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Automotive industries have been a significant contributor to global warming over the last 30 years. Due to the excessive increase in environmental degradation, research has been conducted extensively in various fields to explore sustainable alternatives to IC engines. Therefore, heavy emphasis is being laid on Battery-run Electric Vehicles (BEVs) and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs). BEVs are facing their own set of challenges when it comes to production, recharge time, battery capacity and net carbon footprint, among other issues. However, FCEVs offer certain new opportunities for the automobile sector to foray into a sustainable space. This study aims to review the performance of fuel cell vehicles against the parameters of economic feasibility, technological feasibility, energy efficiency. Recent developments in fuel cell research have been discussed.

Globally, transportation is the second largest energy consuming sector after the industrial sector and is completely dependent on petroleum products and alternative technologies. So, fossil fuel consumption for energy requirement is a primary concern and can be addressed with the fuel consumption reduction technologies. Transportation sector is mainly using diesel engines because of production of high thermal efficiency and higher torque at lower RPM. Therefore, diesel consumption should be targeted for future energy security and this can be primarily controlled by the petroleum fuel substitution techniques for existing diesel engines. Some of the fuel, which includes biodiesel, alcohol-diesel emulsions and diesel water emulsions etc. Among which the diesel water emulsion (DWE) is found to be most suitable fuel due to reduction in particulate matter and NOx emission, besides that it also improves the brake thermal efficiency.

The behavior of flow over an automobile’s body has a large effect on vehicle performance, and automobile manufacturers pay close attention to the minimal of the details that affect the performance of the vehicle. An imbalance of downforce between the front and rear portion of the vehicle can lead to significant performance hindrances. Worldwide efforts have been made by leading automobile manufacturers to achieve maximum balanced downforce using aerodynamic elements of vehicle. One such element is the front splitter. This study aims to analyze the aerodynamic performance of automobile at various splitter overhang lengths using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). For the purpose of analysis, a three-dimensional (3D) CFD study was undertaken in ANSYS Fluent using the realizable k-ε turbulence model, based on the 3D compressible Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations.

Biodiesel (fatty acid methyl ester, or FAME) can be used as an alternative fuel for diesel engines which is produced by the chemical reaction of vegetable oil or animal fat with an alcohol such as ethanol or methanol in the presence of a catalyst. The growing interest in biodiesel is because of the similarity in its properties when compared with the diesel fuel as well as various benefits it provides such as lower soot emissions, less dependency on crude oil, etc. The optimization of experimental parameters, such as catalyst concentration, molar ratio of alcohol to oil, and reaction time, on the transesterification for the production of deodar methyl ester was performed in this article. Optimization of the transesterification process of deodar oil was achieved by a three-factorial central composite design (CCD) using response surface methodology (RSM) in 20 experimental runs. The RSM was performed to determine the optimum operating conditions and to optimize the biodiesel yield.

At present, vast numbers of problems are triggered due to growing global energy crisis and rising energy costs. Since, on-road vehicles constitute the majority share of transportation; any energy losses in them will have a direct effect on the overall global energy scenario. Most of the energy lost is dissipated from the exhaust, cooling, and lubrication systems, and, most importantly, in the braking system. About 6% of the total energy produced is lost with the airstream in form of heat energy when brakes are applied. Thus, various technological systems need to be developed to conserve energy by minimize energy losses while application of brakes. Regenerative Braking is one such system or an energy recovery mechanism causing the vehicle to decelerate by converting its kinetic energy into another form (usually electricity), which further can be used either immediately or stored until needed.

Worldwide, research is going on numerous types of engines that practice green and alternative energy such as natural gas engines, hydrogen engines, and electric engines. One of the possible alternatives is the air powered car. Air is abundantly available and can be effortlessly compressed to higher pressure at a very low cost. After the successful development of Compressed Air Engines, engineers shifted their focus in making this technology cost effective and feasible. This led to advancement in the field of pneumatics that is advanced Compressed Air Engine Kit (used for conversion of a small-two stroke SI engine to Compressed Air Engine) where its frugality and compatibility is kept at high priority. This research is in continuation with our previous project of development of an advanced Compressed Air Engine kit and optimisation of injection angle and injector nozzle area for maximum performance.

The automotive underbody diffuser is an expansion device which works by speeding up the air flowing underneath a vehicle. This reduces the pressure below the vehicle thereby increasing downforce. When designed properly, it can lead to a massive gain in downforce and even a reduction in drag. However, a majority of the research and development is restricted to motorsport teams and supercar manufacturers and is highly secretive. Most of the publicly available research has been done for very simple shapes (bluff bodies) to study the effects of ground clearance and rake angle. Very little research has been done for complex geometries with vanes, flaps and vortex generators. This paper aims to investigate the effects of the addition of vanes/strakes and flaps, their location as well as angle, on diffuser performance. Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations have been carried out using three dimensional, steady state RANS equations with the k-ε turbulence model on STAR CCM+ V9.06.

