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Diversifying energy resources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions are key priorities in the forthcoming years for the automotive industry. Currently, among the different solutions, sustainable biofuels are considered as one of the most attractive answer to these issues. This paper deals with the vehicle application of an innovative diesel fuel formulation using Ethanol to tackle these future challenges. The main goal is to better understand the impact of using biofuel blends on engine behavior, reliability and pollutants emissions. This alternative oxygenated fuel reduces dramatically particulate matter (PM) emissions; this paves the way to improve the NOx/PM/CO₂ trade-off. Another major interest is to avoid adding a particulate filter in the exhaust line and to avoid modifying powertrain and vehicle hardware and therefore to minimize the overall cost to fulfill upcoming emission regulations.

A methodology has been developed to determine, for every cycle on which significant knock is detected, the area in which self-ignition occurs. This methodology is based on the exploitation by a dedicated algorithm of a minimum of 4 simultaneous combustion chamber pressure measurements. The algorithm has been first tested on the results of engine knocking simulation, then applied with success on a single-cylinder engine equipped with classical pressure transducers and with an instrumented cylinder head gasket developed for this application. The results obtained with these two kinds of transducers on several engine configurations and tunings are similar. If the timing and intensity of knock events depend on all engine parameters, its location is especially sensitive to such design parameters as fluid motion into the combustion chamber and spark plug position.