Diesel engines are widely used for propulsion on large ships, which has the undesired characteristic of generating large amounts of harmful emissions. To reduce these emissions, some alternative fuel was developed and used in a marine diesel engine. In this study, an experiment was carried out on a 6-cylinder turbocharged direct-injection marine diesel propulsion engine. A small proportion blend of biodiesel-diesel was used, aimed at exploring the emission characteristics and emission reduction mechanism for diesel propulsion engines. The results show that the high oxygen content of biodiesel blend is crucial for inhibiting the formation of particulate matter (PM) and reducing the formation of total unburned hydrocarbon (THC) and carbon monoxide (CO), which reduces the emission of harmful gases. At the same time, the number of particles (PN) has also decreased. However, the rapid burn rate of biodiesel was found to reduce brake thermal efficiency (BTE), resulting in an increase of fuel consumption and exhaust gas temperature (EGT), which can promote the formation of nitrogen oxides (NOx). More carbon dioxide (CO2) is released due to the increased fuel consumption. The emission characteristics of the biodiesel blend and diesel fuel are discussed in this work. Shanghai Maritime University, Haigang Avenue 1550, Pudong New Area, 201306 Shanghai, China

The effects of heavy fuel oil and biodiesel blends on engine combustion and emissions were studied in a marine two-stroke diesel engine. The engine was operated under propeller conditions using five different fuels with biodiesel blends of 10% (B10), 30% (B30), 50% (B50), and sulphur contents of 0.467% low sulphur fuel oil (LSFO) and 2.9% high sulphur fuel oil (HSFO). Tests have shown that using a biodiesel blend increases the engine fuel consumption due to its lower calorific value. Heavy fuel oil has a high Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) content, which leads to higher exhaust temperatures due to severe afterburning in the engine. A comparison of engine soot emissions under different fuel conditions was carried out, and it was found that the oxygen content in biodiesel promoted the oxidation of soot particles during the combustion process, which reduced the soot emissions of biodiesel. Compared to HSFO, B10, B30, B50 and LSFO, the soot emission concentrations were reduced by 50.2%, 56.4%, 61% and 37.4%, respectively. In our experiments, the soot particles in the engine exhaust were sampled with a thermal float probe. Using Raman spectroscopy analysis, it was found that as the biodiesel ratio increased, the degree of carbonisation of the soot particles in the exhaust became less than that in the oxygenation process, resulting in a decrease in the degree of graphitisation.

The use of alternative fuels in ships faces the dual challenge of emission regulations and cost of use. In this paper, the impact of biodiesel blends from cooking waste as a carbon-neutral fuel for inland waterway vessels was investigated. The software AVL FIRE was used to simulate the detailed chemical combustion process of a marine diesel engine running on D100 (pure diesel), B5 (5% biodiesel by volume), B10 (10% biodiesel by volume), and B15 (15% biodiesel by volume). The results showed that B5, B10, and B15 all provided a better air-fuel mixture and significantly reduced soot production. Based on the performance and emission values, B5, B10, and B15 cause relatively small differences in engine performance compared to diesel and are readily applicable in practice. Optimizing exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and varying injection timing can further optimize biodiesel fuel combustion while reducing NO_x and soot emissions. The results of this study are helpful for the application of waste cooking oil biodiesel fuel and reducing exhaust gas emissions from ships.

Black carbon (BC) emissions from shipboard diesel engines are the next potentially important issue of interest to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and are considered to have a significant impact on the climate environment and human health. However, theories and technologies regarding the mechanisms of black carbon formation, oxidizing and influencing factors, emission detection methods, and abatement techniques are still missing in science and engineering. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of relevant advances in international maritime regulations, the frontier theory on formation mechanisms, comprehensive physical and chemical properties, and the potential reduction measures and control measures of emissions. These results suggest that BC is produced in the combustion flame of fuel and is related to the nucleation as well as the formation of PAHs. It helps to understand the initial generation process of black carbon and reduce its emission by studying it in detail and revealing some key factors, including micromorphology, nanostructural features, surface functional groups, oxidizing activity, size distribution, and elemental composition. Further, an in-depth understanding of the complex characteristics of BC can also help to identify viable BC measurement techniques and instrumentation for marine engines, thereby enhancing emission regulation. Overall, extensive technology can reduce BC emissions from marine diesel engines by approximately 50%. The information contained in this report can be used as a significant reference to further explore the BC formation mechanism and develop exclusive BC emission control strategies.

For reducing soot and NOx emissions, an effective method is to apply split injection strategies. In this research, characteristics of split injection were investigated by applying the pilot-main injection strategy and main-post injection strategy. The injection mass of fuel with the two strategies was measured by an in-house fuel injection rate test system based on the Bosch method. The development of spray tip and tail penetrations, as well as the evolvement of the spray angle when applying these two injection strategies, were explored by employing the high speed shadowgraphy at various injection pressures and surrounding gas densities. The results indicate the tail penetration rate of spray has no relation to the fuel injection pressure. However, the increased injection pressure causes a faster penetration development in the spray tip position. It was also found that the spray tip penetration rate of the second spray is slightly slower than that of the first spray at the beginning stage of injection, but it was significantly larger than the first one at the later stage.

Two-stroke, low-speed diesel engines are widely used in large ships due to their good performance and fuel economy. However, there have been few studies of the effects of lubricating oils on the vibration of two-stroke, low-speed diesel engines. In this work, the effects of three different lubricating oils on the vibration characteristics of a low-speed engine are investigated, using the frequency domain, time-frequency domain, fast Fourier transform (FFT) and short-time Fourier transform (STFT) methods. The results show that non-invasive condition monitoring of the wear to a cylinder liner in a low-speed marine engine can be successfully achieved based on vibration signals. Both the FFT and STFT methods are capable of capturing information about combustion in the cylinder online in real time, and the STFT method also provides the ability to visualise the results with more comprehensive information. From the online condition monitoring of vibration signals, cylinder lubricants with medium viscosity and medium alkali content are found to have the best wear protection properties. This result is consistent with those of an elemental analysis of cylinder lubrication properties and an analysis of the data measured from a piston lifted from the cylinder after 300 h of engine operation.