Search Results

Increasing emphasis on natural gas as a clean, economical, and abundant fuel, encourages the search for the optimum approach to management of fuel, air and combustion to achieve the best results in power, fuel economy and low exhaust emissions. Electronic injection of fuel directly into the throttle body, intake ports or directly into the cylinder offers important advantages over carburetion or mixing valves. This is particularly true in the case of installations in which the gas supply is available at several atmospheres pressure above maximum intake manifold pressure. The use of choked-flow pulse- width-modulated electronic injectors offers precision control over the engine operating range with a wide variety of options for both stoichiometric and lean bum applications. A complete system utilizing commercially available components together with the application, calibration and engine mapping techniques is described.

Additional data has been analyzed on the effect of engine size on thermal efficiency. The comparison has been expanded to show the trends separately for engines developed by several different manufacturers. The data confirm the conclusion that engines below 2.0 liters per cylinder seem to deteriorate in fuel economy faster than would have been predicted from the behavior of larger engines. It is postulated that such deterioration results from a combination of less than optimum fuel spray, wall wetting, and perhaps a greater heat transfer loss than was anticipated. The paper focuses on engines in the size range under two liters per cylinder and addresses some of the problems to be resolved. Means for generating and controlling fuel spray and injection rate shape are presented along with experimental data on fuel sprays and engine combustion.