Pollutant Emissions Assessment of a Marine Methanol Engine by Numerical Simulation

With growing global interest in decarbonizing the maritime sector, alternative fuels such as methanol represent the most promising pathways to meet the new emissions reduction. Consequently, there is an interest in developing new engine technologies and acquiring preliminary data to assess the environmental impact of methanol, in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and exhaust pollutants. In this context, the paper explores the pollutant emissions resulting from the operation of a single-fuel spark-ignition (SI) methanol engine through a predictive tool capable of assessing pollutant emissions in the entire operating domain of a marine engine. The overall performance of the engine is simulated by means of a 0D thermodynamic model developed in MATLAB Simulink environment, calibrated using combustion results carried out through detailed in-cylinder combustion CFD simulations by using ANSYS FORTE®. The engine tested is a 2.4 MW SI engine equipped with a pre-chamber. The simulator is able to provide the initial conditions for the CFD calculation to assess polluting emissions. Then, by developing a correlation for the NOx emission index, the simulator provides comprehensive insights on emissions for all engine working area, while maintaining low computational effort