emissions can also be reduced [3,6]. However, CNG composition is highly variable and strongly dependent on the supply source [7]. In the current study, a commercial high speed single cylinder diesel engine was modied to operate on natural gas and diesel as a dual-fuel system. The engine modications included: (i) reducing the original compression ratio from 22.9:1 into 16:1 to avoid knock phenomena; (ii) installing a CNG injection system which consisted of a CNG cylinder, a pressure regulator, and a Venturi mixer; (iii) modifying the existing diesel injection system; and (iv) undertaking minor modication related to the air manifold and inlet valve [17]. The Venturi mixer was designed using a nite volume commercial CFD package, FLUENT to introduce the correct
* Corresponding author. E-mail address: yusaft@usq.edu.au (T.F. Yusaf). 0306-2619/$ - see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2009.10.009

air to fuel (CNG) ratio through the air intake; it was constructed in house. Testing modied engines under all possible operating conditions and fuel cases was considered to be both time consuming and expensive. We have investigated the prospects of using articial neural networks (ANN) to alleviate the burden of extensive experimental testing. The structure and function of the ANN tend to simulate a biological neuron network, which receives inputs from many sources, combines these inputs in some way, performs a generally non-linear operation on the result, and then outputs the nal result [12]. The network usually consists of three groups of layers: an input layer, a number of hidden layers, and an output layer [9,12,13]. Each layer has number of neurons. The number of neurons in the input and output layers depends on the input and output experimental data, while the features of the hidden layer are generally regarded as adjustable the hidden layers are generally tuned until the prediction has the minimum mean square error. All neurons are connected with other neurons in previous and subsequent layers. The ANN can be demonstrated to be a useful tool if, as a result of training the ANN with certain experimental data, the ANN simulations can then be conrm by independent data [1,4,5]. In this study, we investigate the predictive capability of an ANN applied to a dual CNG-diesel fuel compression ignition (CI) engine operated at the maximum load condition for different engine speeds. In our case, the engine performance parameters and ANN output parameters are: brake power, brake thermal efciency gth,

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brake specic fuel consumption BSFC, exhaust gas temperature, and emission components. 2. Experimental investigation Experiments were performed to evaluate the performance of a single cylinder four-stroke diesel engines modied to operate using dual CNG-diesel fuels. The major specications of the engine are given in Table 1. The detail of the engine modication and some useful calculations related to the compression ratio modication and other major and minor modications are described in [18]. Fig. 1 illustrates the engine test apparatus and sensor locations. All experiments reported in the present work were performed at the maximum load condition. 2.1. Eddy current dynamometer A 150 kW eddy current dynamometer with end radial thrust bearings and a torque beam was locally designed and fabricated for loading the engine. The dynamometer was supplied with a drive shaft coupling ange and associated coupling hardware to connect to the engine.

The tests were conducted under maximum operating conditions and this was achieved by changing the engine load on the dynamometer. The engine started with no load at constant speed and the load was then applied gradually until the maximum load was achieved. This process was repeated for different speeds. The CNG percentage was increased in each test to replace the diesel fuel. 2.2. Temperature and pressure sensors Six temperature sensors and four pressure sensors provided temperature and pressure measurements at key positions in the apparatus. Sensors were installed to measure the temperature of the engine oil, inlet air, exhaust gas and the water inlet and outlet for the calorimeter. The pressure sensors were used to monitor the pressure at the air inlet, exhaust gas pipe, and lubricant oil tank. 3. Experimental results Tests were performed with the engine operating on diesel fuel, and also in a dual fuel (CNG-diesel) mode. Measured and derived experimental data was obtained for the brake engine power, torque, brake thermal efciency, brake specic fuel consumption, NOx, exhaust gas temperature, CO, and CO2 of both diesel and dual-fuel system and is presented as a function of engine speed in Figs. 2 through to 9. Fig. 10 presents the variation in the fraction of CNG with engine speed. 3.1. Engine performance Figs. 2 and 3 shows the brake power and the torque results of the engine operated on diesel and dual fuel. From the results of the engine tests, it was found that dual-fuel system produced higher power than that of the diesel fuel at engine speeds ranging from about 1000 to 2800 rpm. For speeds above 2800 rpm, the power

Table 1 Specications of the test engine. Engine type Bore Stroke Displacement Engine speed Max. power Continuous power Compression ratio Cooling system Combustion system Y170f vertical 4 stroke diesel engine 70 mm 55 mm 211 mm 3600 rpm (max) 3.5 (kW) 3.13 (kW) 16:1 Air cooled Direct injection

PETROL PETRO
Rotameter

DIESEL

Torqu

Air vel.

