Performances and pollutant emissions of spark ignition engine using direct injection for blends of ethanol/ammonia and pure ammonia

Combustion and emissions characteristics of a spark-ignition engine using direct injection of ethanol blended with ammonia and also pure ammonia were investigated in this study. The experiments were conducted using five different fuel compositions of ethanol/ammonia (C₂H₅OH/NH₃): 100/0, 75/25, 50/50, 25/75, and 0/100. Two strategies of injection were conducted to reach homogenous or stratified conditions with three different intake pressures, 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 bar corresponding to 2.8, 7.9, and 12 bar of IMEP. The performances and the pollutants emissions are compared as a function of fuel compositions at identical IMEP. High stability is observed for all blends and even for pure ammonia. However, operating conditions are more restrictive for pure ammonia: the injection must be executed during the intake phase to be in a fully premixed mode to guarantee engine stability. Delaying the injection time for pure ammonia is not possible and requires the split of injections with 50% of the ammonia amount injected during the intake. The thermal efficiency is improved by adding 25% of NH₃ in ethanol but NOx emissions increase. The stratified strategy for blends improves the combustion durations and the addition of ammonia decreases the NOx emission compared to the homogeneous strategy. On the contrary, CO emissions roughly increase for blends. The presence of NH₃ in the fuel composition clearly influences the change of formation of NOx and CO between both strategies.