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Pollutant emissions standards (such like EURO 6 in Europe) are increasingly severe and force a search of new in-cylinder strategies and/or aftertreatment devices / schemes at a reasonable cost. On a conventional Diesel engine an excess of air is usually used to allow very high combustion efficiencies and reasonable levels of soot which can then be after-treated in a diesel particulates filter (DPF). As a consequence, NOx emissions cannot be easily after-treated (lean NOx trap (LNT) and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) are quite expensive even if effective, solutions), as a result they are generally controlled by means of internal measures such as High Pressure (HP) or Low Pressure (LP) exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). In light of ever more stringent NOx emissions regulations, NOx aftertreatment devices seem to be becoming unavoidable.

This paper presents an experimental study of a water injection (WI) application where water fog is added in the intake of a common rail High-Speed Direct Injection (HSDI) automobile Diesel engine in order to reduce pollutant emissions Nitrogen Oxides and Particulate Matter (NOx and PM) for future emissions standards. Also studied are the physical parameters of the engine (in-cylinder pressure, air inlet temperature, air mass flow, specific fuel consumption etc). The results are compared with those obtained with low-pressure dry Exhaust Gas Recirculation (LP EGR) on the same engine. Tests performed with the water injection system show that a much better NOx / PM trade-off (reduced NOx emission levels at constant PM emission levels) is obtained than with EGR especially at points of high engine loads. In addition, tests are performed with EGR in parallel with water injection to investigate the reduction of NOx emissions while potentially reducing water consumption.

Diesel engines are being more commonly used for light automotive applications, due to their higher efficiency, despite the difficulty of depollution and extra associated costs. They require more accessories to function properly, such as turbocharging and post-treatment systems. The most important pollutants emitted from diesel engines are NOx and particles (in conventional engines), being difficult to reduce and control because reducing one increases the other. Low temperature combustion (LTC) diesel engines are able to reduce both pollutants, but increase emissions of CO and HC. Besides HCCI and EGR systems, one method that could achieve LTC conditions is by using multiple injections (pilot/main, split injection, etc.). However, understanding multiple diesel injection is no easy task, so far done by trial and error and complex 3D CFD models, or too simplified by 0D models. Therefore, a numerical 1D model is to be adapted to simulate multiple injection situations in a diesel engine.

Due to its harmful effect on both human health and environment, soot emission is considered as one of the most important diesel engine pollutants. In the last decades, the industrial engine manufacturers have been able to strongly reduce its engine-out value by many different techniques, in order to respect the stricter emission norms. Simulation modeling has played and continues to play a key role for this purpose in the engine control system development. In this context, this paper proposes a new soot emission model for a direct injection diesel engine. This soot model is based on a zero-dimensional semi-physical approach coupled with a crank-angle resolved combustion model and a thermodynamic calculation of the burned gas products temperature. Furthermore, a multi linear regression model has been used to estimate the soot emissions as function of significant physical combustion parameters.