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Research on alternative fuels is necessary to reduce CO2 emissions. Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) of light fuel physically improves spray and combustion characteristics. Fatty Acid Methyl Ester (FAME) is an oxygenated fuel and its combustion characteristics are chemically improved, although its spray characteristics such as penetration and atomization are deteriorated. The purpose of this study is to understand the effects of blending HVO, which has carbon neutral (CN) characteristics, with FAME, which also has CN characteristics, on spray and combustion characteristics, and to further improve emission such as THC and Smoke. This report presents the effect of the combination of improved spray characteristics and oxygenated fuel on emissions. Spray characteristics such as penetration, spray angle and spray volume were investigated by shadowgraph photography.

Fuel design concept has been proposed for low emission and combustion control in engine systems. In this concept, the multicomponent fuels, which are mixed with a high volatility fuel (gasoline or gaseous fuel components) and a low volatility fuel (gas oil or fuel oil components), are used for artificial control of fuel properties. In addition, these multicomponent fuels can easily lead to flash boiling which promote atomization and vaporization in the spray process. In order to understand atomization and vaporization process of multicomponent fuels in detail, the model for flash boiling spray of multicomponent fuel have been constructed and implemented into KIVA3V rel.2. This model considers the detailed physical properties and evaporation process of multicomponent fuel and the bubble nucleation, growth and disruption in a nozzle orifice and injected fuel droplets.

Bio-hydro fined diesel (BHD) oil is known as a second generation oil made from bio hydro finning process. Biodiesel in the first generation is made from transesterification process and it has several disadvantages such as high density and increased the viscosity that can cause operational problems because can make some deposits in the engine. To overcome this, the second generation process of biodiesel has been modified from the first generation oil. BHD is made from the waste cooking oil by using the hydro finning process without the trans-esterification process. The results of BHD oil has nearly the same with diesel oil. BHD oil has low viscosity and high oxidation stability. Therefore, BHD oil can be used in the diesel engine without making any modifications in the engine. In this study, the comparison of performance and emissions characteristics from BHD oil, waste cooking oil, and diesel oil are investigated.

Factors affecting the measurement of the fuel consumption of FCVs were analyzed to reveal their sensitivity. The method for measuring fuel consumption described in WLTP is to measure the hydrogen consumption by using an electric precision balance and off-vehicle tanks (not on-vehicle tanks). This is unique compared with conventional vehicles such as petrol-engine vehicles and pure-electric vehicles. Therefore, we examined the sensitivities of the effect of hydrogen consumption determination, the effect of hydrogen supply pipe design, and the effect of hydrogen supply pipe management. The experiments were conducted with two production models of FCVs having different FC management systems. The effects were quantitatively evaluated by comparing the fuel consumption rate driving in WLTC.

Next-generation vehicles which include Electric Vehicles (EV) and Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) are researched and expected to reduce CO2 emissions in the future. Generally, the main factor to support high efficiency of EV and HEV is the idle stop, motor assistance and regenerative braking. The vehicle mechanism of HEV is complex, compared with conventional internal combustion engine vehicle. Certification test method of gas emissions and fuel consumption is used driving mode, which is currently reflecting the typical driving conditions in the market. And driving mode of certification test is established focusing on the reproducibility of driving by conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. It is necessary to consider that the driving mode for the vehicle used regenerative energy is reflected correctly. And high accuracy certification test method for next generation HEVs is necessary in order to evaluate exhaust gas and fuel economy.

Ignition, combustion and emissions characteristics of dual-component fuel spray were examined for ranges of injection timing and intake-air oxygen concentration. Fuels used were binary mixtures of gasoline-like component i-octane (cetane number 12, boiling point 372 K) and diesel fuel-like component n-tridecane (cetane number 88, boiling point 510 K). Mass fraction of i-octane was also changed as the experimental variable. The experimental study was carried out in a single cylinder compression ignition engine equipped with a common-rail injection system and an exhaust gas recirculation system. The results demonstrated that the increase of the i-octane mass fraction with optimizations of injection timing and intake oxygen concentration reduced pressure rise rate and soot and NOx emissions without deterioration of indicated thermal efficiency.

At interurban transportation, improvement of fuel economy of hybrid electric heavy-duty diesel vehicles, which assist drive-axle by using regeneration energy, is minimum, compared to heavy-duty diesel vehicles. One of the factors is that hybrid electric heavy-duty vehicles are not able to balance regeneration energy (input) and power energy (output) at high speed driving. One reason is not opportunity to operate of braking at high speed driving for the heavy-duty vehicle. In this research, we focus on the method used for the battery energy, and propose a new concept of hybrid electric system to efficiently utilize battery energy. That system consists of electrical booster for supercharging intake air into engine cylinder. We have confirmed the feasibility of the electric system of a new HEV concept by using the simulation I created.

