A Novel Wankel Engine Featuring Jet Ignition and Port or Direct Injection for Faster and More Complete Combustion Especially Designed for Gaseous Fuels 2015-01-0007

Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles using a traditional ICE that has been modified to use hydrogen fuel are an important mid-term technology on the path to the hydrogen economy. Hydrogen-powered ICEs that can run on pure hydrogen or a blend of hydrogen and compressed natural gas (CNG) are a way of addressing the widespread lack of hydrogen fuelling infrastructure in the near term. Hydrogen-powered ICEs have operating advantages as all weather conditions performances, no warm-up, no cold-start issues and being more fuel efficient than conventional spark-ignition engines. The Wankel engine is one of the best ICE to be converted to run hydrogen. The paper presents some details of an initial investigation of the CAD and CAE modeling of a novel design where two jet ignition devices per rotor are replacing the traditional two spark plugs for a faster and more complete combustion. The CAE model (by using the GT-SUITE software [7]) is developed first to describe the wide open throttle operation of the baseline two rotor twin spark plugs per rotor, gasoline port fuel injected Mazda Renexis high power engine. The model is then converted to describe the operation of gasoline or hydrogen fuelled versions with two jet ignition devices replacing the spark plugs.