To properly compare and contrast the environmental performance of one vehicle technology against another, it is necessary to consider their production, operation, and end-of-life fates. Since 1995, Argonne’s GREET® life cycle analysis model (Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies) has been annually updated to model and refine the latest developments in fuels and materials production, as well as vehicle operational and composition characteristics. Updated cradle-to-grave life cycle analysis results from the model’s latest release are described for a wide variety of fuel and powertrain options for U.S. light-duty and medium/heavy-duty vehicles. Light-duty vehicles include a passenger car, sports utility vehicle (SUV), and pick-up truck, while medium/heavy-duty vehicles include a Class 6 pickup-and-delivery truck, Class 8 day-cab (regional) truck, and Class 8 sleeper-cab (long-haul) truck.
Amid rising demands for fuel efficiency and emissions reduction, enhancing the thermal efficiency of gasoline engines has become imperative, which requires higher efficiency combustion strategies and integrated optimized design to maximize the work output from fuel. In gasoline engines, both increasing the compression ratio and using lean burn mode improve the thermal efficiency effectively. Although there is limited scope for increasing the compression ratio due to the higher sensitivity to knocking, especially under stoichiometric conditions, reduced sensitivity could be got with leaner mixture fill into cylinder, which can further increase the specific heat ratio and thermal efficiency. However, realizing the efficiency benefits of lean burn in gasoline engines necessitates overcoming critical challenges like ensuring robust ignition process and accelerating burning rates to achieve short, stable combustion durations.
Due to increasingly strict emission regulations, the demand for internal combustion engine performance has enhanced. Combustion stability is one of the main research focuses due to its impacts on the emission level. Moreover, the combustion instability becomes more significant under the lean combustion concept, which is an essential direction of internal combustion engine development. The combustion instability is represented as the cycle-to-cycle variation. This paper presents a quasi-dimensional model system for solving the cycle-to-cycle variation in 0D/1D simulation. The modeling is based on the cause-and-effect chain of cycle-to-cycle variation of spark ignition engines, which is established through the flow field analysis of large eddy simulation results. In the model system, varying parameters are turbulent kinetic energy, the distribution of air-to-fuel equivalence ratio, and the in-cylinder velocity field.
An experimental study of the spark ignition process for SI engines was conducted to study spark plug erosion and its effect on breakdown voltage and electrode wear characteristics. The experiments were conducted outside of an engine, in both a pressurized constant volume optical chamber and in a high-pressure vessel heated within a furnace with gas temperatures as high as 700C. J-gap spark plugs designed for natural gas engines were studied at elevated temperature and under a range of pressures to investigate electrode wear characteristics. Both iridium-alloy and platinum-alloy electrode cathode and anode spark plugs were investigated. In addition, single spark events were performed on polished platinum cathode surfaces to allow the visualization of craters from individual spark events in order to quantify how their size and shape were affected by energy deposition and breakdown characteristics.
Ammonia (NH3), a zero-carbon fuel, has great potential for internal combustion engine development. However, its high ignition energy, low laminar burning velocity, a narrow range of flammability limits, and high latent heat of vaporization are not conducive for engine application. This paper numerically investigates the feasibility of utilizing ammonia in a heavy-duty diesel engine, specifically through the method of low-pressure direct injection (LP-DI) of hydrogen to ignite ammonia combustion. The study compares the engine's combustion and emission performance by optimizing four critical parameters: excess air ratio, hydrogen blending ratio, ignition timing, and hydrogen injection timing. The results reveal that excessively high hydrogen blending ratios lead to an advanced combustion phase, resulting in a reduction in indicated thermal efficiency.
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.
Net-Zero emission ambitions coupled with availability of oxygenated fuels like ethanol encouraged the Government towards commercial implementation of fuels like E20. In this background, a study was taken up to assess the impact of alcohol blended fuels on performance and emission characteristics of a BS-VI complaint motorbike. A single cylinder, 113-cc spark ignition, ECU based electronic fuel injection motorbike was used for conducting tests. Pure gasoline (E0), 10% ethanol-gasoline (E10), 20% ethanol-gasoline (E20) and 15% methanol-gasoline (M15) blends meeting respective IS standards were used as test fuels. The oxygen content of E10, E20 and M15 fuels were 3.7%, 7.4% and 8.35% by weight respectively. Experiments were conducted following worldwide motorcycle test cycle (WMTC) as per AIS 137 standard and also wide-open-throttle (WOT) test cycle, using chassis dynamometer.
