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In order to improve the fuel economy for future high-efficiency spark ignition engines, the applications of advanced combustion strategies are considered to be beneficial with an overall lean and/or exhaust gas recirculation diluted cylinder charge. Stronger and more reliable ignition sources become more favorable under extreme lean/EGR conditions. Existing research indicates that the frequency of plasma restrikes increases with increased flow velocity and decreased discharge current level, and a higher discharge current can reduce the gap resistance and maintain the stretched plasma for a longer duration under flow conditions. An in-house developed current boost control system provides flexible control of the discharge current level and discharge duration. The current boost ignition system is based on a multi-coil system with a discharge current level of 180mA.

Oxygenated, low energy-density fuels have the potential to decouple the NOx-soot emissions trade-off in compression-ignition engines. Additionally, synthetic fuels can provide a pathway to reach carbon-neutral utilization of hydrocarbon-based fuels in IC engines. Oxymethylene Dimethyl Ether (OME) is one such synthetic, low energy-density fuel, derived from sustainable sources that in combination with conventional fossil fuels with higher energy content, has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions below the US and EU VI legislative limits, while maintaining ultra-low soot emissions. The objective of this work is to investigate and compare the performance, emissions and efficiency of a modern multi-cylinder diesel engine under conventional high temperature combustion (HTC) with two different fuels; 1) OME310 - a blend of 10% OME3 by volume, with conventional Ultra-Low Sulphur Diesel (ULSD), and 2) D100 - conventional ULSD in North America.

Performance of the ignition system becomes more important than ever, because of the extensively used EGR in modern spark-ignition engines. Future lean burn SI and SACI combustion modes demand even stronger ignition capability for robust ignition control. For spark-based ignition systems, extensive research has been carried out to investigate the discharge characteristics of the ignition process, including discharge current amplitude, discharge duration, spark energy, and plasma stretching. The correlation between the spark stretch and the discharge energy, as well as the impact of discharge current level on this correlation, are important with respect to both ignition performance, and ignition system design. In this paper, a constant volume combustion chamber is applied to study the impact of plasma stretch on the spark energy release process with cross-flow speed from 0 m/s up to 70 m/s.

With the increasing demand of emission reductions from the automotive industry, advanced after-treatment strategies have been investigated to overcome the challenges associated with meeting increasingly stringent emission regulations. Ongoing investigations on low temperature combustion (LTC) strategies are being researched to meet future emission regulations, however, the lowered exhaust temperature presents an even greater issue for exhaust after-treatment due to the change in combustion modes. Catalyst temperature is critical for the catalytic ability to maintain effective conversion efficiency of regulated emissions. The use of periodic flow reversal has shown benefits of maintaining catalyst temperature by alternating the exhaust flow direction through the catalytic converter, reducing the catalyst sensitivity to inlet gas temperature fluctuations.

DME has been considered an alternative fuel to diesel fuel with promising benefits because of its high reactivity and volatility. Research shows that an engine fueled with DME will produce zero smoke emissions. However, the storage and the handling of the fuel are underlying difficulties owing to its high vapour pressure (530 kPa @ 20 °C). In lieu, OME1 fuel, a derivate of DME, offers advantages exhibited with DME fuel, all the while being a liquid fuel for engine application. In this work, engine tests are performed to realize the combustion behaviour of DME and OME1 fuel on a single-cylinder research engine with a compression ratio of 9.2:1. The dilution ratio of the mixture is progressively increased in two manners, allowing more air in the cylinder and applying exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). The high reactivity of DME suits the capability to be used in compression ignition combustion whereas OME1 must be supplied with a supplemental spark to initiate the combustion.

Advanced ignition systems with enhanced discharge current have been extensively investigated in research, since they are highly regarded as having the potential to overcome challenges that arise when spark-ignition engines are running under lean or EGR diluted conditions. Local flow field is also of particular importance to improve the ignitability of the air-fuel mixture in SI engines as the spark plasma channel can be stretched by the flow across the spark gap, leading to longer plasma length, thus more thermal spark energy distributed to the air-fuel mixture in the vicinity of the spark plug. Research results have shown that a constantly high discharge current is effective to maintain a stable spark plasma channel with less restrikes and longer plasma holding period.

The control of combustion phasing in homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) combustion is investigated with neat n-butanol in this work. HCCI is a commonly researched combustion mode, owing to its improved thermal efficiency over conventional gasoline combustion, as well as its lower nitrogen oxide (NOx) and particulate matter emissions compared to those of diesel combustion. Despite these advantages, HCCI lacks successful widespread implementation with conventional fuels, primarily due to the lack of effective combustion phasing control. In this preliminary study, chemical kinetic simulations are conducted to study the auto-ignition characteristics of n-butanol under varied background pressures, temperatures, and dilution levels using established mechanisms in CHEMKIN software. Increasing the pressure or temperature lead to a shorter ignition delay, whereas increasing the dilution by the application of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) leads to a longer ignition delay.

