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The price of fossil fuels and the increasing inexorable energy crisis have become vital issues for everyone. Tongji University EconoPower Racing Team was established to participate in the “Honda EconoPower Cup” annually. Every contestant in the competition must finish a certain distance in the fixed time, with the gasoline supplied by the committee. After that the committee will measure the fuel consumption of every team and calculate the distance per liter fuel (the farther the better) to determine the champion. In order to enhance the EP vehicle's achievement we've made some improvements, such as framework, body, engine's optimization and so on. In this passage we mainly state some details of our research approaches in framework, steering, transmission, shape and driving strategy. The main technologies were: friction reduction, lightweight, enhancement of power train efficiency, tire selection and driving strategy.

Combustion and emission characteristics of diesel and biodiesel blends (soybean methyl ester) were studied in a single-cylinder Direct Injection (DI) engine at different loads and a constant speed. The results show that NOx emission and fuel consumption are increased with increasing biodiesel percentage. Reduction of smoke opacity is significant at higher loads with a higher biodiesel ratio. Compared with the baseline diesel fuel, B20 (20% biodiesel) has a slight increase of NOx emission and similar fuel consumption. Smoke emission of B20 is close to that of diesel fuel. Results of combustion analysis indicate that start of combustion (SOC) for biodiesel blends is earlier than that for diesel. Higher biodiesel percentage results in earlier SOC. Earlier SOC for biodiesel blends is due to advanced injection timing from higher density and bulk modulus and lower ignition delay from higher cetane number.

In this paper, the characteristics of performance and emissions of diesel and biodiesel blends are studied in a four-cylinder DI engine employing common rail injection system. The results show that engine output power is further reduced and brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) increased with the increase of the blend concentration. B100 provides average reduction by 8.6% in power and increase by 11% in BSFC. With respect to the emissions, although NOx emissions were increased with increasing the blend concentration, the increase depends on the load. Filter smoke number is reduced with increasing the blend concentration. At the same time, NO, NO2 and other specific emissions are also investigated. In addition, difference of performance and emission between standard parameters of ECU and modified parameters of ECU is investigated for B10 and B20 based on same output power. The results show that NOx emission and FSN are still lower than baseline diesel.

In this paper, characteristics of gas emission and particle size distribution are investigated in a common rail diesel engine fueled with biodiesel blends. Gas emission and particle size distribution are measured by AVL FTIR - SESAM and SMPS respectively. The results show that although biodiesel blends would result in higher NOx emissions, characteristics of NOx emissions were also dependent on the engine load for waste cooking oil methyl ester. Higher blend concentration results in higher NO2 emission after two diesel oxidation catalyst s (DOC). A higher blend concentration leads to lower CO and SO2 emissions. No significant difference of Alkene emission is found among biodiesel blends. The particle size distributions of diesel exhaust aerosol consist of a nucleation mode (NM) with a peak below 50N• m and an accumulation mode with a peak above 50N • m. B100 will result in lower particulates with the absence of NM.

The active components, such as OH and their concentrations in the coflow, have a strong effect on the combustion process of diesel fuel spray flames in the Controllable Active Thermo-Atmosphere (CATA), which then will affect the soot incandescence of the spray flames. CO2 and H2O2, the additives which have contrary effect on the concentration of the active components, were mixed separately into the thermo-atmosphere before the jet spray were issued into the coflow, which changed the boundary condition around the central jet and influenced the combustion characteristics and soot incandescence. The combustion characteristics such as ignition delay and flame liftoff height of the central spray flames are measured and the linkage between these two parameters is investigated at different coflow temperatures.

By changing the top-land radial clearance, this paper presents the effect of the piston crevice on the transient HC emissions of the first firing cycle at cold start on an LPG SI Engine. A fast-response flame ionization detector (FFID) was employed to measure transient HC emissions of the first firing cycle. At the same time, the transient cylinder pressure and instantaneous crankshaft speed of the engine were measured and recorded. The results show that increasing 50% crevice volume leads to 25% increase of HC emissions in the lean region and 18% increase of HC emissions in the rich region, however, the 50% increase of crevice volume contributes to 32% decease of HC emissions in the stable combustion region. For LPG SI engine, the HC emissions of the first firing cycle during cold start are relatively low in a wide range of the excess air ratio.

A segment of steel tube with the inner diameter of 60 mm and length of 100 mm was fixed between the intake manifold and cylinder head in a direct injection natural aspirated diesel engine. The surface of the tube could be heated to be above 400 °C by the heater enwrapped outside within several minutes under the power less than 600 W. The tip of an injector traditionally used for in-cylinder diesel direct injection was extended to the axis of the tube. The diesel sprays could impinge onto the hot inner surface of the tube and atomize quickly if the temperature of the tube was high enough. Then the fuel-air mixture would be sucked into the cylinder, and HCCI combustion could be fulfilled. The vaporization ratio of the impinged diesel sprays was estimated by fuel consumption, intake air flux and excess air coefficient (λ) calculated from the volumetric concentration of O2, CO2 and CO emissions. The NOx emission was always very low.

A novel method is applied to analysis the autoignition phenomenon. Experiments on the study of autoignition characteristics of diesel fuel were carried out with a Controllable Active Thermo-Atmosphere Combustor. The results show that the method for autoignition studying of liquid fuel is of feasibility. Autoignition delay time and autoignition height from the nozzle increase with the coflow temperature decreasing and autoignition delay time changes sensitively under lower coflow temperature. Liftoff height of diesel spray flame decreases with the increasing of coflow temperature. Lower temperature causes higher variance of liftoff height. It might be speculated that there are two different mechanisms of flame stabilization that the lower lift-off heights flames are related to a balance between the flow velocity and flame speed while the higher lift-off heights flames are stabilized by the mixture autoignition.

The First Firing Cycle (FFC) is very important at cold-start. Misfiring of the first firing cycle can lead to significant HC emissions and affect the subsequent cycles. This paper presents an investigation of characteristics of transient NO emissions in a small LPG SI engine with electronic gaseous injection system. To determine the optimal excess air coefficient ( λ=[A/F]/[A/F]stoic) of the first firing cycle, the emission of instantaneous NO was proposed as a useful criterion to judge if the combustion is occurred or not. A fast response NO detector- Cambustion fNOx400, based on the chemiluminescence's (CLD) method, has been employed to measure continuous, transient emissions of NO during the first firing cycle in the exhaust port of the engine. At the same time, the transient cylinder pressure, instantaneous crankshaft speed of the engine and engine-out HC emissions were measured and recorded.

Based on a 125cm3 single cylinder SI engine, the designated idle speed was controlled by adjusting of cycle ignition advance angle. By analyzing the effects of different idle speed and throttle open position on three way catalyst (TWC) light-off time and conversion efficiency of HC and CO emissions, combined with the corresponding total HC and CO emissions level, the optimum idle speed and throttle open position at engine's warm-up phase were found by the matching optimum. The present method for engine control strategy is helpful to optimize the warm-up phase emission levels in SI engine with LPG fuel.