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In the last couple of decades, countries have enacted new laws concerning environmental pollution caused by heavy-duty commercial and passenger vehicles. This is done mainly in an effort to reduce smog and health impacts caused by the different pollutions. One of the legislated pollutions, among a wide range of regulated pollutions, is nitrogen oxides (commonly abbreviated as NOx). The SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction) was introduced in the automotive industry to reduce NOx emissions leaving the vehicle. The basic idea is to inject a urea solution (AdBlue™) in the exhaust gas before the gas enters the catalyst. The optimal working temperature for the catalyst is somewhere in the range of 300 to 400 °C. For the reactions to occur without a catalyst, the gas temperature has to be at least 800 °C. These temperatures only occur in the engine cylinder itself, during and after the combustion.

Internal combustion engine (ICE) fuel efficiency is a balance between good indicated efficiency and mechanical efficiency. High indicated efficiency is reached with a very diluted air/fuel-mixture and high load resulting in high peak cylinder pressure (PCP). On the other hand, high mechanical efficiency is obtained with very low peak cylinder pressure as the piston rings and bearings can be made with less friction. This paper presents studies of a combustion engine which consists of a two stage compression and expansion cycle. By splitting the engine into two different cycles, high-pressure (HP) and low-pressure (LP) cycles respectively, it is possible to reach high levels of both indicated and mechanical efficiency simultaneously. The HP cycle is designed similar to today's turbo-charged diesel engine but with an even higher boost pressure, resulting in high PCP. To cope with high PCP, the engine needs to be rigid.

The focus has recently been directed towards the engine out soot from Diesel engines. Running an engine in PPC (Partially Premixed Combustion) mode has a proven tendency of reducing these emissions significantly. In addition to combustion strategy, several studies have suggested that using alcohol fuels aid in reducing soot emissions to ultra-low levels. This study analyzes and compares the characteristics of PM emissions from naphtha gasoline PPC, ethanol PPC, methanol PPC and methanol diffusion combustion in terms of soot mass concentration, number concentration and particle size distribution in a single cylinder Scania D13 engine, while varying the intake O2. Intake temperature and injection pressure sweeps were also conducted. The fuels emitting the highest mass concentration of particles (Micro Soot Sensor) were gasoline and methanol followed by ethanol. The two alcohols tested emitted nucleation mode particles only, whereas gasoline emitted accumulation mode particles as well.

Model-based analysis of in-cylinder pressure sensor signals has been a key component for internal combustion engine research, diagnostics and controller development during the past decades. This analysis is often based on simple thermodynamic models of the in-cylinder processes. In order for the analysis to give accurate results, the models need to be sufficiently calibrated. This paper investigates the use of the extended Kalman filter and the particle filter for the purpose of online estimation of top-dead-center offset, a convective heat-transfer coefficient and cylinder-wall temperature in a Gatowski heat-release model. Simulation results show that the filters are consistent in estimating the true parameters, that the assumed model uncertainty and heat-release noise density works as filter tuning parameters. The filters were found to be sensitive to errors on pressure-sensor offset and the cylinder compression ratio.

The engine concept partially premixed combustion (PPC) has proved higher gross indicated efficiency compared to conventional diesel combustion engines. The relatively simple implementation of the concept is an advantage, however, high gas exchange losses has made its use challenging in multi-cylinder heavy duty engines. With high rates of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) to dilute the charge and hence limit the combustion rate, the resulting exhaust temperatures are low. The selected boost system must therefore be efficient which could lead to large, complex and costly solutions. In the presented work experiments and modelling were combined to evaluate different turbocharger configurations for the PPC concept. Experiments were performed on a multi-cylinder engine. The engine was modified to incorporate long route EGR and a single-stage turbocharger, however, with compressed air from the building being optionally supplied to the compressor.

Gas engines (fuelled with CNG, LNG or Biogas) for generation of power and heat are, to this date, taking up larger shares of the market with respect to diesel engines. In order to meet the limit imposed by the TA-Luft regulations on stationary engines, lean combustion represents a viable solution for achieving lower emissions as well as efficiency levels comparable with diesel engines. Leaner mixtures however affect the combustion stability as the flame propagation velocity and consequently heat release rate are slowed down. As a strategy to deliver higher ignition energy, an active pre-chamber may be used. This work focuses on assessing the performance of a pre-chamber combustion configuration in a stationary heavy-duty engine for power generation, operating at different loads, air-to-fuel ratios and spark timings.

Fumigation was studied in a 12 L six-cylinder heavy-duty engine. Port-injected ethanol was ignited with a small amount of diesel injected into the cylinder. The setup left much freedom for influencing the combustion process, and the aim of this study was to find operation modes that result in a combustion resembling that of a homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine with high efficiency and low NOx emissions. Igniting the ethanol-air mixture using direct-injected diesel has attractive properties compared to traditional HCCI operation where the ethanol is ignited by pressure alone. No preheating of the mixture is required, and the amount of diesel injected can be used to control the heat release rate. The two fuel injection systems provide a larger flexibility in extending the HCCI operating range to low and high loads. It was shown that cylinder-to-cylinder variations present a challenge for this type of combustion.

