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With Euro III emissions standards requiring a 50% reduction in current diesel car emissions from January 1st 2000, there is a need to improve fuel consumption and thus reduce exhaust emissions. One of the ways this is being addressed is by the introduction of lower viscosity crankcase oils and by the use of friction modifiers within these oils. The resulting reduced engine friction contributes to improved fuel economy and should also aid engine cold start ability. To investigate the cold start abilities of different crankcase oils, a matrix consisting of six different oil formulations was tested at -20°C, - 25°C and -30°C in a two litre four cylinder diesel engine. The tests were conducted using a dynamometer, with the engine being driven by the dynamometer at nominal cranking speed for 30 seconds and then increased to cold idle speed for a further 30 seconds.

Historically, fuel cost conscious customers have tended to purchase diesel passenger cars. However, with increasing competition from alternative fuels and lean burn and direct injection gasoline fuelled engines, diesel engined vehicles currently face tough challenges from the point of fuel economy and emissions. In gasoline engines, low viscosity friction modified oils have demonstrated their potential for reducing internal engine friction and thus improving fuel economy, without adversely effecting engine durability. These fuel economy improvements have led to the introduction of such a low viscosity friction modified 5W-30 oil as the initial and service fill for the majority of Ford products sold in Europe. The trend towards even lower viscosities continues. To assess the potential benefits and issues of moving to 5W-20 in diesel engines, a short pilot study has been conducted using a Ford 1.8l direct injection diesel engine.

An arrangement of port - injected, stratified-charge, 4 - valve SI engine is proposed, in which fuel is injected in a thin column from an injector which is angled so that the fuel is deflected by one of the inlet valves onto the combustion chamber surface, at a position close to the central spark plug. The injection takes place towards the end of the induction stroke, and the injector is mounted to the side of one of the intake ports. The second intake port is deactivated at part load to establish an axial swirling motion to stabilise the fuel evaporating from the warm combustion chamber surface. Testing has been performed on a single - cylinder research engine to assess the extent of the stratification by measuring pre - flame hydrocarbon concentrations at various positions around the combustion chamber.

In this paper, we present the results of a series of experiments to determine the exhaust particulate size distributions from a number of diesel, gasoline and compressed natural gas (CNG) fuelled vehicles. The results show that all three types of vehicle produce significant populations of particulates under certain operating conditions. Particulates produced by gasoline and CNG engines tend to be smaller than for diesel engines. At low loads, there is a significant particulate distribution for diesel engines but much lower particulate numbers for both gasoline and CNG vehicles. Under these conditions, the gasoline particulate distribution has little structure but the CNG distribution is clearly bimodal. At higher loads, the number of particulates produced by diesel vehicles increases by an order of magnitude from idle and both the CNG and gasoline distributions are comparable in peak height. The diesel vehicle produces a much larger particulate volume than gasoline or CNG.