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Air pollution from internal combustion engines poses a significant apprehension for both global warming and public health on a worldwide scale. The adoption of hybridization and electrification within the vehicular fleet can help to tackle these challenges. This study evaluates a waste heat recovery system for electric power generation, based on the Inverted Brayton Cycle (IBC) coupled with a high-performance gasoline engine. The Mercedes-Benz CLS 350 CGI engine platform was modelled in AVL Boost software and validated against the reference published experimental data. The engine model was then modified to incorporate the IBC to study the performance of the proposed hybrid propulsion system. The IBC power output was calculated at a wide range of engine speed and load, and results showed that up to 18 kW of extra power output can be generated by the IBC system.

Reducing exhaust emissions has been a major focus of research for a number of years since internal combustion engines (ICE) contribute to a large number of harmful particles entering the environment. As a way of reducing emissions and helping to tackle climate change, many countries are announcing that they will ban the sale of new ICE vehicles soon. Electrical vehicles (EVs) represent a popular alternative vehicle propulsion system. However, although they produce zero exhaust emissions, there is still concern regarding non-exhaust emission, such as brake dust, which can potentially cause harm to human health and the environment. Despite EVs primarily using regenerative braking, they still require friction brakes as a backup as and when required. Moreover, most EVs continue to use the traditional grey cast iron (GCI) brake rotor, which is heavy and prone to corrosion, potentially exacerbating brake wear emissions.

Electrification is one of the main solutions for the decarbonization of the transport system. It is employed widely by the automotive industry in light- and medium-duty vehicles and recently started to be considered in heavy-duty applications. However, powertrain electrification of heavy-duty vehicles, especially for Class 8 trucks, is very challenging. In this study, the battery-electric powertrain energy and technical performance of a DAF 44 tones truck are compared for two different electric drives. The case study truck is modeled in AVL CRUISE M software and the battery electric powertrain is evaluated for long haul driving cycle. The minimum number of battery packs is determined by defining the lowest energy consumption of the powertrain designed for the proposed drive cycle. Also, a transient analysis is accomplished to investigate the impact of various electric drives on energy consumption and performance of the proposed electric powertrain.

Small diesel engines are a common primer for micro and mini-grid systems, which can supply affordable electricity to rural and remote areas, especially in developing countries. These diesel generators have no exhaust after-treatment system thus exhaust emissions are high. This paper investigates the potential of introducing simulated synthetic gas (syngas) to diesel in a small diesel engine to explore the opportunities of widening fuel choices and reducing emissions using a 5.7kW single cylinder direct injection diesel generator engine. Three different simulated syngas blends (with varying hydrogen content) were prepared to represent the typical syngas compositions produced from downdraft gasification and were injected into the air inlet. In-cylinder pressure, ignition delay, premixed combustion, combustion stability, specific energy consumption (SEC), and gaseous and particle emissions were measured at various power settings and mixing ratios.

Non-exhaust and exhaust particles from traffic were evaluated to account for nearly equal proportions in traffic-related emissions. Among non-exhaust emissions, tyre wear has been a crucial contributor to Particulate matter (PM), with its mass contribution as high as 30% to non-exhaust emissions from traffic. As exhaust emissions control regulation becomes stricter, which leads to a substantial reduction in exhaust emissions from road traffic, currently relative contributions of non-exhaust particles generated from tyre wear to PM is becoming more important. Accordingly, possible regulatory requirement and effectively control strategy of tyre wear particles needs to be developed. This review paper covers the physical properties, chemical composition, emission rates, and mathematic model development of tyre wear particles.

A Gas to liquid (GTL) fuel was investigated for its combustion and emission performance in an IVECO EURO5 DI diesel engine with a DOC (Diesel Oxidation Catalyst) and DPF (Diesel Particle Filter) installed. The composition of the GTL fuel was analyzed by GC-MS (gas chromatography-mass spectrometry) and showed the carbon distribution of 8-20. Selected physical properties such as density and distillation were measured. The GTL fuel was blended with standard fossil diesel fuel by ratios of diesel/GTL: 100/0, 70/30, 50/50, 30/70 and 0/100. The engine was equipped with a pressure transducer and crank angle encoder in one of its cylinders. The properties of ignition delay and maximum in-cylinder pressure were studied as a function of fraction of the GTL fuel. Particle emissions were measured using DMS500 particle size instrument at both upstream (engine out) and downstream of the DPF (DPF out) for particle number concentrations and size distribution from 5 nm to 1000 nm.

Heat Release Rate (HRR) analysis is indispensable in engine research. The HRR of Internal Combustion Engines (ICEs) is most sensitive to gamma (γ). The proposed HRR models in literature were largely based on γ expressed as functions of temperature. However, γ is depended on temperature as well as the excess air ratio (λ). In this work, an improved HRR model based on γ(T, λ) was used to investigate the combustion behaviour of standard diesel, Gas-to-Liquid (GTL) diesel and Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) diesel in a 96 kW, multiple fuel injection, Euro V, Direct Injection (DI) engine. The improved HRR model (Leeds HRR model) was validated for the alternative fuels by comparing the fuel masses predicted by the model to the measured fuel masses. The fuel masses predicted by the Leeds HRR model were also compared to the predictions from four HRR models that were based on γ(T).