In this study, it is purpose to make clear the effect of cavitation phenomenon on the spray atomization. In this report, the cavitation phenomenon inside the nozzle hole was visualized and the pressure measurements along the wall of the nozzle hole were carried out by use of 25-times enlarged acrylic nozzle. For the representatives of regular gasoline, single and two-component fuels were used as a test fuel. In addition, various cavitating flow patterns same as experimental conditions were simulated by use of Barotropic model incorporated in commercial code of Star-CD scheme, and compared with experimental results.

Methyl butanoate (MB) and methyl decanoate (MD) are surrogates for biodiesel fuels. According to computational results with their detailed reaction mechanisms, MB and MD indicate shorter ignition delays than long alkanes such as n-heptane and n-dodecane do at an initial temperature over 1000 K. The high ignitability of these methyl esters was computationally analyzed by means of contribution matrices proposed by some of the authors. Due to the high acidity of an α-H atom in a carbonyl compound, hydroperoxy radicals are generated out of the equilibrium between forward and backward reactions of O₂ addition to methyl ester radicals by the internal transfer of an α-H atom in the initial stage of an ignition process. Some of the hydroperoxy methyl ester radicals can generate OH to activate initial reactions. MB has an efficient CH₃O formation path via CH₃ generated by the β-scission of an MB radical which has a radical site on the α-C atom to the carbonyl group.

A plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) is recently developed technology and it will be put in the market in the near future. In existing hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), it was possible to suppress the petroleum consumption by regenerating the kinetic energy of vehicles during deceleration into electrical energy. A PHEV can use petroleum fuel as with traditional vehicles including HEV, and in addition, use the electrical energy supplied from the commercial power for running energy. That is, the existing HEV technology suppresses petroleum energy consumption. In contrast, the PHEV technology alternates part of vehicle drive petroleum energy with electric energy. Commercial electric generation can use many kinds of energy source other than the fossil oil. PHEV is a promising technology to reduce the well to wheel CO2 emission and one of the solutions for energy security issue.

The objective of this study was to develop a test method for heavy-duty HEVs using a hardware-in-the-loop simulator (HILS) to enhance the type-approval-test method. To achieve our objective, HILS systems for series and parallel HEVs were actually constructed to verify calculation accuracy. Comparison of calculated and measured data (vehicle speed, motor/generator power, rechargeable energy storage system power/voltage/current/state of charge, and fuel economy) revealed them to be in good agreement. Calculation error for fuel economy was less than 2%.

The applicability of several popular diesel particulate matter (PM) measurement techniques to low temperature combustion is examined. The instruments' performance in measuring low levels of PM from advanced diesel combustion is evaluated. Preliminary emissions optimization of a high-speed light-duty diesel engine was performed for two conventional and two advanced low temperature combustion engine cases. A low PM (<0.2 g/kg_fuel) and NOx (<0.07 g/kg_fuel) advanced low temperature combustion (LTC) condition with high levels of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and early injection timing was chosen as a baseline. The three other cases were selected by varying engine load, injection timing, injection pressure, and EGR mass fraction. All engine conditions were run with ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel. An extensive characterization of PM from these engine operating conditions is presented.

Authors propose the reformulation technique of physical properties of Biodiesel Fuel (BDF) by mixing lower boiling point fuels. In this study, waste cooking oil methyl ester (B100), which have been produced in Kyoto city, is used in behalf of BDF. N-Heptane (C7H16) and n-Dodecane (C12H26) are used as low and medium boiling point fuel. Mixed fuel of BDF with lower boiling point fuels have lighter quality as compared with neat BDF. This result is based on the chemical-thermo dynamical liquid-vapor equilibrium theory. This paper describes fundamental spray and combustion characteristics of mixed fuel of B100 with lower boiling point fuels as well as the reformulation technique. By mixing lower boiling point fuel, lighter quality fuels can be refined. Thus, mixed fuels have higher volatility and lower viscosity. Therefore, vaporization of mixed fuel spray is promoted and liquid phase penetration of mixed fuel shortens as compared with that of neat BDF.

It is thought that the synthetic gas, including hydrogen and carbon monoxide, has a potential to be an alternative fuel for internal combustion engines, because a heating value of the synthetic gas is higher than one of hydrogen or natural gas. A purpose of this study is to acquire stable auto-ignition and combustion of the synthetic gas which is supposed to be applied into a direct-injection compression ignition engine. In this study, the effects of ambient gas temperatures and oxygen concentrations on auto-ignition characteristics of the synthetic gas with changing percentage of hydrogen (H2) or carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations in the synthetic gas. An electronically-controlled, hydraulically-actuated gas injector was used to control a precise injection timing and period of gaseous fuels, and the experiments were conducted in an optically accessible, constant-volume combustion chamber under simulated quiescent diesel engine conditions.