Ammonia is one of the carbon-free alternatives considered for power generation and transportation sectors. But ammonia’s lower flame speed, higher ignition energy, and higher nitrogen oxides emissions are challenges in practical applications such as internal combustion engines. As a result, modifications in engine design and control and the use of a secondary fuel to initiate combustion such as natural gas are considered for ammonia-fueled engines. The higher-octane number of methane (the main component in natural gas) and ammonia allows for higher compression ratios, which in turn would increase the engine's thermal efficiency. One simple approach to initiate and control combustion for a high-octane fuel at higher compression ratios is to use a spark plug. This study experimentally investigated the operation of a heavy-duty compression ignition engine converted to spark ignition and ammonia-methane blends.
World is moving towards cleaner, greener and energy efficient fuels. The increase in fuel consumption in various industries, especially in road transport sector has created interest for the blending of biofuels in conventional fuel and renewable fuels. Among biofuels ethanol is one of them and preferable choice for blending in gasoline which is a fuel for spark ignition engines and flex fuel vehicles. As such ethanol/methanol cannot be used in compression-ignition diesel engines without engine modifications due to inherent low cetane number and lubricity of alcohols. Therefore, fuel consisting of certain concentrations of alcohols such as methanol / ethanol in diesel blends is being promoted. The lower alcohols (methanol/ethanol) are not miscible in diesel due to their polarity differences. An additive package is essential for the solubility and stability of alcohol (methanol/ethanol) in diesel phase or diesel blends.
The European Union aims to be climate neutral by 2050 and requires the transportation sector to reduce their emissions by 90%. The deployment of H2ICE to power vehicles is one of the solutions proposed. Indeed, H2ICEs in vehicles can reduce local pollution, reduce global emissions of CO2 and increase efficiency. Although H2ICEs could be rapidly introduced, investigations on hydrogen combustion in internal combustion engines are still required. This paper aims to experimentally compare a flat piston and a bowl piston in terms of performances and emissions. For the performances, experiments were performed with the help of a single cylinder Diesel engine which has been modified. In particular, a center direct injector dedicated to H2 injection and a side-mounted spark plug were installed, and the compression ratio was reduced to 12.7:1. For the emissions, several exhaust gas measurement systems were used to monitor NO, NO2, N2O and H2.
Turbulent jet ignition (TJI) combustion using pre-chamber ignition can accelerate the combustion speed in the cylinder and has garnered growing interest in recent years. However, it is complicated for the optimization of the pre-chamber structure and combustion system. This study investigated the effects of the pre-chamber structure and the intake ports on the combustion characteristics of a gasoline engine through CFD simulation. Spark ignition (SI) combustion simulation was also conducted for comparison. The results showed that the design of the pre-chamber that causes the jet flame colliding with walls severely worsen the combustion, increasing the knocking intendency, and decrease the thermal efficiency. Compared with SI combustion mode, the TJI combustion mode has the higher heat transfer loss and lower unburned loss. The well-optimized pre-chamber can accelerate the flame propagation with knock suppression.
Ultra-lean combustion of GDI engines could achieve a higher thermal efficiency and lower NOx emissions, but it also faces challenges such as ignition difficulties and a low-speed flame propagation. In this paper, the sparked-spray is proposed as a novel ignition method, which employs the spark to ignite the fuel spray by the cooperative timing control of in-cylinder fuel injection and spark ignition, and form a jet flame, and then the jet flame fronts propagate in the ultra-lean premixed mixture in the cylinder. This combustion mode is named Sparked-Spray Induced Combustion (SSIC) in this paper. Based on a 3-cylinder 1.0L GDI engine, a 3D simulation model is established in the CONVERGE to study the effects of ignition strategy, compression ratio, injection timing, equivalent ratio on SSIC with global equivalent ratio of 0.50.
The abatement of carbon dioxide and pollutants emissions on motorbike spark-ignition (SI) engines is a challenging task, considering the small size, the low-cost and the high power-to-weight ratio required by the market of such powertrain. In this context, the passive pre-chamber (PPC) technology is an attractive solution. The combustion duration can be reduced by igniting the air-fuel mixture inside a small volume connected to the cylinder, unfolding the way to high engine efficiencies without penalization of the peak performance. Moreover, no injectors are needed inside the PPC, guaranteeing a cheap and fast retrofitting of the existing fleet. In this work, a 3D computational fluid-dynamics (CFD) investigation is carried out over an experimental configuration of motorbike SI engine, operated at fixed operating conditions with both traditional and PPC configurations.