Due to the variability of real traffic conditions for vehicle testing, real-world vehicle performance estimation using simulation method become vital. Especially for heavy duty vehicles (e.g. 40 t trucks), which are used for international freight transport, real-world tests are difficult, complex and expensive. Vehicle simulations use mathematical methods or commercial software, which take given driving cycles as inputs. However, the road situations in real driving are different from the driving cycles, whose speed profiles are obtained under specific conditions. In this paper, a real-world vehicle performance estimation method using simulation was proposed, also it took traffic and real road situations into consideration, which made it possible to investigate the performance of vehicles operating on any roads and traffic conditions. The proposed approach is applicable to all kind of road vehicles, e.g. trucks, buses, etc. In the method, the real-road network includes road elevation.

Light-duty China-6, which is among the most stringent vehicle exhaust emission standards globally, mandates the monitoring and reporting of real driving emissions (RDE) from July, 2023. In the process of regulation promulgation and verification, more than 300 RDE tests have been performed on over 50 China-5 and China-6 certified models. This technical paper endeavors to summarize the experience of RDE practice in China, and discuss the impacts of some boundary conditions (including vehicle dynamic parameters, data processing methods, hybrid propulsion and testing altitude) on the result of RDE measurement. In general, gasoline passenger cars confront few challenges to meet the upcoming RDE NOx requirement, but some China-5 certified samples, even powered by naturally-aspirated engines may have PN issues. PN emissions from some GDI-hybrid powertrain systems also need further reduction to meet China-6 RDE requirements.

The drive characteristics and gaseous emissions of legislated Real Driving Emissions (RDE) test data from 8 different spark ignition vehicles were compared to data from corresponding Worldwide harmonized Light vehicles Test Cycle (WLTC) tests. The effect of the official RDE exclusion of cold start and idling on the RDE test, and the effect of the use of the moving averaging window (MAW) analysis technique, were simultaneously investigated. Specific attention was paid to differences in drive characteristics of the three different driving modes and the effect this had on the distance-based CO2, CO and NOx emission factors for each. The average velocity of the RDE tests was marginally greater than the WLTC tests, while the average acceleration was smaller. The CO2 emission appeared on average 4% lower under the RDE tests compared to the WLTC tests, while the CO was 60% lower. The NOx values were 34% lower under the RDE testing, and appeared to be linked to the average acceleration.

The emissions from vehicles in real world driving are of current concern, as they are often higher than on legislated test cycles and this may explain why air quality in cities has not improved in proportion to the reduction in automotive emissions. This has led to the Real Driving Emissions (RDE) legislation in Europe. RDE involves journeys of about 90km with roughly equal proportion of urban, rural and motorway driving. However, air quality exceedances occur in cities with urban congested traffic driving as the main source of the emissions that deteriorate the air quality. Thus, the emissions measured on RDE journeys may not be relevant to air quality in cities. A Temet FTIR and Horiba exhaust flow measurement system was used for the mass emissions measurements in a Euro 4 SI vehicle. A 5km urban journey on a very congested road was undertaken 29 times at various times so that different traffic congestion was encountered.

Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (HVO) diesel fuels have the potential to provide a reduced carbon footprint for diesel engines and reduce exhaust emissions. Therefore, it is a strong candidate for transport and diesel powered machines including electricity generators and other off-road machines. In this research, a waste cooking oil derived HVO diesel was investigated for its combustion and emission performance including ignition delays, size segregated particulate number emissions and gaseous emissions. The results were compared to the standard petroleum diesel. A EURO5 emission compliant three litre, direct injection, intercooled IVECO diesel engine equipped with EGR was used which has a maximum power output of 96kW. The engine was equipped with an integrated DOC and DPF aftertreatment system. Both the upstream and downstream of the aftertreatment emissions were measured. The tests were conducted at different RPM and loads at steady state conditions.

This paper investigates the optimization of the aerodynamic design of a police car, BMW 5-series which is popular police force across the UK. A Bezier curve fitting approach is proposed as a tool to improve the existing design of the warning light cluster in order to reduce drag. A formal optimization technique based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and moving least squares (MLS) is used to determine the control points for the approximated curve to cover the light-bar and streamline the shape of the roof. The results clearly show that improving the aerodynamic design of the roofs will offer an important opportunity for reducing the fuel consumption and emissions for police vehicles. The optimized police car has 30% less drag than the non-optimized counter-part.

Fluctuations in the operational output of spark ignition engines are observed from one engine cycle to the other, when an engine is run at technically identical operating condition. These fluctuations known as cycle-to-cycle variations, when high, adversely affect the performance of an engine. Reduction in cycle-to-cycle variation in engines has been noted by researchers as one of the methods of improving engine efficiency and operational stability. This study investigated the combustion performance characteristics of two fuels: E5 (95% gasoline and 5% ethanol) and ULG98 (unleaded gasoline) in a spark ignition engine, operating at varying inlet pressure conditions and ignition timing. A two-stroke, 80mm bore, spark ignition engine was operated at an engine speed of 750 rpm, inlet pressures of 1.6 and 2.0 bar and spark-timings ranging from 2 to 13 bTDC. A top cylinder head with a centralized spark plug was used in all the experiments.