This empirical work investigates the impacts of thermodynamic parameters, such as pressure and temperature, and fuel properties, such as fuel Cetane number and aromatic contents on ignition delay in diesel engines. Systematic tests are conducted on a single-cylinder research engine to evaluate the ignition delay changes due to the fuel property differences at low, medium and high engine loads under different EGR dilution ratios. The test fuels offer a range of Cetane numbers from 28 to 54.2 and aromatic contents volume ratios from 19.4% to 46.6%. The experimental results of ignition delays are used to derive an ignition delay model modified from Arrhenius’ expression. Following the same format of Arrhenius’ equation, the model incorporates the pressure and temperature effects, and further includes the impacts of intake oxygen concentration, fuel Cetane number and aromatic contents volume ratio on the ignition delay.

This paper examines the diesel-ethanol dual fuel combustion at medium engine loads on a single-cylinder research diesel engine with a compression ratio of 16.5:1. The effect of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and ethanol energy ratio was investigated for the dual fuel combustion to achieve simultaneously ultra-low NOx and soot emissions. A medium ethanol ratio of about 0.6 was found suitable to meet the requirements for mixing enhancement and ignition control, which resulted in the lowest NOx and soot emissions among the tested ethanol ratios. A double-pilot injection strategy was found competent to lower the pressure rise rate owing to the reduced fuel quantity in the close-to-TDC injection. The advancement of pilot injection timing tended to reduce the CO and THC emissions, which is deemed beneficial for high EGR operations. The reactivity mutual-modulation between the diesel pilot and the background ethanol mixture was identified.

Close-loop feedback combustion control is essential for improving the internal combustion engines to meet the rigorous fuel efficiency demands and emission legislations. A vital part is the combustion sensing technology that diagnoses in-cylinder combustion information promptly, such as using cylinder pressure sensor and ion current measurement. The promptness and fidelity of the diagnostic are particularly important to the potential success of using intra-cycle control for abnormal cycles such as super knocking and misfiring. Many research studies have demonstrated the use of ion-current sensing as feedback signal to control the spark ignition gasoline engines, with the spark gap shared for both ignition and ion-current detection. During the spark glow phase, the sparking current may affect the combustion ion current signal. Moreover, the electrode gap size is optimized for sparking rather than measurement of ion current.

In this work, a spatially distributed spark ignition strategy was employed to improve the ignition process of well-mixed ultra-lean dilute gasoline combustion in a high compression ratio (13.1:1) single cylinder engine at partial loads. The ignition energy was distributed in the perimeter of a 3-pole igniter. It was identified that on the basis of similar total spark energy, the 3-pole ignition mode can significantly shorten the early flame kernel development period and reduce the cyclic variation of combustion phasing, for the spark timing sweep tests at λ 1.5. The effect of ignition energy level on lean-burn operation was investigated at λ 1.6. Within a relatively low ignition energy range, i.e. below 46 mJ per pole, the increase in ignition energy via ether 1 pole or 3 pole can improve the controllability over combustion phasing and reduce the variability of lean burn combustion. Higher ignition energy was required in order to enable ultra-lean engine operation with λ above 1.6.

In order to meet the future carbon dioxide legislation, advanced clean combustion engines are tending to employ low temperature diluted combustion strategies along with intensified cylinder charge motion. The diluted mixtures are made by means of excess air admission or exhaust gas recirculation. A slower combustion speed during the early flame kernel development because of the suppressed mixture reactivity will reduce the reliability of the ignition process and the overall combustion stability. In an effort to address this issue, an ignition strategy using a multi-pole spark igniter is tested in this work. The igniter uses three electrically independent spark gaps to allow three spatially distributed spark discharges. The multi-pole spark strategy displayed more advanced combustion phasing and lower phasing variability compared to single spark discharges.

Future clean combustion engines tend to increase the cylinder charge to achieve better fuel economy and lower exhaust emissions. The increase of the cylinder charge is often associated with either excessive air admission or exhaust gas recirculation, which leads to unfavorable ignition conditions at the ignition point. Advanced ignition methods and systems have progressed rapidly in recent years in order to suffice the current and future engine development, and a simple increase of energy of the inductive ignition system does not often provide the desired results from a cost-benefit point of view. Proper design of the ignition system circuit is required to achieve certain spark performances.

The combustion of dual-fuel engines usually uses a pilot flame to burn out a background fuel inside a cylinder under high compression. The background fuel can be either a gaseous fuel or a volatile liquid fuel, commonly with low reactivity to prevent premature combustion and engine knocking; whereas the pilot flame is normally set off with the direct injection of a liquid fuel with adequate reactivity that is suitable for deterministic auto-ignition with a high compression ratio. In this work, directly injected butanol is used to generate the pilot flame, while intake port injected ethanol or butanol is employed as the background fuel. Compared with the conventional diesel-only combustion, dual-fuel operations not only broaden the fuel applicability, but also enhance the potential for clean combustion, in high efficiency engines. The amount of background fuel and the scheduling of pilot flame are investigated through extensive laboratory experiments.