The energy crisis coupled with depleting fuel reserves and rising emission levels has encouraged research in the fields of performance enhancement, emission reduction technologies and engineering designs. The present paper aims primarily to offset the problem of high emissions and low efficiencies in low cost CI engines used as temporary power solutions on a large scale. The investigation relates to the low cost optimization of an intake runner having the ability to vary the swirl ratio within the runner. Test runs reveal that NOx and CO2 follow a relatively smaller gradient of rise and fall in their values depending on the configuration; whereas UHC and CO have a rapid changes in values with larger gradients. However, in a relative analysis, no configuration was able to simultaneously reduce all emission parameters and thus, there exists a necessity to find an optimized configuration as a negotiation between the improved and deteriorated parameters.

In the present experimental investigation, performance, emission and combustion characteristics of a single cylinder diesel engine using diesel-biodiesel blends and antioxidant containing biodiesel test fuels was carried out. The potential suitability of aromatic amine based antioxidants to enhance the oxidation stability of biodiesel on one hand and reduction of tail pipe oxides of nitrogen (NOx) on the other were evaluated. Tertiary Butyl Hydroquinone (TBHQ) was considered as the antioxidant and Calophyllum Inophyllum vegetable oil was taken as the feedstock for biodiesel production. The test fuel samples were neat diesel (D100), 10% and 20% blend of Calophyllum biodiesel with diesel (CB10 and CB20) and 1500 ppm of TBHQ in CB10 and CB20 (CBT10 and CBT20). The results indicated that neat biodiesel blended test fuels (CB10 and CB20) exhibited lower brake thermal efficiency compared to the diesel baseline by a margin of 3% to 10% at full load.

The functions of a piston ring are to seal off the combustion pressure, to distribute and control the oil, to transfer heat and to stabilize the piston. Most piston rings and metallic sealing rings for modern application where running conditions are severe, require some form of coating to minimise abrasion and corrosion. The piston ring coating improves the life of engine as well as fuel efficiency. In this study, physical vapour deposition (ion chrome plating) was investigated; plates with similar composition as the piston ring material were prepared by the casting process using induction arc furnace and sand mould. Wear test of the coating was conducted on pin on disc machine under dry conditions. The wear rate was calculated using mass loss methods on an electronic balance having least count of 1× 10−4 g.

The Aerofoil theory along with its design has integrated itself into the vast areas of applications ranging from Automobile, Aeronautical, Wind Turbine, Micro-Vehicles, UAVs applications. In this paper, knowing the intricacy of the airfoil's applications, A MATLAB Code for NACA-2415 Airfoil is developed and a Model with dimensions c=180mm, w=126mm, tmax=27mm is generated. The model is then subjected to Flow Simulation with various input parameters: Reynolds Numbers taken are- (REN-1) 105 and (REN-2) 2×105 [Laminar External Flow], Angles of attack taken are-0°, 4°, 8°, 12°. The pressure and velocity distribution along the airfoil sketch curve are graphed qualitatively, emphasizing on the flow separation leading to the transition from laminar to turbulent flow. The various aerodynamics characteristic curves for coefficient of pressure, coefficient of lift and coefficient of drag are plotted against different angle of attacks for REN-1 and REN-2.

Friction stir processing (FSP) is a method of changing the properties of metal through intense, localized plastic deformation. This deformation is produced by forcibly inserting a non-consumable tool into a workpiece, and revolving the tool in a stirring motion as it is pushed laterally through the workpiece. It comprises of a rotating tool with pin and shoulder which are inserted into a single piece of material and traversed along the desired path to cover the region of interest. Friction between the shoulder and work piece results in localized heating which raises the temperature of the material to the range where it is plastically deformed. During this process, severe plastic deformation occurs and due to thermal exposure of material, it results in a significant evolution in the local microstructure. Carbon nanotubes were dispersed into Al matrix by multipass FSP to fabricate Al6082 T0/Fe-MWCNT.

Lead (Pb) bronze material is used for the manufacturing of bearings. Lead provides less friction and wear-related properties to bronze. During working of the bearings the lead contained micro-chips mixes with the lubricant oil and makes its disposal difficult. Rotational speed and applied load are the two main parameters on which the working and amount of wear from the bearing depend. So it is important to find out an optimum set of speed and pressure on which a particular bearing should operate to minimize the wear and hence minimize the lead-contaminated lubricating oil. In the present work, Taguchi technique has been used to find out the optimum values of speed and pressure. To measure the specific wear rate (SWR) and coefficient of friction (COF) of the leaded bronze material, it is made to slide on a mild steel material and amount of wear and coefficient of friction has been recorded using a pin on disc machine using ASTM-G99 standards.

