Internal Combustion Engines General Course

Layout
SUBJECT: ME-448 INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES
CREDIT HOURS: 3-0
CONTACT HOURS:
3 Hours per Week
TEXT BOOK:
Internal Combustion Engines: Applied Thermo sciences, Colin R.
Ferguson, Allan T. Kirkpatrick, 2nd Edition, Wiley
REFERENCE BOOKS:
Edward F. Obert, Internal Combustion Engines and Air Pollution,
Harper & Row NewYark.
Internal Combustion Engines by V.Ganesan
Internal Combustion Engine by Willard W. Pulkrabek

Thermochemistry and Fuel

4 + 22 = 2 + 22

818 + 12.52 = 82 + 92
Reactants

Products

What is mole?
It signifies the amount of chemical.

01 mole = 6.022 * 1023 particles

01 mole = formula (molecular) mass (g)

Combustion
Thus one mole of CH4 = 16.04 g
One mole of O2 = 32.00 g
Similarly One Kg mole of CH4 = 16.04 kg
One kg mole of O2 = 32.00 kg

Particles

Moles

And then there is the formulae m = NM

Where N = No of moles
M = Formula or Molecular mass

Grams

Combustion
Combustion with pure oxygen is ideal, but the cost factor prohibits its
wide scale use.
Air is the best and most in expensive alternate.
Air is composed of
78 percent nitrogen
21 percent oxygen
01 percent argon
Traces of other gases like carbon dioxide, methane, helium etc.
Nitrogen and argon are chemically neutral and are generally
considered as a combination, which adds up to 79 percent
Oxygen is the remaining 21 percent.

Combustion
Thus we can say that for every 0.21 moles of oxygen, there is 0.79
moles of nitrogen.
For one mole of oxygen, there are 0.79/0.21 moles of nitrogen.
In simple words, for every mole of oxygen needed for combustion
we, need 4.76 moles of air.
Thus the stoichiometric relation for methane can be written as;
4 + 22 + 2(3.76)2 = 2 + 22 + 2(3.76)2
And that for octane;
818 + 12.52 + 12.5 3.76 2 = 82 + 92 + 12.5(3.76)2

Combustion
Remember to balance the equations for 01 kg mole of fuel (why?).
Combustion can also occurs when the mixture is lean or rich.
If methane is burned with 150 percent stoichiometric air then the
reaction is reshaped as under;
4 + 32 + 3(3.76)2 = 2 + 22 + 3(3.76)2 + 2
Thus there is excess oxygen in the product.
When octane is burned with 80 percent stoichiometric air, there isnt

enough oxygen to convert all the carbon molecules to CO2 and then CO
also ends up in the products.
818 + 102 + 10 3.76 2 = 32 + 92 + 10(3.76)2 + 5CO

Table for Molecular Weights

Combustion
Carbon Monoxide is a colorless and odorless gas which is
extremely dangerous.
It is a product of incomplete combustion, and can be
converted into carbon dioxide if its burned further.
Various terminologies are used to describe the amount of air
or oxygen used in combustion.

Remember equivalence ratio .

Example Problem
Isooctane is burned with 120% theoretical air in a small threecylinder turbocharged automobile engine :
Calculate
1. Air-fuel ratio

2. Fuel-air ratio
3. Equivalence ratio
818 + 12.52 + 12.5 3.76 2 = 82 + 92 + 12.5(3.76)2
818 + 152 + 15 3.76 2 = 82 + 92 + 15(3.76)2 +2.52

Chemical Equilibrium
1.

Chemical equilibrium is the condition which occurs when the

concentration of reactants and products participating in a chemical

reaction exhibit no net change over time.
2.

Chemical equilibrium may also be called a "steady state reaction."

This does not mean the chemical reaction has necessarily stopped
occurring, but that the consumption and formation of substances has
reached a balanced condition.
3.

The quantities of reactants and products have achieved a constant

ratio, but they are almost never equal. There may be much more
product or much more reactant.
Reference: http://chemistry.about.com/

Chemical Equilibrium

Here A and B represent the reactant species whereas C and

D represent the products. The coefficients before them are
the stoichiometric coefficients of A,B, C and D respectively.
Equilibrium composition for a reaction can be found out if
we know a certain constant, commonly known as the
chemical equilibrium constant.
It is given by;

Chemical Equilibrium
Ke is very dependent on temperature, changing many orders of

magnitude over the temperature range experienced in an IC engine.

