On-board diagnosis of engine and transmission systems has been mandated by government regulation for light and medium vehicles since the 1996 model year. The regulations specify many of the detailed features that on-board diagnostics must exhibit. In addition, the penalties for not meeting the requirements or providing in-field remedies can be very expensive. This course is designed to provide a fundamental understanding of how and why OBD systems function and the technical features that a diagnostic should have in order to ensure compliant and successful implementation.
This course is designed to provide an overview of the fundamental design objectives and the features needed to achieve those objectives for generic on-board diagnostics. The basic structure of an on-board diagnostic will be described along with the system definitions needed for successful implementation.
To mitigate the NOx emissions from diesel engines, the adoption of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) has gained widespread acceptance as a technology. Nonetheless, employing EGR has the drawback of elevating soot emissions. The use of hydrogen-enriched air with EGR in a diesel engine (dual-fuel operation), offers the potential to decrease in-cylinder soot formation while simultaneously reducing NOx emissions. The present study numerically investigates the effect of hydrogen energy share and engine load on the formation and emission of soot and NOx emission from hydrogen-diesel dual-fuel engine. The numerical investigation is performed using an n-heptane/H2 reduced reaction mechanism with a two-step soot model in ANSYS FORTE. To enhance the accuracy of predicting dual-fuel combustion in a hydrogen-diesel dual-fuel engine, a reduced n-heptane reaction mechanism is integrated with a hydrogen reaction mechanism using CHEMKIN.
To satisfy recent stringent exhaust gas regulations, large amounts of Rh and Pd have been often employed in three-way catalysts (TWCs) as main active components. However, application of Pt-based TWCs are limited due to their lower thermal stability than Pd. Previously, we found that Pt-based TWCs with a small amount of CeO2 showed high catalytic performance in gasoline vehicles test. Especially, calcined CeO2 at high temperature before Pt loading (cal-CeO2) showed higher catalytic activity than untreated CeO2 after endurance at 1000 degree centigrade. This result could be attributed to higher redox performance and Pt dispersion derived from strong interaction between Ce and Pt. Even though cal-CeO2 has low specific surface area (SSA) given by preliminary calcination, it shows strong effects on catalytic performance. In other word, improvement of its SSA could be the most powerful way to prepare highly active Pt catalysts.
Engine knock is a major barrier to achieving higher engine efficiency by increasing the compression ratio of the engine. It is an abnormal event caused by the autoignition of air-fuel mixture ahead of the propagating flame front. A higher octane number fuel can be a good solution to reduce or eliminate the higher knock intensity and obtain better engine performance. Methanol is a promising alternative fuel, which has a higher octane number and can be produced from conventional and non-conventional energy resources to reduce pollutant emissions. This study compares the combustion characteristics of gasoline and methanol fuels in an optical spark-ignition engine using multiple spark plugs. The experiment was performed on a single-cylinder four-stroke optical engine. A customized metal liner equipped with four circumferential spark plugs was used to generate multiple flame kernels inside the combustion chamber.
A potential route to reduce CO2 emissions from heavy-duty trucks is to combine low-carbon fuels and vehicle electrification/hybridization. Hybridization offers the potential to downsize the engine. Although engine downsizing in the light-duty sector can offer significant fuel economy savings mainly due to increased part-load efficiency, its benefits and downsides in heavy-duty engines are less clear. As there has been limited published research in this area to date, there is a lack of a standardized engine downsizing procedure. This paper aims to use an experimentally validated one-dimensional phenomenological combustion model in a commercial engine simulation software GT-Power alongside turbocharger scaling methods to develop downsized engines from a baseline 6-cylinder (2.2 L/cyl, 26 kW/L) pilot-ignition, direct-injection natural gas engine.
In the perspective of a reduction of emissions and a rapid decarbonization, especially for compression ignition engines, hydrogen plays a decisive role. The dual fuel technology is perfectly suited to the use of hydrogen, a fuel characterized by great energy potential. In fact, replacing, at the same energy content, the fossil fuel with a totally carbon free one, a significant reduction of the greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and total hydrocarbon, as well as of the particulate matter can be obtained. The dual fuel with indirect injection of gaseous fuel in the intake manifold, involves the problem of hydrogen autoignition. In order to avoid this difficulty, the optimal conditions for the injection of the incoming mixture into the cylinder were experimentally investigated. All combustion processes have been carried out on a research engine with optical access. The engine speed has been set at 1500 rpm, while the EGR valve has been deactivated.
The gasoline particulate filter (GPF) represents a practical solution for particulate emissions control in light-duty gasoline-fueled vehicles. It is also seen as an essential technology in North America to meet the upcoming US EPA tailpipe emission regulation, as proposed in the “Multi-pollutant Rule for Model Year 2027”. The goal of this study was to introduce advanced, uncoated GPF products and measure their particulate mass (PM) reduction performance within the existing US EPA FTP vehicle testing procedures, as detailed in Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) part 1066. Various state-of-the-art GPF products were characterized for their microstructure properties and lab-bench performance for pressure drop and filtration efficiency, were then subjected to an EPA-recommended 2000mile on-road break-in, and finally were tested on an AWD vehicle chassis-dyno emissions test cell at both 25C and -7C ambient conditions.
The impending emission regulations in both China (CN7) and the United States (Tier 4) are set to impose more stringent emission limits on hydrocarbons (HC), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and particulate matter (PM). CN7 places particular emphasis on reducing particulate number (PN) thresholds, while the forthcoming United States Tier 4 legislation is primarily concerned with reducing the allowable particulate matter (PM) to an assumed limit of 0.5 mg/mile. Given the more stringent constraints on both PN and PM emissions, the development of enhanced aftertreatment solutions becomes imperative to comply with these new regulatory demands. Coated Gasoline Particulate Filters (cGPF) play a pivotal role as essential components for effective PN and PM abatement.