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Ignition, combustion and emissions characteristics of dual-component fuel spray were examined for ranges of injection timing and intake-air oxygen concentration. Fuels used were binary mixtures of gasoline-like component i-octane (cetane number 12, boiling point 372 K) and diesel fuel-like component n-tridecane (cetane number 88, boiling point 510 K). Mass fraction of i-octane was also changed as the experimental variable. The experimental study was carried out in a single cylinder compression ignition engine equipped with a common-rail injection system and an exhaust gas recirculation system. The results demonstrated that the increase of the i-octane mass fraction with optimizations of injection timing and intake oxygen concentration reduced pressure rise rate and soot and NOx emissions without deterioration of indicated thermal efficiency.

Selected as an alternative diesel fuel based on consideration regarding the relationship between the fuel molecular structure and exhaust emission and criteria as alternative fuels, Dimethylacetal (DMA) was evaluated in both a direct injection (DI) diesel and a Direct Fuel Injection Impingement Diffusion Combustion Diesel (OSKA-D) engines. Since DMA with a 1% commercial-type cetane improver has 53 for the cetane number, no ignition-assist divice such as a spark plug is needed, unlike methanol. According to the DI diesel engine test, the NOx emission for DMA was almost equal to that for hydrocarbon diesel fuel, but smoke for DMA was much lower than that for diesel fuel. The OSKA-D engine test showed that NOx emission for DMA was much lower than that for diesel fuel and smoke emission for DMA was zero under all engine conditions.

The mixture formation process plays an important role on combustion in the direct injection stratified charge engine. A new mixture formation technology named OSKA has been developed for direct injection stratified charge SI engines. The OSKA process has the potential to yield better fuel economy and cleaner emissions. However, the mixture formation process has not been clarified completely, and detailed studies of the mixture formation process with the OSKA technology are needed. As a fundamental study on the OSKA mixture formation, time and space resolved distribution is obtained on concentration and on pressure in the unsteady gas jet, which discharges with constant injection pressure into a quiescent atmosphere and impinges on a projection placed on a wall.

A direct injection stratified charge engine using New Mixture Formation Technology (OSKA) has been developed. Experiments on a single cylinder engine, with methanol and gasoline fuels showed the following results: 1) With methanol, the maximum IMEP was 1.3 MPa and the best indicated thermal efficiency was 46 %. 2) With gasoline, the maximum IMEP was 1.16 MPa and the best indicated thermal efficiency was 43 %. Analysis of the cylinder pressure diagram showed the following results: 1) High indicated thermal efficiency was observed by low time loss. 2) A relatively short combustion duration was observed even if the engine was operated with an overall lean fuel-air mixture in the part-load condition. This fact suggests that a stratified charge was attained. 3) From observation of the heat release rate,it will be predicted that combustion is characterized by flame propagation.

The mixture formation by fuel spray impingement (OSKA system) was applied to a small direct-injection diesel engine in order to reduce the wall quenching- induced emissions, i.e., the emissions of THC and soluble organic fractions (SOF). Experiments were carried out using a single-cylinder engine, fitted with various piston cavity geometries, ran under a wide range of compression ratios and fuel injection specifications. The piston cavity was designed as a centrally located reentrant type. The combination of the high squish flow and the weak penetration of the OSKA spray was very effective in reducing harmful emissions. A short ignition delay, under the retarded fuel injection timing, was obtained because of the high compression ratio. The OSKA DI diesel engine showed reduced NOx, smoke, and THC emissions without deterioration of the fuel consumption compared to modern DI diesel engines used in automotive applications.

Ethanol is a promising alternative to fossil fuels because it can be produced from biomass resources that are renewable. Due to the amount of production, however, the usage would be limited to blends with other conventional fuels. Ethanol-fuel blends are azeotropic and have unique vaporization characteristics different from blends composed of aliphatic hydrocarbons, so that the present study developed a numerical scheme which takes into account the vapor-liquid equilibrium of azeotrope in order to update the author's original version of the multi-component fuel CFD model and to evaluate the effect of mixing ethanol into gasoline on the evaporation process. The numerical simulation was implemented for evaporating sprays of ethanol-n-heptane blends, which are injected through a single hole nozzle. In addition to the vapor-liquid equilibrium, the effect of the latent heat of vaporization was investigated.

