Evaluation of Emissions Characteristics of Marine Diesel Engine Intake of Exhaust Gas of Lean Burn Gas Engine

The need for reductions of nitrogen oxides (NO_x), sulfur oxides (SO_x), and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions has been acknowledged on the global level. However, it is difficult to meet the strengthened emissions regulations by using the conventional marine diesel engines. Therefore, lean burn gas engines have been recently attracting attention in the maritime industry. Because they use natural gas as fuel and can simultaneously reduce both NO_x and CO₂ emissions. On the other hand, since methane is the main component of natural gas, the slipped methane, which is the unburned methane emitted from the lean burn gas engines, might have a potential impact on global warming. The authors have proposed a combined exhaust gas recirculation (C-EGR) system to reduce the slipped methane from the gas engines and NO_x from marine diesel engines by providing the exhaust gas from lean burn gas engine to the intake manifold of the marine diesel engine using a blower. Since the exhaust gas from the gas engine includes slipped methane, this system could reduce both the NO_x from the marine diesel engine and the slipped methane from the lean burn gas engine simultaneously. This paper introduces the details of the proposed C-EGR system and presents the experimental results of emissions characteristics on the C-EGR system. As a result, it was confirmed that the C-EGR system attained more than 75% reduction of the slipped methane in the intake gas. Additionally, the NO_x emission from the diesel engine decreased with the effect of the exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) system.