Numerical model to study the combustion process and emissions in the Wärtsilä 6L 46 four-stroke marine engine

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is to develop a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis to study the combustion process in a four-stroke marine diesel engine, the Wärtsilä 6L 46. The motivation comes from the importance of emissions from marine engines in the global emissions, particularly for nitrogen oxides (NO_x) and sulfur oxides (SO_x). The pressure and temperature fields were obtained, as well as the exhaust gas composition. In order to validate this work, the numerical results were satisfactory compared with experimental ones, which indicates that this model is accurate enough to reproduce the fluid pattern inside the cylinder during the combustion process. Accordingly, the aim of future works is to use this numerical procedure to optimize the performance and reduce the emissions of the new marine engine designs.