The new type of Diesel combustion engine has been developed. The new Idea Incorporates an impingement part in the central piston cavity. The fuel jet is injected against the impingement part, spreads and form fuel-air mixture. Single hole fuel injection nozzle is used and the relatively low opening pressure is needed. Intake air swirl is not needed. The re-entrant type combustion chamber is employed to get a relatively strong squish speed. Experimental with single cylinder 4 stroke prototype test engine showed that the brake mean effective pressure was 0.82 MPa and the maximum net specific fuel consumption was 220 g/kW.h. The NOx and smoke emissions was reduced compared with the conventional DI Diesel engine. The authors have developed a new type of Direct Injection Stratified Charge SI engine called “Direct Fuel Injection Impingement Diffusion Stratified Charge System” (hereafter called OSKA).

A new mixture formation and combustion process for reducing both emissions and fuel consumption has been developed, where the fuel impinges onto the impinging surface and spreads into the free space, named the OSKA process. A single cylinder engine particulate emission test was conducted with full flow dilution tunnel. The OSKA process shows lower TPM (total particulate matter) emission than the conventional DI diesel at the corresponding operating condition. ISF(insoluble fractions) and SOF(soluble organic fraction) are lower than DI diesel's. Correlation between SOF and THC of OSKA engine is, however different from that of conventional DI diesel. OSKA emits lower THC than conventional DI diesel does at the same SOF emission. This is because the wall quenching effect is smaller in OSKA than in conventional DI diesel. A NEW MIXTURE FORMATION and combustion technology, impinging diffusion one named OSKA, has been developed by the authors.

The OSKA-DH diesel engine employed a unique system (hereafter called OSKA system) which is composed of a single-hole fuel injector, an impinging disk and a re-entrant type combustion chamber. This study is concerned with the combustion observation of both OSKA-DH diesel engine and conventional DI diesel engine by the high-speed photography and video system. This video system enables us to take combustion photographs under the warm-up condition of the engine. From the observation of those photographs, the OSKA-DH engine shows the shorter ignition delay compared with a DI diesel engine and the combustion flame of OSKA-DH diesel engine are concentrated in the center of the combustion chamber and a relatively monotonous flame intensity are observed. THE AUTHORS HAVE DEVELOPED a new type of Direct Injection Stratified Charge Engine called “Direct Fuel Injection Impingement Diffusion Stratified Charge System” (hereafter called OSKA System).

A new lean combustion process for internal combustion engines has been developed. This newly devised combustion system, designated as “Active Thermo-Atmosphere Combustion” (ATAC), differs from conventional gasoline and diesel engine combustion processes. ATAC can be applied most easily to two-stroke cycle gasoline engines. Stable combustion can be achieved with lean mixtures at part-throttle operation. With ATAC the fuel consumption and exhaust emissions of two-stroke cycle spark-ignition engines are remarkably improved, and noise and vibration are reduced.

A new scavenging method for two-stroke cycle engines - Multi-Layer Stratified Scavenging (MULS) - has been developed. The MULS method is achieved by separating the mixture generated by the carburetor into a rich mixture and a lean mixture between the inlet manifold and the scavenging ports, and by finely controlling the scavenging flows. With the MULS method the thermal efficiency and HC emissions of two-stroke cycle gasoline engines are considerably improved without sacrificing the brake specific power output and mechanical simplicity.

