The Influence of Excess Air Ratio on NOx Emissions of Turbocharged Direct Injection Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engines

Direct injection in the cylinder of a hydrogen internal combustion engine results in increasing NOx emissions in high-temperature oxygen rich environments. To explore the effect of excess air ratio λ on the NOx emissions of a direct injection hydrogen fueled internal combustion engine (HICE), a CFD simulation model was built based on a turbocharged direct injection hydrogen internal combustion engine using Converge software, and investigates the impact of lean burn on the NOx emissions. The simulation results show that increasing the excess air ratio λ can lower the in-cylinder mean temperature and effectively reduce the generation of NOx. The maximum temperature difference between λ=2.1 and λ=2.7 is 400K when engine speed is 4500 r/min. As the engine speed increases, under the same condition of λ, different loads at different speeds result in differences in the reaction temperature inside the cylinder, with higher temperatures at high speeds, so both the cylinder temperature and NOx emissions increase. The maximum cylinder pressure and mean cylinder temperature also increase when engine speed increase.