In the previous study design of two-component normal paraffin fuel was attempted considering the components and blending ratio. Only the thermodynamic analysis of combustion and analysis of emission characteristics were performed to evaluate the design performance. In this study mixture formation behavior and combustion phenomena of pure and mixed n-paraffin fuels were investigated by direct visualization in an AVL engine with bottom view piston. The experiments included laser-illuminated high-speed photography of the fuel injection phase and combustion phase to investigate physical differences. The results obtained for the proposed fuels are compared with the results of conventional diesel fuel. It was found that the two component normal paraffin fuels with similar thermo physical properties have very similar spray development pattern but evaporation rates are different.

This paper describes the results of on-board measurement of engine performance and emissions in diesel vehicle operated with bio-diesel fuels. Here, two waste-cooking oils were investigated. One fuel is a waste-cooking oil methyl esters. This fuel is actually applied to a garbage collection vehicle with DI diesel engine (B100) and the city bus (B20; 80% gas oil is mixed into B100 in volume) as an alternative fuel of gas oil in Kyoto City. Another one is a fuel with ozone treatment by removing impurities from raw waste-cooking oils. Here, in order to improve the fuel properties, kerosene is mixed 70% volume in this fuel. This mixed fuel (i-BDF) is applied into several tracks and buses in Wakayama City. Then, these 3 bio-diesel fuels were applied to the on-board experiments and the results were compared with gas oil operation case.

The Flame structure and combustion characteristics for two waste-cooking oils were investigated in detail. One fuel is the waste-cooking oil methyl esters. This fuel is actually applied to the garbage collection vehicle with DI diesel engine (B100) and the city bus (B20; 80% gas oil is mixed into B100 in volume) as an alternative fuel of gas oil in Kyoto City. Another one is the fuel with ozone treatment by removing impurities from raw waste-cooking oils. Here, in order to improve the fuel properties, kerosene is mixed 70% volume in this fuel. This mixed fuel (i-BDF) is applied into several tracks and buses in Wakayama City. In the experiments, the used fuels were gas oil, i-BDF, B100 and B20. Spray characteristics and basic combustion properties were measured inside a rapid compression and an expansion machine (RCEM).

Flash-boiling occurs when a fuel is injected to a combustion chamber where the ambient pressure is lower than the saturation pressure of the fuel. It has been known that flashing is a favorable mechanism for atomizing liquid fuels. On the other hand, alternative fuels, such as gaseous fuels and oxygenated fuels, are used to achieve low exhaust emissions in recent years. In general, most of these alternative fuels have high volatility and flash-boiling takes place easily in fuel spray, when they are injected into the combustion chamber of an internal combustion engine under high pressure. In addition, fuel design concept the multicomponent fuel with high and low volatility fuels has been proposed in the previous study in order to control the spray and combustion processes in internal combustion engine. It is found that the multicomponent fuel produce flash-boiling with an increase in the initial fuel temperature.

This work presents the ignition delay time characteristics of oxygenated fuel sprays under simulated diesel engine conditions. A constant volume combustion vessel is used for the experiments. The fuels used in the experiments were three oxygenated fuels: diethylene glycol dibutyl ether, diethylene glycol diethyl ether, and diethylene glycol dimethyl ether. JIS 2nd class gas oil was used as the reference fuel. The ambient gas temperature and oxygen concentration were ranging from 700 to 1100K and from 21 to 9%, respectively. The results show that the ignition delay of each oxygenated fuel tested in this experiments exhibits shorter than that of gas oil fuel for the wide range of ambient gas conditions. Also, NTC (negative temperature coefficient) behavior which appears under shock tube experiment for homogenous fuel-air mixture was observed on low ambient gas oxygen concentration for each fuel. And at the condition, the ignition behavior exhibits two-stage phase.

This paper provides new insights on the mechanism of the smokeless diesel combustion with oxygenated fuels, based on a combination of soot kinetic modeling and optical diagnostics. The chemical effects of fuel compositions, including aromatics - paraffins blend, neat oxygenated fuels and oxygenate additives, on sooting equivalence ratio ‘ϕ’ - temperature ‘T’ dependence were numerically examined using a detailed soot kinetic model. To better understand the physical factors affecting soot formation in oxygenated fuel sprays, the effects of injection pressure and ambient gas temperature on the flame lift-off length and relative soot concentration in oxygenated fuel jets were experimentally investigated. The computational results show that the leaner mixture side of soot formation peninsula on the ϕ - T map, rather than the lower temperature one, should be utilized to suppress the formation of PAHs and ultra-fine particles together with the large reduction in particulate mass.