To maximize CO2 reduction, refined straight used cooking oils were used as a fuel in Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs) in this research. The fuel is called C2G Ultra Biofuel (C2G: Convert to Green Ltd) and is a fully renewable fuel made as a diesel replacement from processed used cooking oil, used directly in diesel engines specifically modified for this purpose. This is part of a large demonstration project involving ten 44-tonne trucks using C2G Ultra Biofuel as a fuel to partially replace standard diesel fuels. A dual fuel tank containing both diesel and C2G Ultra Biofuel and an on-board fuel blending system-Bioltec system was installed on each vehicle, which is able to heat the C2G Ultra Biofuel and automatically determine the required blending ratio of diesel and C2G Ultra Biofuel according to fuel temperature and engine load. The engine was started with diesel and then switched to C2G Ultra Biofuel under appropriate conditions.

The tailpipe exhaust emissions were measured under real world urban driving conditions by using a EURO4 emissions compliant SI car equipped with an on-board heated FTIR for speciated gaseous emission measurements, a differential GPS for travel profiles, thermocouples for temperatures, and a MAX fuel meter for transient fuel consumption. Emissions species were measured at 0.5 Hz. The tests were designed to enable cold start to occur into congested traffic, typical of the situation of people living alongside congested roads into a large city. The cold start was monitored through temperature measurements of the TWC front and rear face temperatures and lubricating oil temperatures. The emissions are presented to the end of the cold start, defined when the downstream TWC face temperature is hotter than the front face which occurred at ∼350-400oC. Journeys at various times of the day were conducted to investigate traffic flow impacts on the cold start.

The tailpipe exhaust emissions were measured using a EURO4 emissions compliant SI car equipped with on-board measurement systems such as a FTIR system for gaseous emission, a differential GPS for velocity, altitude and position, thermal couples for temperatures, and a MAX fuel meter for transient fuel consumption. Various nitrogen species emissions (NO, NO2, NOx, NH3, HCN and N2O) were measured at 0.5 Hz. The tests were designed and employed using two real world driving cycles/routes representing a typical urban road network located in a densely populated area and main crowded road. Journeys at various times of the day were conducted to investigate traffic conditions impacts such as traffic and pedestrian lights, road congestion, grade and turning on emissions, engine thermal efficiency and fuel consumption. The time aligned vehicle moving parameters with Nitrogen pollutant emission data and fuel consumption enabled the micro-analysis of correlations between these parameters.

Direct use of straight vegetable oil based biofuels in diesel engines without trans-esterification can deliver more carbon reductions compared to its counterpart biodiesel. However, the use of high blends of straight vegetable oils especially used cooking oil based fuels in diesel engines needs to ensure compatible fuel economy with PD (Petroleum Diesel) and satisfactory operational performance. There are two ways to use high blends of SVO (Straight Vegetable Oil) in diesel engines: fixed blending ratio feeding to the engine and variable blending ratio feeding to the engine. This paper employed the latter using an on-board blending system-Bioltec system, which is capable of heating the vegetable oils and feeding the engine with neat PD or different blends of vegetable oils depending on engine load and temperature.

Replacing the conventional fossil fuel totally or partially with alcohols or ethers in spark-ignition (SI) engine is a promising way to reduce pollutant emissions. A large number of studies on alcohol-containing blends in SI engines could be found in the literature. Nonetheless, investigations of ether-containing blends are by far much less numerous, especially for modern boosted engines. Blending with ether compounds might change the burning rate at high pressure, which consequently changes the anti-knock properties of these fuels and leads to a deterioration in the vehicle drivability. This work reports experiments carried out in two one-cylinder engines: one is a naturally aspirated, variable compression ratio engine, and the other is a strongly charged optical engine. Three fuels with different RON and MON numbers were tested: Iso-octane, a blend Ethyl Tert Butyl Ether (ETBE) with a primary reference fuel, and a commercial gasoline fuel containing 5% by volume of ethanol (E05).

Aluminium alloys have been used extensively in the automotive industry to reduce the weight of a vehicle and improve fuel consumption which in turn leads to a reduction in engine emissions. The main aim of the current study is to replace the conventional cast iron rotor material with a lightweight alternative such as coated aluminium alloy. The main challenge has been to meet both the cost and functional demands of modern mass-produced automotive braking systems. A sensitivity analysis based on the Taguchi approach was carried out to investigate the effect of various parameters on the thermal performance of a typical candidate disc brake. Wrought aluminium disc brake rotors coated with alumina on the rubbing surfaces were determined to have the best potential for replacing the conventional cast iron rotor at reasonable cost. Optimisation of the structure was subsequently carried out using a genetic algorithm on the selected coated aluminium disc brake rotor.