Power

Speed

Temp

Temp

Temp

Piezometri

PC Control system

1 8 9 9 10 1 22 33 4 5 6 7 8 10

ELCB

Flowmeter

T&P transferal
Exhaust temp

To the Engine

Reg.

Valve

Calorimeter outlet temp. Combustion chamber

CNG

Dynamometer

Strain Gauge

Oil sump temp.

Exhaust temp.

Calorimeter Calorimet Inlet Temp. er inlet temp.

SIEMENS
Direct Coupling

Engine

Fig. 1. Single cylinder engine test bed.

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Fig. 2. Power vs. engine speed for diesel and dual-fuel system (CNG% = 6585%). Fig. 4. Brake thermal efciency vs. engine speed for diesel and dual-fuel system (CNG% = 6585%).

Fig. 3. Torque vs. engine speed for diesel and dual-fuel system (CNG% = 6585%). Fig. 5. Brake specic fuel consumption vs. engine speed for diesel and dual-fuel system (CNG% = 6585%).

output of the dual-fuel system was lower than the power output of the diesel system. A contributing factor here may be the relatively low ame speed of the CNG-air mixtures in comparison with the rate of combustion of the diesel [21]. Another possible contributor to reduced power of the dual-fuel system at the higher speeds may be knock or pre ignition which is possible in the dual-fuel system because the CNG mixes with the inducted air prior to cylinder compression. From Fig. 4, the brake thermal efciency of the dual-fuel system is comparable to, and sometimes higher than the diesel system with the average increase of around 13% especially at low speeds. At higher speeds, there is no remarkable difference in the thermal efciency. On the other hand, the brake specic fuel consumption (BSFC) of the dual-fuel system was lower than that of the diesel system, Fig. 5 the dual-fuel system consumes less fuel in comparison to the same diesel system producing same power output. This

arises primarily because of the higher caloric value of the natural gas but the more complete combustion in the dual-fuel system may also make a contribution.

3.2. Exhaust gas emissions test 3.2.1. Oxides of nitrogen (NOx) Fig. 6 shows that the concentration of the NOx for the dual-fuel system operated at maximum load conditions is lower than that of the diesel for speeds ranging between 1000 rpm and 3500 rpm. High temperatures and the availability of oxygen are two main factors in the formation of NOx. According to [18], more NOx will be formed when sufcient oxygen is available and the average combustion temperature is high. Exhaust gas temperatures are related

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Fig. 6. NOx vs. engine speed for diesel and dual-fuel system (CNG% = 6585%).

Fig. 8. Carbon monoxide vs. engine speed, for diesel and dual-fuel system (CNG% = 6585%).

During the burning of hydrocarbon such as CH4 a signicant amount of CO is formed. During power and exhaust stroke most of the CO oxidizes to CO2. If there is sufcient oxygen available and high exhaust temperature, CO will continue to convert to CO2 until relatively small concentrations of CO are left in the exhaust. 3.2.3. Carbon dioxides (CO2) The dual-fuel operating conditions produced less CO2 emissions than the diesel, Fig. 9. On average, the dual-fuel produced about 30% less CO2 emission than the diesel although there was an increase in CO2 emission as the speed increased for both dual fuel and diesel fuel cases. If complete combustion actually occurred for both dual and diesel fuels, the exhaust composition of CO2 would depend on the composition of fuel itself. In the dual fuel cases, there was approx-

Fig. 7. Exhaust temperature vs. engine speed, for diesel and dual-fuel system (CNG% = 6585%).

to the average combustion temperature and Fig. 7 shows that the exhaust temperature for dual-fuel is much lower than the temperature when diesel fuel is used. 3.2.2. Carbon monoxide (CO) At the maximum operating condition, the CO concentration produced by the diesel engine was much higher compared with the dual-fuel system, Fig. 8. The reduction of the CO in the exhaust gas means a more complete combustion is achieved; the lower CO concentration in the exhaust gas, the better and complete combustion is achieved. The air to fuel ratio was very rich for the diesel operation at higher torque and power, and this resulted in the increased in CO concentration due to the lack of oxygen or incomplete combustion, particularly after 2200 rpm.

Fig. 9. Carbon dioxide emissions vs. engine speed for diesel and dual-fuel system (CNG% = 6585%).