The decarbonisation trajectory and the potential of hydrogen as a zero-carbon substitute fuel have effectively tackled environmental and sustainable energy concerns. The potential of hydrogen as a substitute for fossil fuels in various internal combustion engines holds promise for enhancing efficiency and achieving zero carbon emissions. This study exhibits an experimental investigation of a highly boosted, downsized spark ignition (SI) engine modified to utilise hydrogen as fuel, replacing the conventional gasoline supply system. The modified engine incorporates both port fuel injection (PFI) and direct injection (DI) hydrogen supply lines, capable of injecting hydrogen at pressures of up to 40 bar in the DI system and 10 bar in the PFI system, to analyse the performance and the emissions. Altering the air-to-hydrogen ratio (lambda) at different speeds to reach the combustion and engine limits for classifying and optimising the operation regions.
With the aim of decarbonising the vehicles fleet, the use of hydrogen is promising solution. Hydrogen is an energy carrier, carbon-free, with high calorific value and with no CO2 and HC emissions burning in ICE. Hydrogen use in spark ignition engines has already been extensively investigated and optimised. On the other hand, its use in compression ignition engines has been little developed and, therefore, there is a lack of information regarding the combustion in ultra lean conditions, typical of diesel engines. Several applications employ dual fuel combustion for the easy management of the PFI injection system to be applied in addition to the DI Common Rail system. However, this mode suffers from several problems regarding the management of the maximum flow rate of hydrogen into the intake. In particular, to avoid throwing hydrogen into the exhaust, injection must be started after the valve crossing.
As peak values, spark-ignition engines now can achieve approximately 40% brake thermal efficiency and truck compression-ignition engines can approach 50%. Clearly, if one could recover some of the rejected heat for beneficial use then this is likely to become important as new means of mitigating fossil CO2 emissions are demanded. Previous studies by the authors have identified that the closed Joule cycle (or complications of it beginning to approximate the closed Ericsson cycle) could reasonably be developed to provide a practical means of recovering exhaust heat when applied to a large ship engine. Given the early indications that Joule-cycle based WHR could work in already-efficient marine applications, this paper investigates the practicality of this method of recovering exhaust heat in various other sectors in the future – principally heavy-duty road transport.
In recent months, the increasing debate within the European Union to review the ban on internal combustion engines has led to the pursuit of environmentally neutral solutions for ICEs, as an attempt to promote greater economic and social sustainability. Interest in internal combustion engines remains strong to uphold the principle of technological neutrality. In this perspective, the present paper proposes a numerical methodology for 3D-CFD in-cylinder simulations of hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines. The combustion modelling relies on G-equation formulation, along with Damköhler and Verhelst turbulent and laminar flame speeds, respectively. Numerical simulations are validated with in-cylinder pressure traces and images of chemiluminescent hydrogen flames captured through the piston of a single-cylinder optical spark-ignition engine.
Methanol is one of the most promising fuels for the decarbonization of the off-road and transportation sectors. Although methanol is typically seen as an alternative fuel for spark ignition engines, mixing-controlled compression ignition (MCCI) combustion is typically preferred in most off-road and medium-and heavy-duty applications due to its high reliability, durability and high-efficiency. In this paper, the potential of using ignition enhancers to enable methanol MCCI combustion was investigated. Methanol was blended with 2-ethylhexyl nitrate (EHN) and experiments were performed in a single-cylinder production-like diesel research engine, which has a displacement volume of 0.84 L and compression ratio of 16: 1. The effect of EHN has been evaluated with three different levels (3%vol, 5%vol, and 7%vol) under low- and part-load conditions. The injection timing has been swept to find the stable injection window for each EHN level and load.
The Argon Power Cycle (APC) is a novel closed-loop argon recirculating engine cycle. It provides a significant gain in indicated thermal efficiency of the reciprocating engine by breathing oxygen and argon rather than air. The use of argon, a monatomic gas, greatly increases the specific heat ratio of the working fluid, resulting in a significantly higher ideal Otto cycle efficiency. This technology delivers a substantial improvement in reciprocating engine performance, maximizing the energy conversion of fuel into useful work. Combined Heat and Power (CHP) operating under the APC represents a promising solution to realize a net-zero-carbon future, providing the thermal energy that hard-to-electrify manufacturing processes need while at the same time delivering clean, dispatchable, and efficient power.