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Ethanol direct injection (EDI) is a new technology to use ethanol fuel more efficiently in spark ignition engines. Fuel temperature is one of the key factors which determine the evaporation process of liquid fuel spray, and consequently influence the combustion and emission generation of the engine. To better understand the mixture formation process of the EDI spray and provide experimental data for engine modelling, experiments were conducted in a constant volume chamber in engine-like conditions. The high speed Shadowgraphy imaging technique was used to capture the ethanol spray behaviours. The experiments covered a wide range of fuel temperature, ranged from 275 K (non-evaporating) to 400 K (flash-boiling). Particularly the transition of the ethanol spray from normal-evaporating to flash-boiling was investigated.

Ethanol direct injection plus gasoline port injection (EDI+GPI) is a new technology to make the use of ethanol fuel more effective and efficient in spark ignition engines. It takes the advantages of ethanol fuel, such as its greater latent heat of vaporization than that of gasoline fuel, to enhance the charge cooling effect and consequently to increase the compression ratio and improve the engine thermal efficiency. Experimental investigation has shown improvement in the performance of a single cylinder spark ignition engine equipped with EDI+GPI. It was inferred that the charge cooling enhanced by EDI played an important role. To investigate it, a CFD model has been developed for the experimentally tested engine. The Eulerian-Lagrangian approach and Discrete Droplet Model were used to model the evolution of the fuel sprays. The model was verified by comparing the numerical and experimental results of cylinder pressure during the intake and compression strokes.

Since 1st September 2014 the Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department (HKEPD) has been utilising a Dual Remote Sensing technique to monitor the emissions from gasoline and liquified petroleum gas (LPG) vehicles for identifying high emitting vehicles running on road. Remote sensing measures and determines volume ratios of the emission gases of HC, CO and NO against CO2, which are used for determining if a vehicle is a high emitter. Characterisation of each emission gas is shown and its potential to identify a high emitter is established. The data covers a total of about 2,200,000 LPG vehicle emission measurements taken from 14 different remote sensing units. It was collected from 6th January 2012 to 20th April 2017 across a period before and after the launch of the Remote Sensing programme for evaluating the performance of the programme. The results show that the HKEPD Remote Sensing programme is very effective to detect high emitting vehicles and reduce on-road vehicle emissions.

Vehicle emissions and fuel consumption are significantly affected by driving behavior. Many studies of eco-driving technology such as eco-driving training, driving simulators and on-board eco-driving devices have reported potential reductions in emissions and fuel consumption. Use of on-board safety devices is mainly for safety, but also affects vehicle emissions and fuel consumption. In this study, an on-board safety device was installed to alert the driver and provide several types of warning to the driver (e.g. headway monitoring warning, lane collision warning, speed limit warning, etc.) to improve driving behavior. A portable emissions measurement system (PEMS) was used to measure vehicle exhaust concentrations, including hydrocarbons (HC), carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx). The driving parameters including vehicle speed, acceleration and position were also recorded.

The work reported in this paper contributes to understanding the effects of ethanol/gasoline ratio on mixture formation and cooling effect which are crucial in the development of EDI+GPI engine. The spray simulations were carried out using a commercial CFD code. The model was verified by comparing the numerical and experimental results of spray shapes in a constant volume chamber and cylinder pressure in an EDI+GPI research engine. The verified model was used to investigate the fuel vaporization and mixture formation of the EDI+GPI research engine. The effect of the ethanol/gasoline ratio on charge cooling has been studied. Compared with GPI only, EDI+GPI demonstrated stronger effect on charge cooling by decreased in-cylinder temperature. However, the cooling effect was limited by the low evaporation rate of the ethanol fuel due to its lower saturation vapour pressure than gasoline's in low temperature conditions.