This research work investigates the control strategies of fuel burn rate of neat n-butanol combustion to improve the engine load capability. Engine tests of homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) and partially premixed combustion (PPC) with neat n-butanol show promising NOx and smoke emissions; however, the rapid burn rate of n-butanol results in excessive pressure rise rates and limits the engine load capability. A multi-event combustion strategy is developed to modulate the fuel burn rate of the combustion cycle and thus to reduce the otherwise high pressure rise rates at higher engine load levels. In the multi-event combustion strategy, the first combustion event is produced near TDC by the compression ignition of the port injected butanol that resembles the HCCI combustion; the second combustion event occurs near 7~12 degrees after TDC, which is produced by butanol direct injection (DI) after the first HCCI-like combustion event.

In this study, impacts of neat n-butanol fuel injection parameters on direct injection (DI) compression ignition (CI) engine performance were investigated to gain knowledge for understanding the fuel injection strategies for n-butanol. The engine tests were conducted on a four-stroke single-cylinder DI CI engine with a compression ratio of 18.2:1. The effects of fuel injection pressure (40, 60 and 90 MPa) and injection timing in a single injection strategy were investigated. The results showed that an increase in injection pressure significantly reduced nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions which is the opposite trend seen in conventional diesel combustion. The parallel use of a higher injection pressure and retarded injection timing was a proposed method to reduce NOx and cylinder pressure rise rate simultaneously. NOx was further reduced by using exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) while keeping near zero soot emissions.

In this work, empirical investigations of the diesel-ethanol Premixed Pilot-Assisted Combustion (PPAC) are carried out on a high compression ratio (18.2:1) single-cylinder diesel engine. The tests focus on determining the minimum ethanol fraction for ultra-low NOx & soot emissions, effect of single-pilot vs. twin-pilot strategies on emissions and ignition controllability, reducing the EGR requirements, enabling clean combustion across the load range and achieving high efficiency full-load operation. The results show that both low NOx and almost zero soot emissions can be achieved but at the expense of higher unburned hydrocarbons. Compared to a single-pilot injection, a twin-pilot strategy reduces the soot emissions significantly and also lowers the NOx emissions, thereby reducing the requirements for EGR. The near-TDC pilot provides excellent control over the combustion phasing, further reducing the need of a higher EGR quantity for phasing control.

Advances in engine technology in recent years have led to significant reductions in the emission of pollutants and gains in efficiency. As a facet of investigations into clean, efficient combustion, the homogenous charge compression ignition (HCCI) mode of combustion can improve upon the thermal efficiency and nitrogen oxides emission of conventional spark ignition engines. With respect to conventional diesel engines, the low nitrogen oxides and particulate matter emissions reduce the requirements on the aftertreatment system to meet emission regulations. In this paper, n-butanol, an alcohol fuel with the potential to be derived from renewable sources, was used in a light-duty diesel research engine in the HCCI mode of combustion. Control of the combustion was implemented using the intake pressure and external exhaust gas recirculation. The moderate reactivity of butanol required the assistance of increased intake pressure for ignition at the lower engine load range.

The control of nitrogen oxide and smoke emissions in diesel engines has been one of the key researches in both the academia and industry. Nitrogen oxides can be effectively suppressed by the use of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). However, the introduction of inert exhaust gas into the engine intake is often associated with high smoke emissions. To overcome these issues there have been a number of proposed strategies, one of the more promising being the use of low temperature combustion enabled with heavy EGR. This has the potential to achieve simultaneously low emissions of nitrogen oxide and smoke. However, a quantitative way to identify the transition zone between high temperature combustion and low temperature combustion has still not been fully explored. The combustion becomes even more complicated when ethanol fuel is used as a partial substitution for diesel fuel.

Dual fuel applications of alcohol fuels such as ethanol or butanol through port injection with direct injection of diesel can be effective in reduction of NOx. However, these dual fuel applications are usually associated with an increase in the incomplete combustion products such as hydrocarbons (HC), carbon monoxide (CO), and hydrogen (H2) emissions. An analysis of these products of incomplete combustion and the resulting combustion efficiency penalty was made in the diesel ignited alcohol combustion modes. The effect of EGR application was evaluated using ethanol and butanol as the port injected fuel, with varying alcohol fractions at the mid-load condition (10 -12 bar IMEP). The impact of varying the engine load (5 bar to 19 bar IMEP) in the diesel ignited ethanol mode on the incomplete combustion products was also studied. Emission measurements were taken and the net fuel energy loss as a result of the incomplete combustion was estimated.