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Subsequent network development was undertaken to improve the performance of the ANN. using The architecture transfer function of Linear TanhAxon and the learning rule function of Levenberg-Marqua were used for the output layer and hidden layers. The total number of epochs was 1000 and the MSE was 1e6. The ANN test started with 12 neurons using double hidden layers TanhAxon function. The results were repeated for higher numbers of neurons between 13 and 23. It was found that the most accurate ANN results were found to be failed in 22 neurons where double hidden layers approach was used. The accuracy of the results was signicantly improved in comparison to the single hidden layer conguration, especially for break thermal efciency, CO, and NOx. The process used in developing the current model was adopted from [2,19,20]. Three criteria R, RMSE and MRE were selected to evaluate the networks to nd the optimum solution as follows:

0 B R2 1 B @

1
2

j t j oj C C P A oj 2 j

Fig. 10. Oxygen consumption vs. engine speed for diesel and dual-fuel system (CNG% = 6585%). Table 2 Summary of different networks evaluated to yield the criteria of network performance. No. of hidden layer 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Activation function Sig/lin Sig/lin Sig/lin Sig/lin Sig/lin Sig/axon Soft/lin Sig/axon Tanax/lin Sig/lin Sig/lin Sig/lin Sig/axon Training rule Trainlm Trainlm Trainlm Trainlm Trainlm Trainlm Traingdx Traingdx Traingdx Trainlm Trainlm Trainlm Trainlm Neurons in hidden layer 19 20 21 22 22 22 22 22 22 23 24 25 19 Training error 1.1000E02 1.3000E02 2.8600E02 2.7600E03 1.9184E02 9.0100E02 1.2954E01 3.1877E02 3.1238E02 1.6640E02 4.6170E02 2.5300E02 8.4522E02 R

imately 20% less carbon in the fuelair mixture than in the diesel fuel cases, and this explains the majority of the difference between the CO2 emissions in each case. 4. Articial neural network modelling ANN modelling was used in the present work to predict the relationship of brake power, torque, brake specic fuel consumption, brake thermal efciency and emission components with the engine speed and percentage CNG as inputs. Approximately 70% of the total experimental data (220 values) was selected at random and was used for training purpose, while the 30% was reserved for testing. The experimental data set for every output parameter includes 20 values, of which 14 values were used for training the network and six values were selected randomly to test the performance of the trained network. Simulations were performed using MATLAB. A multi-layer perception network (MLP) was used for non-linear mapping between the input and the output variable. To improve the modeling, several architectures were evaluated and trained using the experimental data. The back-propagation algorithm was utilized in training of all ANN models. This algorithm uses the supervised training technique where the network weights and biases are initialized randomly at the beginning of the training phase. The error minimization process is achieved using gradient descent rule. There were two input and nine output parameters in the experimental test. The two input variables were engine speed in rpm and the compressed natural gasdiesel ratio. The nine outputs for evaluating engine performance are indicated in Fig. 10. The input layer consisted of two neurons and the output layer had nine neurons. The number of hidden layers and neurons within each layer can be tuned to suit the complexity of the problem and data set. In this study, the initial network that was selected consisted of one hidden layer with a set range of neurons. The activation function for the hidden layer was selected to be linear function. A linear function was usually best suited for output layer. However, the results of this ANN model with one hidden layer were not accurate enough. It was found that NOx, CO and brake thermal efciency modeled ANN results were not accurate as the indicated R values were below 90%. Therefore several other networks with various functions and topologies were examined.

0.989 0.987 0.9714 0.99724 0.980816 0.9099 0.87046 0.968123 0.968762 0.98336 0.95383 0.9747 0.915478

Fig. 11. Experimental and predicted powers vs. engine speed.

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Fig. 12. CNG percentages vs. engine speed at maximum loads for diesel and dualfuel system.

! j t j oj RMSE n   n  X t j pj  1   MRE  100  tj n 1  Pn

Fig. 14. The ANN power prediction vs. the experimental power.

2 3

Three standard criteria R, RMSE and MRE were selected to evaluate the various networks (R is the error, RMSE is the root mean square error, and MRE is the mean relative error). A regression analysis between the network response and corresponding targets was performed to investigate the network response in more detail. Different training algorithms were tested and Levenberg-Marquadt was selected. R values in Table 2 represent the error coefcient between the outputs and As. R values did not increase when the number of neurons in the hidden layer was more than 22. Therefore, a network with one hidden layer and 22 neurons was selected as the preferred ANN.

