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It can be said that the greatest engineering challenge of mobility it is not related to the energy shortage, but to its generation and sustainable use. In this context, the growing use of biofuels by high performance internal combustion engines represents a sustainable alternative from the economic, technological, social and environmental point of view. In some regions of the planet, the modern electric and hybrid vehicles may not be the most sustainable choice, since they face many obstacles regarding clean energy generation, reduced recharging station network, limited autonomy, expensive vehicle prices, and battery recycling. In Brazil since its launching in 2003, the fleet of Flex-Fuel vehicles moved by either ethanol or gasoline is ever increasing. It is worth mentioning that the biofuel has physical and chemical properties that could make its use more efficient than it is nowadays.

A CFD three-dimensional analysis of an internal combustion engine was carried out to evaluate the gasoline-ethanol E27 fuel spray and flow characteristics using variable valve timing (VVT) technology. In this study, the fuel injection has been made using port fuel injection (PFI) and the simulations modeled two conditions of valve timing: baseline and retarding the intake valve opening (IVO) 40°. The dynamic performance of this numerical model was validated comparing simulation results of cylinder pressure, mass burned fraction, cylinder temperature, and heat release with experimental data. The effects of in-cylinder fluid flow patterns, such as tumble and swirl, on combustion were numerically investigated for the two studied conditions and it was verified an extreme reduction of swirl when IVO is retarded, besides differences in tumble and cross-tumble.

Gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines have very attractive potential for improving fuel economy and exhaust emissions, especially disadvantages of increased fuel consumption at part load. In this research, a study has been made on the investigations of stratified lean combustion in a wall-air guided type spark-ignition single cylinder optical research engine. Experiments were conducted at constant load (NIMEP 3 bar) using ethanol as fuel, for a wide range of injection, ignition and mixture formation parameters. Engine efficiency and combustion stability were evaluated at each excess air ratio. Optical visualization illustrated the spray behavior and flame propagation. Specific fuel consumption improvement was achieved with lean burn mixtures. Thus, combustion analysis data based on in-cylinder pressure measurement provide useful data for ethanol GDI engine development.

Direct inject engine provides increased possibilities to work with injection strategies in order to achieve better efficiency. Some ethanol properties such as the higher octane number, the latent heat of vaporization as well as the faster laminar speed made ethanol one of the most promising biofuels. These properties help to achieve knock suppression in a SI engine and therefore allow the use of higher volumetric compression ratio, which is one of the key factors in efficiency improvement. Several studies have showed ethanol as a way to reduce soot formation in direct injection engines as the oxygen molecule reduces the locally fuel-rich region. The use of ethanol contributes significantly to the reduction of total hydrocarbon (THC) and carbon monoxide (CO).