Biodiesel is a potential substitute for diesel and extensive research is carried in India on production and utilization of biodiesel from a variety of edible/non-edible, animal fat and waste oils. However, issues like stability, clogging, increased NOx, and high consumption rate etc. are some of the critical issues which are associated with long-term use of these alternative fuels in a diesel engine. The recent developments in science and technology may have concreted a method to create nano measure vigorous resources that have incredible benefits to micron sized constituents. Nano liquids may be a fresh period of compact-fluid complex constituents comprising of nano sized concrete elements disseminated into a base liquid. The present study investigates the effect of doping metal oxides nanoparticles with waste fish oil-based biodiesel. For the present study, the blends of fuel are prepared by using 30ppm each of titanium dioxide and alumina nanoparticles respectively.

Gasoline has been the major fuel in transportation, its good calorific value and high volatility have made it suitable for use in different injection methods. The drastic increase in use of carbon based fuels has led to increase in harmful emissions, thus resulting in implementation of stricter emissions norms. These harmful emissions include carbon monoxide and NOx. To meet the new norms and reduce the harmful emissions, better techniques have to be implemented to achieve better combustion of gasoline and reduce the amount of carbon monoxide in the exhaust. One such way of doing this is by enriching gasoline with hydrogen. Due to its low activation energy and high calorific value, the high energy released from hydrogen can be used to achieve complete combustion of gasoline fuel. However, there are certain drawbacks to the use of hydrogen in spark ignition engine, knocking and overheating of engine parts being the major problems.

The world today is majorly dependent upon fossil fuels for power generation, of which diesel forms an integral part. Diesel engines, having the highest thermal efficiency of any regular internal or external combustion engine, are widely used in almost all walks of life and cannot be dispensed with in the near future. However, the limited availability of diesel and the adverse effects of diesel engine emissions like nitrogen oxide (NOx) and soot particles raise serious concerns. Hence, their performance and emission improvement continues to be an avenue of great research activity. In this research work, the effects of blending Diethyl Ether with diesel in various proportions (5%, 10%, 15% and 20% by volume) were evaluated on engine performance and emissions of an industrial internal combustion engine.

Enhancement of combustion behavior of conventional liquid fuel using nanoscale materials of different properties is an imaginative and futuristic topic. This experiment is aimed to evaluate the performance and emission characteristics of a diesel engine when lade with nanoparticles of Cu-Zn alloy. The previous work reported the effect of metal/metal oxide or heterogeneous mixture of two or more particles; less work had been taken to analyze the homogeneous mixture of metals. This paper includes fuel properties such as density, kinematic viscosity, calorific value and performance measures like brake thermal efficiency (BTE), brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) and emission analysis of NOX, CO, CO2, HC. For the same solid concentration, nano-fuel is compared with base fuel at different engine loads; and its effect when lade at different concentrations.

Internal combustion engines are the backbone of contemporary global transportation. But the major drawbacks associated with them, are the exhaust gases. These include carbon monoxide (CO), unburned hydrocarbons (UBHC), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), odor, particulate matter (PM) etc. Among them the emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and the particulate matter are the reasons of serious concern. For NOx reduction in recent developing technologies, diesel water emulsion was found the best approach for the existing engines by researchers. In the present study, performance and emission statistics of a diesel engine using diesel water emulsion operating at different compression ratios from 17:1 to 18:1 was performed. Stable Emulsions were prepared with 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% and 25 % (v/v) water concentration with variable agitation speed ranging from 5000-15000 rpm along with two surfactants. Various physico-chemical properties of emulsions were tested for all six samples including diesel.

The power generation, agriculture, and transportation sectors are dominated by diesel engines due to better thermal efficiency and durability. Diesel engines are also a major contributor to the air pollutants such as NOx and particulate matter. Acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) is considered a promising alternative fuel as it emits less pollutants compared to conventional fuels. In current work, the ABE used was of the ratio (3:6:1) and four samples were prepared for engine trial ABE (10%90%diesel), ABE (20%80%diesel), ABE (30%70%diesel) and ABE (40%60%diesel). Their physio-chemical properties like kinematic viscosity, density, specific gravity and calorific value were checked and tested on compression ignition engine at different operating parameters. The experimental work was conducted upon Kirloskar 4-stroke single cylinder, vertical, air-cooled 661cc compression ignition engine at different speeds and loads.

Dependency and increase in use of fossil fuels is leading to its depletion and raises serious environmental concerns. There are international obligations to reduce emissions and requirements to strengthen security of fuel supply which is pressuring the automobile industry to use cleaner and more sustainable fuels. Hydrogen fits these criteria as it is not just an abundant alternative but also a clean propellant and Hydrogen engines represent an economic alternative to fuel cells. In the present investigation, EGR has been used on hydrogen boosted SI engine running on gasoline-methanol and ethanol-gasoline blends to determine the additional advantages of the same compared to pure gasoline operation and gasoline-methanol and ethanol-gasoline blends without EGR.