Partially Premixed Combustion (PPC) has shown its potential by combining high combustion controllability with emission characteristics that are close to those of an HCCI engine. In order to get PPC the ignition delay needs to be long enough for the fuel and air to mix prior to combustion. This can be achieved by injecting the fuel sufficiently early while running with high EGR. In order to find out where and how PPC occurs a map that shows the changes in combustion characteristics with injection timing and EGR was created. The combustion characteristics were studied in a six cylinder heavy duty engine where the Start of Injection (SOI) was swept from early to late injection over a wide range of EGR levels. The emissions were monitored during the sweeps and in the most promising regions, with low emissions and high efficiency, additional changes in injection pressure and engine speed were applied to get a more versatile picture of the combustion.

This article deals with application of turbulent jet ignition technique to heavy duty multi-cylinder natural gas engine for mobile application. Pre-chamber spark plugs are identified as a promising means of achieving turbulent jet ignition as they require minimal engine modification with respect to component packaging in cylinder head and the ignition system. Detailed experiments were performed with a 6 cylinder 9.4 liter turbo-charged engine equipped with multi-point gas injection system to compare performance and emissions characteristics of operation with pre-chamber and conventional spark plug. The results indicate that ignition capability is significantly enhanced as flame development angle and combustion duration are reduced by upto 30 % compared to those with conventional spark plugs at certain operating points.

This paper investigates the FPGA resources for the implementation of in-cycle closed-loop combustion control algorithms. Closed-loop combustion control obtains feedback from fast in-cylinder pressure measurements for accurate and reliable information about the combustion progress, synchronized with the flywheel encoder. In-cycle combustion control requires accurate and fast computations for their real-time execution. A compromise between accuracy and computation complexity must be selected for an effective combustion control. The requirements on the signal processing (evaluation rate and digital resolution) are investigated. A common practice for the combustion supervision is to monitor the heat release rate. For its calculation, different methods for the computation of the cylinder volume and heat capacity ratio are compared. Combustion feedback requires of virtual sensors for the misfire detection, burnt fuel mass and pressure prediction.

In this article, a virtual sensor for the estimation of the injected pilot mass in-cycle is proposed. The method provides an early estimation of the pilot mass before its combustion is finished. Furthermore, the virtual sensor can also estimate pilot masses when its combustion is incomplete. The pilot mass estimation is conducted by comparing the calculated heat release from in-cylinder pressure measurements to a model of the vaporization delay, ignition delay, and the combustion dynamics. A new statistical approach is proposed for the detection of the start of vaporization and the start of combustion. The discrete estimations, obtained at the start of vaporization and the start of combustion, are optimally combined and integrated in a Kalman Filter that estimates the pilot mass during the vaporization and combustion. The virtual sensor was programmed in a field programmable gate array (FPGA), and its performance tested in a Scania D13 Diesel engine.

In HCCI you do not have the same control of the combustion like in SI and Diesel engines. Controlling the start of a combustion event is a difficult task and requires feedback from previous cycles. This feedback can be retrieved from ion current measurements. By applying a voltage over the spark gap, ions will lead a current and a signal that represents the combustion in the cylinder will be retrieved. Voltages of 450 V were used. The paper describes a new method to enhance the combustion phasing from the Ion current trace in HCCI engines. The method is using the knowledge of how the signal should look. This is known due to the fact that the shape of the ion current signal is similar from cycle to cycle. This new observation is shown in the paper. Also the correlation between the ion current and CA50 was studied. Later the signals have been used for combustion feedback.

Nowadays the power supplying systems have a fundamental importance for all small and portable devices. For low power applications, there are two main ways for producing power: electrochemical batteries and mini engines. Even though in recent years many developments have been carried out in improving the design of batteries, the energy density of 1MJ/kg seems to be an asymptotic value. If the energy source is a hydrocarbon fuel, whose energy density is 46 MJ/kg, with an overall efficiency of only 2.5 % it is possible to surpass the electrochemical batteries. On the other hand, having a mini engine, as energy source, implies three main problems: vibrations, noise and emissions. A light (230 g) model airplane engine with a displacement volume of 4.11 cm3 and a geometrical compression ratio of 13.91 has been studied. The work carried out in this paper can be divided basically in three parts.

Natural gas and hydrogen enriched natural gas has been tested as fuels together with diesel oil and RME in a single cylinder Scania research engine. The gas was introduced as port injection while the diesel was introduced as early direct injection. Because the gas was premixed with air before combustion and the diesel was injected early in the compression stroke, the engine ran close to HCCI mode. However, a more precise description of the combustion would be PPC (Partially Premixed Combustion) as the diesel oil was not expected to be totally premixed. The experiments revealed that the combustion phasing could successfully be controlled by the amount of diesel oil injected for loads between 3.5 and 7.5 bar IMEPg at 1200 rpm. For a given combustion phasing, the hydrogen was not found to influence the required amount of diesel noticeable. However, a large difference between the RME and diesel oil could be seen by the necessity to inject more RME to obtain the same combustion phasing.

