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Provided by UMP Institutional Repository

National Conference in Mechanical Engineering Research and Postgraduate Students (1st NCMER 2010)
26 -27 MAY 2010, FKM Conference Hall, UMP, Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia; pp. 614-620
ISBN: 978-967-5080-9501 (CD ROM); Editors: M.M. Rahman, M.M. Noor and K. Kadirgama
©Universiti Malaysia Pahang

DESIGN OF COMPRESSED NATURAL GAS MIXER USING

COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS

D. Ramasamy, S. Mahendran, K. Kadirgama and M. M. Noor

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Pahang,

26300 UMP, Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia; Phone: +6016-7580946, Fax: +609-4242201
E-mail: deva@ump.edu.my

ABSTRACT

The usage of natural gas is ever increasing with environment consciousness ever
increasing. A general bi-fuel CNG system is analyzed on a new two-stroke engine. The
mixer of CNG is to be designed for the new two-stroke gasoline engine. Mixer design is
crucial to meter the flow of natural gas into the combustion chamber. With this the
amount of gas can be controlled for different engine speeds and loads. To reduce the
time to design computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used to get the desired flow
condition inside the mixer. Calculation is done for the initial sizing of the throat of the
mixer and later is simulated to obtain the best flow characteristics. Different preliminary
design is to get the best shape of the mixer. With the help of CFD the best shape is taken
for fabrication. The initial calculation for sizing is based on the stoichiometry of the fuel
and general fluid dynamic equations.

Keywords: Computational Fluid Dynamics, Compressed Natural Gas, Two Stroke,

Venturi System, Mixer, Design

INTRODUCTION

Two stroke engines have a higher power to weight ratio and are simpler in design.
Evolution of the two-stroke engine has seen many designs for the two-stroke engine.
The intake of a two-stroke engine is based on scavenging process. CNG system is rarely
used on two stroke engines. Current CNG systems only cater for four-stroke engine. In
two stroke application which is also widely used in the world today there are an
estimated 70-100 million two-stroke cycles in Asia which are motorcycle, tricycle and
auto rickshaws. Two-stroke engines are characterized by very high levels of
hydrocarbon (HC), carbon monoxide (CO), and particulate (PM) emissions (Bryan,
2002). The usage of natural gas may reduce the emmision of the two-stroke. The
objective here is to overcome the problem of two-stroke emmisions by using bi-fuel
(Rosli, 2002) conversion kit that utilizes a mixer. The task is to modify the kit for a two-
stroke engine. This is because natural gas is available in large quantities compared to
petroleum in the world. As at January 2001, Malaysia’s gas reserves stood at 97.6
trillion cubic feet (tcf). This translates to about 66.8 years of natural gas availability
(Gas Malaysia, 2003).

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A SIMPLE VENTURI MIXER

A venturi mixer utilizes the same fluid mechanics as a standard carburettor system. That
is the change in velocity causes a change in pressure in the contraction passage which in

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 D. Ramasamy, S. Mahendran, K. Kadirgama and M.M. Noor

turn effects a change in flow of the other medium or (fuel) to join and mix with the main
airflow in the required proportion. The mixer throat size is selected based on the airflow
capacity required to supply the engine with adequate intake air according to engine
operating speed. If the throat is too small the maximum horsepower will be limited. If it
is too large a poor vacuum will be created causing engine starting problem (Maxwell
T.T, 1995). Engines that never operate at WOT should be equipped with an undersized
mixer for good starting and to look for low engine speed performance. (Xinlei Wang,
2003) found that some critical venturis require pressure drops of 9kPa minimum to
ensure constant air flow rate. So the designed model should exceed this value for stable
operation of the mixer since the throat of the mixer is a venturi contraction area.

Determination of intake air velocity in intake of engine

The engine being developed is a two-stroke engine. The intake is charged with a
supercharger root type with a maximum flow rate from 0.025 kg/s at WOT to 0.004 kg/s
at idling (Table 2). This is based on engine simulation with the blower system.

Cross sectional area of the venturi mixer

The cross sectional area is determined based on engine intake manifold diameter. The
area is given as,
d 12 
A1= (1)
4
Since the intake manifold is given as 38 mm the cross sectional area is equal to 1134
mm2.

Inlet velocity

Based on the continuity equation mass can neither be created or destroyed, that is
m 
1 = mt and the inlet velocity is based on maximum engine speed at which the blower
gives the maximum air boost at fully open throttle. This is given by (John K. Vennard,
1982) in equation (2),

1 A1 v1 t At v t (2)

where A 1 is the area at cross-section 1, and At is the area at the throat (minimum area)
with assuming that the velocities are uniform across the flow area.

Contraction cross section of the mixer

The contraction of the venturi will cause the air velocity to rise as a linear function of
the change in cross-sectional area. The air velocity at the throat cannot exceed speed of
100 m/s at maximum flowrate. This is because above this velocity the air is considered
as compressible and the effects of compressibility have to be taken into account. The
Mach number for air to be considered incompressible is M < 0.3. With this the
maximum velocity of the throat is assumed as 100 m/s as this speed is considered
incompressible limit (John D. Anderson, 1989). The venturi area is calculated as
equation (3).

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 Design of Compressed Natural Gas Mixer using Computational Fluid Dynamics

From continuity 1 = 2 so we get,

A1 v1 At v t (3)
A1v 1
At = = 1.6932 x 10-4 m2, the diameter is found accordingly an under sized value is
vt
taken (Maxwell T.T, 1995).
4 At
dt  0.01468 m


The throat diameter is assumed as 14 mm from the equation above.

COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS MODEL

The new design shape of the mixer is shown in Fig. 1. A single inlet is chosen to enable
careful fuel control with the power valve in the conversion kit.

Throat Air Inlet

Throat
Contraction

Outlet CNG and Holes to CNG inlet

Air meter

Figure 1: Mixer Shape Before Section View And After Section View

The model is the meshed for calculation by adaptive meshing using rectangular
elements in a CFD program shown in Fig.2. The amount of elements is specified in
Table 1.
Table 1 Mesh Elements

Fluid Cells 34401

Solid Cells 22965
Partial Cells 26367

The air boundary condition for the inlet is calculated from the equation (4) (Willard,
1997) for engine volumetric efficiency.

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 D. Ramasamy, S. Mahendran, K. Kadirgama and M.M. Noor

Figure 2: Meshed Model

a
m = v a V d N (4)

Where, ma is the mass of air into the engine in kg/s. v is the volumetric efficiency
which is assumed as 1.4 for this two stroke engine, a is the ambient air density of
1.181 kg/m 3, Vd is the engine displacement of 150 cc., and N is the engine speed in rpm.
For the fuel flow rate the stoichiometry of methane is used as below. The boundary is
summarized in Table 2. Methane combustion is given as below (5).

CH4 + 2O2 + 2(3.76) N2  CO2 + 2H2O + 2(3.76) N2 (5)

The stoichiometry air-fuel ratio value for methane is 17.12 (Rosli, 2002). That is;
m
AF= a (6)
mf

Table 2: Boundary for Fuel and Air

Engine Speed (rpm) ma mf

6000 0.025 0.00144
5000 0.020 0.00120
4000 0.017 0.00096
3000 0.012 0.00072
2000 0.008 0.00048
1000 0.004 0.00024

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The pressure is dropping, as the air is moving across the mixer as shown in Figure 3.
The maximum pressure decrease is seen at 6000 rpm. The decrease will create a
vacuum for the fuel to be forced into the inlet manifold of the engine. Figure 4 indicates

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 Design of Compressed Natural Gas Mixer using Computational Fluid Dynamics

increasing pressure difference as the engine speed is increased. This is what is explained
by (Willard, 1997) that as engine speed is increased the higher flow rate will create an
even lower pressure in the venturi throat, which increases the fuel flow rate to keep up
with greater airflow. The simulation can be seen in Figure 5 showing the pressure, mass
fraction and velocity plots. Basically for all engine speeds the simulation results are
same as stoichiometric values are used only the air velocity changes with the increasing
engine speeds. The maximum pressure drop achieved is about 16 kPa which is more
compared with 9 kPa from critical venturi systems (Xinlei Wang, 2003).

108000
106000
104000
102000
Pressure (Pa)

100000
1000
98000 2000
96000 3000
94000 4000
92000 5000
6000
90000
88000
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08
Length (m)

Figure 3: Effect of Pressure Drop In Venturi Mixer From The Inlet To Outlet
18000
16000
14000
Pres sure Drop (Pa)

12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000
Engine Speed (rpm)

Figure 4: The Effect Of Pressure Drop In Venturi Mixer At Different Speeds

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 D. Ramasamy, S. Mahendran, K. Kadirgama and M.M. Noor

(a) Pressure (b) Mass Fraction (c) Velocity

Figure 5: Simulation results of the mixer at 6000 rpm.

CONCLUSIONS

As the pressure drop is enough for the venturi, this model has to be further validated.
The validation will be done on a test rig where the flow rate will be applied for the
typical engine conditions. The results obtained here will help in optimization of the gas
mixer before the prototype is fabricated and tested in a real engine.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to express their thanks to University Malaysia Pahang.

REFERENCES

Bryan Willson, 2002, “Direct Injection as a Retrofit Strategy for Reducing Emissions
from 2-Stroke Cycle Engines in Asia”, Hong Kong SAR.
GAS MALAYSIA SDN BHD, 2003, Natural Gas In Malaysia, www. gasmalaysia.com.
access on 7 May 2010.
John D. Anderson, 1989, “Introduction to Flight”, McGraw-Hill, pg 133.
John K. Vennard, Robert L. Street, 1982, “Elementary Fluid Mechanics”, John Wiley &
Sons, Pg 94.
Maxwell T.T. and Jones J.C., 1995, “Alternative Fuels: Emissions, Economics and
Performance”, USA Society of Automotive Engineers: SAE Inc.
Rosli Abu Bakar, Mardani Ali Sera and Wong Hung Mun, “Towards The
Implementation Of A CNG Engine: A Literature Review To Problem And
Solutions”, BSME-ASME International Conference on Thermal Engineering,
Dhaka.
Willard W. Pulkrabek, 1997, Engineering Fundamentals Of The Internal Combustion
Engine, Prentice Hall.
Xinlei Wang; Yuanhui Zhang, 1991, “ Development of a Critical Air Flow Venturi for
Air Sampling” , Department of Agricultural Engineering, University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign, USA.

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 Design of Compressed Natural Gas Mixer using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Nomenclature

A, a constants
Cp specific heat at constant pressure J.kg 1.K1
D mass diffusion coefficient m 2.s1
g acceleration due to gravity m.s 2
k thermal conductivity J.m 1.K1
t time s
t dimensionless time
ma mass of air into the engine in kg/s
Vd engine displacement
N engine speed in rpm
A1 area at cross-section 1, m2
At area at the throat, m 2
P Pressure, Pa

Greek symbols

 coefficient of viscosity Pa.s

 kinematic viscosity m 2.s1
 density of the fluid kg.m 3
v is the volumetric efficiency

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