The new idea incorporates an impinging part in the central piston cavity. A relatively low injection pressure, lower than that of a conventional IDI Diesel engine, and a single hole fuel nozzle are used. The fuel spray is injected against the impinging part, spreads and forms a fuel-air mixture. Since a comparatively rich fuel-air mixture always stays around the impinging part and ignition is accomplished near the center of the mixture, steady, instantaneous and high-speed combustion is possible. As the fuel-air mixture is formed mostly in the cavity, there is little fuel in the squish area. Therefore, it is possible to prevent end-gas knocking, and in spite of the use of spark ignition, to employ a higher compression ratio than that of the conventional premixed SI engine. Experiments with a single cylinder prototype (4-stroke cycle) engine with gasoline fuel showed that the maximum BMEP was 1.0 MPa and the maximum brake thermal efficiency was 37.7 % (217 g/kW.h).

A new type of internal combustion engine has been developed. The new idea incorporates an impinging part in the central piston cavity. The fuel spray is injected against the impinging area, spreads and forms a fuel mixture. Since a comparatively rich fuel mixture always stays around the impinging part and ignition is acomplished at the center of the rich fuel mixture, steady, instantaneous and high-speed combustion is possible. As the fuel mixture is always formed in the cavity, there is little fuel in the squish area. Therefore, it is possible to prevent end-gas knocking, and in spite of the use of spark ignition, to operate the engine at higher compression ratio than a conventional premixed SI engine. Experiments with methanol fuel showed that BMEP was 1.1MPa and the maximum brake thermal efficiency was 42%. The combustion noise was lower than that of diesel engine. Brief tests with gasoline showed a maximum brake thermal effiency of 36%.

Ethanol is a promising alternative to fossil fuels because it can be made from biomass resources that are renewable. In the most cases, however, ethanol is blended with conventional fuels because of the limited amount of production. Ethanol-fuel blends are typically azeotropic and have a unique characteristic in vapor pressure and phase equilibrium, which is different from that of blends composed of simple aliphatic hydrocarbons. The current studies by the authors have developed a numerical vaporization model for ethanol-gasoline blends, which takes into account vapor-liquid equilibrium of azeotrope and high latent heat of vaporization of ethanol, in order to update the authors' multicomponent fuel spray model and to investigate effects of blending ethanol on droplet vaporization processes. In this paper, the developed vaporization model was validated through a comparison with experimentally-observed vaporization rate for single droplets of ethanol-n-heptane blends.

Jatropha biofuel is promising renewal oil to produce biodiesel fuel through transesterification method which is shown in many papers. The ideal diesel alternative fuel obtained considering Jatropha as materials is Fatty Acid Methyl Ester (FAME). It is more desirable than the viewpoint of economical efficiency and CO2 control to operate a diesel engine with Jatropha crude (JC) oil. It is the purpose of this research to examine a possibility of using advantageous JC oil direct use as diesel engine fuel, in consideration of the sustainable production of the Jatropha biofuel in Mozambique. The adaptability to the diesel engine of diesel oil and the mixed fuel of JC was examined. Jatropha crude oil contains phorbol ester (PEs) which is a promoter of cancer. Measurement of the concentration of PEs in an exhaust gas was performed using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC).

Effects of chemical reaction characteristics of premixed fuel were experimentally studied in a dual fuel compression ignition engine using port injection (PI) of gasoline-like component and direct injection (DI) of diesel fuel. Octane number of port injection fuels, direct injection timing and injection amount ratio between PI and DI were swept to assess the interaction between chemical reaction and mixture distribution in a combustion chamber. Chemical kinetic study using multi-zone modeling was also performed in order to explain experimental results under quiescent condition.

A comparative study was performed by use of blends of Jatropha oil-diesel fuel and Jatropha oil-kerosene in order to investigate the feasibility of direct utilization of Jatropha oil in a DI diesel engine. Experimental results at low load demonstrated that mixing 60 vol.% of Jatropha oil into both diesel fuel and kerosene gave less impact on indicated thermal efficiency, whereas further increase of Jatropha oil deteriorated it. Jatropha oil-kerosene decreased particulate matter compared to Jatropha oil-diesel fuel, although particulate matter increased with the increase of Jatropha oil fraction. At partial load where double injection was applied, mixing 80 vol.% of Jatropha oil gave no significant impact on indicated thermal efficiency, exhaust gas emissions and particulate matter and no significant difference was observed between diesel fuel blends and kerosene blends.