Performance Improvement of a HFO Fuelled Medium-Speed Diesel Engine

This paper presents the endeavor to use Heavy Fuel Oil on a medium-speed diesel engine. The researched engine is a locomotive diesel engine, which used to be only fuelled with light diesel fuel. Since the fuel injection system of the original engine is unfit for HFO, the authors reformed the fuel injection system to meet the requirements of using HFO. In order to decrease the viscosity of the fuel, light diesel fuel was blended with HFO and heating apparatus was applied. A serial of experiments were carried out to check the performance of the reformed engine. Meanwhile, 1-D engine working cycle simulation tool was employed to study the fuel economy and combustion performance of the engine. The results indicate that compared with using light diesel fuel, when using HFO, the engine’s power performance was maintained, and the brake specific fuel consumption was increased. But considering lower price of heavy fuel oil, the fuel economy was greatly improved.