Effects of pilot injection pressure on the combustion and emissions characteristics in a diesel engine using biodiesel–CNG dual fuel

Highlights: • Injection pressure of pilot fuel in dual fuel combustion (DFC) affects the engine power and exhaust emissions. • In the biodiesel–CNG DFC mode, the combustion begins and ends earlier as the pilot-fuel injection pressure increases. • The ignition delay in the DFC mode is about 1.2–2.6 °CA longer than that in the diesel single fuel combustion (SFC) mode. • The smoke and NOx emissions are significantly reduced in the DFC mode. - Abstract: Biodiesel–compressed natural gas (CNG) dual fuel combustion (DFC) system is studied for the simultaneous reduction of particulate matters (PM) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) from diesel engine. In this study, biodiesel is used as a pilot injection fuel to ignite the main fuel, CNG of DFC system. In particular, the pilot injection pressure is controlled to investigate the characteristics of engine performance and exhaust emissions in a single cylinder diesel engine. The results show that the indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP) of biodiesel–CNG DFC mode is lower than that of diesel single fuel combustion (SFC) mode at higher injection pressure. However, the combustion stability of biodiesel–CNG DFC mode is increased with the increase of pilot injection pressure. At the same injection pressure, the start of combustion of biodiesel–CNG DFC is delayed compared to diesel SFC due to the increase of ignition delay of pilot fuel. On the contrary, it is observed that as the pilot injection pressure increase, the combustion process begins and ends a little earlier for biodiesel–CNG DFC. The ignition delay in the DFC is about 1.2–2.6 °CA longer compared to diesel SFC, but decreases with increases of pilot injection pressure. Smoke and NOx emissions are decreased and increased, respectively, as the pilot injection pressure increases in the biodiesel–CNG DFC. In comparison to diesel SFC, smoke emissions are significantly reduced over all the operating conditions and NOx emissions also exhibited similar reduction trend except for the full load condition in biodiesel–CNG DFC. DFC yields higher CO emissions compared to diesel SFC over all engine conditions except for 100% load. The more unburned hydrocarbon emissions are exhausted in the DFC mode than in the diesel SFC; however, this decreases with increases in pilot injection pressure