A Review of Development of Natural Gas Engines

Abstract

Natural gas has been successfully applied to the operation of internal combustion engines (ICEs) in various applications including automotive vehicles and generator sets, and is becoming a promising alternative fuel in ICEs due to its advantages such as the excellent knock resistance, stable combustion process, and low pollutant emissions. The operation cost of vehicles using natural gas engines (NGEs) is remarkably reduced, as the price of natural gas is over 50% lower than that of gasoline or diesel fuel. This review describes three stages of the NGEs development followed by discussions of natural gas resources, mechanisms underlying structural design and combustion process of NGEs, as well as different technologies applied in NGEs. The scientific guidance for research and development of NGEs is also provided in this review.