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A new 2.0 ℓ DOHC 4-valve direct injection (DI) gasoline engine has been developed which features new technologies such as swirl intake ports to produce an optimum swirl in the cylinder by variable controlled swirl control valve, pistons with a concave combustion chamber, and high pressure fuel injection system to provide a fine fuel-air mixture cloud in the combustion chamber. These all help to control fuel-air mixture preparation and flame propagation under ultra lean, stratified combustion at partial loads. NOx emission is reduced by using an electrically controlled EGR system and an NOx storage-reduction catalyst. At higher loads, a homogeneous mixture is obtained with direct injection during the intake stroke. A seamless output torque transition between stratified charge and homogeneous charge condition is achieved by an electronic throttle control system.

Hydrogen can be produced from various renewable energy sources, therefore it is predicted that hydrogen could play a greater role in meeting society's energy needs in the mid- to long-term. Conventional hydrogen engines have some disadvantages: higher cooling loss results in low thermal efficiency and abnormal combustion (backfire, pre-ignition, higher burning velocity) limits high load operation. Direct injection is an effective solution to overcome these disadvantages, but combustion methods that enable both high efficiency and low NOx have yet to be studied in enough detail. In this research, high-efficiency and low-NOx hydrogen combustion was investigated using a prototype high-pressure hydrogen injector (maximum 30 MPa). Experiments were carried out with a 2.2-liter 4-cylinder diesel engine equipped with a centrally mounted hydrogen injector, a toroidal shape combustion chamber, and a spark plug in the glow plug position.