Nowadays for small-scale power generation there are electrochemical batteries and mini engines. Many efforts have been done for improving the power density of the batteries but unfortunately the value of 1 MJ/kg seems to be asymptotic. If the energy source is an organic fuel which has an energy density of around 29 MJ/kg with a minimum overall efficiency of only 3.5%, this device would surpass the batteries. This paper is the fifth of a series of publications aimed to study the HCCI combustion process in the milli domain at high engine speed in order to design and develop VIMPA, Vibrating Microengine for Low Power Generation and Microsystems Actuation. Previous studies ranged from general characterization of the HCCI combustion process by using metal and optical engines, to more specific topics for instance the influence of the boundary layer and quenching distance on the quality of the combustion.

The Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) principle holds promise to increase efficiency and to reduce emissions from internal combustion engines. As HCCI combustion lacks direct ignition timing control and auto-ignition depends on the operating condition, control of auto-ignition is necessary. Since auto-ignition of a homogeneous mixture is very sensitive to operating conditions, a fast combustion phasing control is necessary for reliable operation. To this purpose, HCCI modeling and model-based control with experimental validation were studied. A six-cylinder heavy-duty HCCI engine was controlled on a cycle-to-cycle basis in real time by applying in-cylinder pressure feedback. A low-complexity physical model was developed, aiming at describing the major thermodynamic and chemical interactions in the course of an engine stroke. The model shows the importance of thermal interaction between the combustion and the cylinder walls.

Partially Premixed Combustion (PPC) is a combustion concept by which it is possible to get low smoke and NOx emissions simultaneously. PPC requires high EGR levels and injection timings sufficiently early or late to extend the ignition delay so that air and fuel mix extensively prior to combustion. This paper investigates the operating region of single injection diesel PPC in a multi cylinder heavy duty engine resembling a standard build production engine. Limits in emissions and fuel consumption are defined and the highest load that fulfills these requirements is determined. Experiments are carried out at different engine speeds and a comparison of open and closed loop combustion control are made as well as evaluation of an extended EGR-cooling system designed to reduce the EGR temperature. In this study the PPC operating range proved to be limited.

Homogenous charge compression ignition (HCCI) has been identified as a promising way to increase the efficiency of the spark-ignited engine, while maintaining low emissions. The challenge with HCCI combustion is excessive pressure rise rate, quantified here with Ringing Intensity. Turbocharging enables increased dilution of the charge and thus a reduction of the Ringing Intensity. The engine used is an SI four cylinder base with 2.2L displacement and is equipped with a turbocharger. Combustion phasing control is achieved with individual intake/ exhaust cam phasing. Fuel injection with spray guided design is used. Cycle resolved combustion state is monitored and used for controlling the engine either in closed or open loop where balancing of cylinder to cylinder variations has to be done to run the engine at high HCCI load. When load is increased the NOx levels rise, the engine is then run in stoichiometric HCCI mode to be able to use a simple three-way catalyst.

The paper describes a novel method for calculating the residual gas fraction and the trapping efficiency in a 2 stroke engine. Assuming one dimensional compressible flow through the inlet and exhaust ports, the method estimates the instantaneous mass flowing in and out from the combustion chamber; later the residual gas fraction and trapping efficiency are estimated combining together the perfect displacement and perfect mixing scavenging models. It is assumed that when the intake port opens, the fresh mixture is pushing out the burned charge without any mixing and after a multiple of the time needed for the largest eddy to perform one rotation, the two gasses are instantly mixed up together and expelled. The result is a very simple algorithm that does not require much computational time and is able to estimate with high level of precision the trapping efficiency and the residual gas fraction in 2 stroke engines.

The behavior of Ethanol and seven fuels in the boiling point range of gasoline but with an Octane Number spanning from 69 to 99 was investigated in Partially Premixed Combustion. A load sweep was performed from 5 to 18 bar gross IMEP at 1300 rpm. The engine used in the experiments was a single cylinder Scania D12. To allow high load operations and achieve sufficient mixing, the compression ratio was decreased from the standard 18:1 to 14.3:1. It was shown that by using only 50% of EGR it is possible to achieve NOx below 0.30 g/kWh even at high loads. At 18 bar IMEP soot was in the range of 1-2 FSN for the gasoline fuels while it was below 0.06 FSN with Ethanol. The use of high boost combined with relatively short combustion duration allowed reaching gross indicated efficiencies in the range of 54 - 56%. At high load the partial stratified mixture allowed to keep the maximum pressure rise rate below 15 bar/CAD with most of the fuels.