As Ke gets larger, equilibrium is more towards the right (products).
This is the maximizing of entropy.

For hydrocarbon fuels reacting with oxygen (air) at high engine

temperatures, the equilibrium constant is very large, meaning that
there are very few reactants (fuel and air) left at final equilibrium.

However, at these high temperatures another chemical phenomenon

takes place that affects the overall combustion process in the engine
and what ends up in the engine exhaust.

Chemical Equilibrium
The important question to answer is what actually happens.
Dissociation of normally stable components will occur at
these high engine temperatures

yields

yields

yields

CO + O

O + O (monoatomic oxygen)

N+ N (monoatomic nitrogen)

So what!! What's the big deal

Chemical Equilibrium
Nitrogen in the diatomic form does not react with other
substances, but when it dissociates to monatomic nitrogen at high
temperature it readily reacts with oxygen to form nitrogen oxides,
NO and NO2, a major pollutant.
To avoid generating large amounts of nitrogen oxides, combustion
temperatures in automobile engines are lowered, which reduces
the dissociation of N2.
Unfortunately, this also lowers the thermal efficiency of the
engine.

Exhaust Dew Point Temperature

When exhaust gases of an IC engine are cooled below their dew
point temperature, water vapor in the exhaust starts to condense
to liquid.

It is common to see water droplets come out of an automobile

exhaust pipe when the engine is first started and the pipe is cold.
Very quickly the pipe is heated above the dew point temperature,

and condensing water is then seen only as vapor when the hot
exhaust is cooled by the surrounding air, much more noticeable in
the cold wintertime.

Combustion Temperature
Heat liberated in a combustion reaction in terms of enthalpy?

Ni = number of moles of component i

hi = (h)i + hi

Thermodynamic Tables

(h)i = enthalpy of formation, the enthalpy needed to form one mole

of that component at standard conditions of 25C and 1 atm
hi = change of enthalpy from standard temperature for component i

Combustion Temperature
Q will be negative, meaning that heat is given up by the reacting
gases.
Heating value QHV is the negative of the heat of reaction for one
unit of fuel, and thus is a positive number.
It is calculated assuming both the reactants and the products are
at 25C.
Care must be used when using heating values, which almost
always are given in mass units (kJ/kg), whereas heats of reaction
are obtained using molar quantities.
Two values of heating value are given in any thermodynamic table.
Higher Heating Value is used when water in the
exhaust products is in the liquid state
Lower Heating Value is used when water in the products
is vapor.
The difference is the heat of vaporization of the water

Combustion Temperature
Now we already know, how to use to find out the
output work.
All we need to do is to find the heat in and the problem can
be moved forward from there;
And how do we find the heat in;
=
Now the question arises as to why we are studying all these
laws of thermodynamics and chemistry.
The answer lies in the heading of the slide.

Combustion Temperature
We want to formulate a method through which we can predict the
maximum possible temperature that can be reached in an ICE
engine.
In more technical words, we want to calculate the Adiabatic Flame
Temperature of the input air fuel mixture.

Assuming that inlet conditions of the reactants are known, it is

necessary to find the temperature of the products such that this
equation will be satisfied. This is the adiabatic flame temperature.

Combustion Temperature
Adiabatic flame temperature is the ideal theoretical maximum
temperature that can be obtained for a given fuel and air
mixture.
The actual peak temperature in an engine cycle will be several
hundred degrees less than this. (WHY?)

There is some heat loss even in the very short time of one cycle.
Combustion efficiency is less than 100% so a small amount of
fuel does not get burned.

Some components dissociate at the high engine temperatures.

All these factors contribute to making the actual peak engine
temperature somewhat less than adiabatic flame temperature.

Example Problems
Q No 1. An SI engine operating on stoichiometric propane fuel burns
0.00005 kg of fuel in each cylinder during each cycle with a combustion
efficiency of 95 percent. When combustion starts at end of the compression
stroke, the temperature and pressure in the cylinder are 700 K and 2000
KPa. Exhaust temperature is 1200 K.
Find combustion heat input (heat of reaction) and combustion heat input
using QLHV.

3 8 + 52 + 5 3.76 2

3 C2 + 4 2 + 5 3.76 2

Q No 2. Find the adiabatic flame temperature of iso-octane burned with an

equivalence ratio of 0.833 in dry air. It can be assumed that the reactants are
at a temperature of 700K after the compression stroke.

818 + 152 + 15 3.76 2 = 82 + 92 + 15(3.76)2 +2.52