An independent ANN test was conducted for a range specic of RPMs for different parameter to establish condence in the ANN model. Initial tests were conducted to predict the relationship between the speed and the brake power for different speed values [19]. Fig. 11 shows the relationship between the actual and predicted power for different speed. As seen in Fig. 11, the predicted results are nicely matched to the experimental ones. This result will give an idea to the reader of how far the suggested ANN can go for a reliable prediction.

5. Results and discussion In general, using CNG in IC engines will lead to a leaner and cleaner combustion. It was experimentally demonstrated that using CNG led to an increase in the engine brake power, torque

Fig. 13. The structure of ANN for dual fuel (CNG_diesel) and diesel fuel engine.

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and brake thermal efciency and decrease the brake specic fuel consumption. The lean combustion improves the completeness of combustion and therefore the CO emission was expected to be decreased. The experimental results conrmed that by using CNG, the CO was decreased. The oxygen enrichment generated from CNG increased the oxygen ratio in the ratio in the charge and led to lean combustion. CO2 emission varies with the A/F ratio and CO concentration. As a result, CO2 emission increased because of the improved combustion. When the combustion process is closer to stoichiometric, ame temperature increase, therefore, the NOx emission increased. Fig. 12 illustrates the relationship between the speed and the CNG percentage for maximum operating conditions. This gure

shows that the increase the engine speed is associated with the increase of CNG percentage. An ANN was developed based on this experimental work to predict the missed data and avoid spending excessive time running experimental tests (Fig. 13). The results showed that the training algorithm of Back Propagation was sufcient for predicting engine torque, brake power, brake thermal efciency, specic fuel consumption and exhaust gas components for different engine speeds and different type of fuel. The predicted vs. experimental values for experimental parameters are indicated in Figs. 1418. The ANN predictions for the brake power, engine torque, brake thermal efciency, brake specic fuel consumption and exhaust temperature yield a correlation coefcient (R) of 0.9808, 0.9884, 0.92897, 0.9838, and 0.9934 respectively. It was found the root mean square error (RMSE)

Fig. 15. The ANN torque prediction vs. the experimental torque. Fig. 17. The ANN prediction for the BSFC vs. experimental data.

Fig. 16. The ANN prediction for the brake thermal efciency (lth) vs. experimental date.

Fig. 18. The ANN prediction for the exhaust temperature vs. experimental values.

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values were 0.1469 kW, 1.8803 N m, 1.2103%, 4.06 kg/kW h and 8.265 C for the brake power, engine torque, brake thermal efciency, brake specic fuel consumption and exhaust temperature respectively. The ANN predictions for the performance of the tested IC engine yielded a good statistical performance. Comparisons of the experimental results and the ANN predictions demonstrate that IC engine using CNG-diesel fuel can be accurately simulated using ANN. The predicted vs. experimental values for the CO emission are indicated in Fig. 19. The ANN predictions for the CO yield a correlation coefcient (R) of 0.9359, root mean square error (RMSE) of 10.26 ppm. Fig. 20 indicates the predicted vs. experimental values of the CO2 emission with error correlation coefcient (R) of 0.9964 and root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.3422. The predicted vs. experimental values for the NOx emission are indicated in Fig. 21. The ANN

Fig. 21. The ANN prediction for the NOx vs. experimental values.

Fig. 19. The ANN prediction for the CO vs. experimental values.

Fig. 22. The ANN predictions for the O2 vs. experimental values.

predictions for the NOx yield correlation coefcient (R) of 0.95707 and root mean square error (RMSE) of 7.0099. Fig. 22 shows the relationship between the predicted vs. experimental values of O2 emission. The ANN predictions for the O2 yield a correlation coefcient (R) of 0.9705 and root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.62186. 6. Conclusion Operating a diesel engine on dual fuel CNG-diesel, gives better brake thermal efciency and lower emissions. It was found that the training algorithm of back propagation is sufcient for predicting engine torque, specic fuel consumption and exhaust gas component for different engine speeds. Analysis of the experimental data by the ANN revealed that there is good correlation between

Fig. 20. The ANN predictions for the CO2 vs. experimental values.

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the simulated results from the ANN and the measured data, with R values are ranging between 0.92 and 0.99. Therefore the ANN is demonstrated to be a useful simulation tool in the evaluation of the engine parameters. Generally speaking, ANNs can provide accuracy and simplicity in the analysis and simulation of the engine performance. References
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