Combustion characteristics of landfill gas in constant volume combustion chamber for large displacement volume engine (I) - Fundamental characteristics - Fundamental c

This is the first paper on the combustion characteristics of landfill gas in a constant volume combustion chamber for a large displacement volume commercial engine, and it discusses the fundamental characteristics of fuel from the viewpoint of thermochemistry and thermodynamics and compares these results with experimental ones. The results show that the final pressures obtained from theoretical analysis vary under the same heating value owing to the change in the constant volume specific heat owing to the difference in the burned gas composition according to the fuel gas compositions; furthermore, the stoichiometric ratios and trends of analytical and experimental pressures coincide very well, although some minor differences are observed between the two. The root cause of the difference is the heat transfer, which changes the specific heat and lowers the temperature considerably, in the real combustion process. In addition, the large chamber volume and ignition position promote the heat transfer to the wall. Finally, the fuel conversion efficiency increases as the methane mol fraction decreases, and it is maximum when the stoichiometric ratio ranges from 0.8 to 0.9. These increases due to the composition and stoichiometric ratio could sufficiently compensate the decrease due to the specific heat ratio drop, LFG might be more advantageous than pure methane in a real engine.