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Future emission regulations require further development for internal combustion engines operating on gasoline. To comply with such regulations and simultaneously improve fuel efficiency, major development trends are found in reduced displacements, increased compression ratios and turbocharging. To counteract such engines’ increased tendencies to knocking combustion, direct fuel injection systems are necessarily applied. Compared to standard port fuel injection, direct injection systems cause increased particle emissions. State-of-the-art magnet-driven gasoline direct injectors are capable of realizing various injection events of small injected mass per event and short dwell time between one another. Thereby, they facilitate multiple injection strategies, able to overcome the drawbacks of direct injection systems in relation to exhaust emissions. However, the full potential of multiple injection strategies is not yet taken advantage of.

This paper provides an overview of possible engine design optimizations by utilizing highly knock-resistant potential greenhouse gas (GHG) neutral synthetic fuels. Historically the internal combustion engine was tailored to and highly optimized for fossil fuels. For future engine generations one of the main objectives is to achieve GHG neutrality. This means that either carbon-free fuels such as hydrogen or potential greenhouse gas neutral fuels are utilized. The properties of hydrogen make its use challenging for mobile application as it is very diffusive, not liquid under standard temperature/pressure and has a low volumetric energy density. C1-based oxygenated fuels such as methanol (MeOH), dimethyl carbonate (DMC) and methyl formate (MeFo) have properties like conventional gasoline but offer various advantages. Firstly, these fuels can be produced with renewable energy and carbon capture technologies to be GHG neutral.