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The major challenge of the post-processing of soot aggregates in transmission electron microscope (TEM) images is the detection of soot primary particles that have no clear boundaries, vary in size within the fractal aggregates, and often overlap with each other. In this study, we propose an automated detection code for primary particles implementing the Canny Edge Detection (CED) and Circular Hough Transform (CHT) on pre-processed TEM images for particle edge enhancement using unsharp filtering as well as image inversion and self-subtraction. The particle detection code is tested for soot TEM images obtained at various ambient and injection conditions, and from five different combustion facilities including three constant-volume combustion chambers and two diesel engines.

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.

Hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines equipped with port fuel injection offer a cheap alternative to fuel cells and can be run in bi-fuel operation side-stepping the chicken and egg problem of availability of hydrogen fueling station versus hydrogen vehicle. Hydrogen engines with external mixture formation have a significantly lower power output than gasoline engines. The main causes are the lower volumetric energy density of the externally formed hydrogen-air mixture and the occurrence of abnormal combustion phenomena (mainly backfire). Two engine test benches were used to investigate different means of compensating for this power loss, while keeping oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions limited. A single cylinder research engine was used to study the effects of supercharging, combined with exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). Supercharging the engine results in an increase in power output.

Models for the convective heat transfer from the combustion gases to the walls inside a spark ignition engine are an important keystone in the simulation tools which are being developed to aid engine optimization. The existing models have, however, been cited to be inaccurate for hydrogen, one of the alternative fuels currently investigated. One possible explanation for this inaccuracy is that the models do not adequately capture the effect of the gas properties. These have never been varied in a wide range because air and ‘classical’ fossil fuels have similar values, but they are significantly different in the case of hydrogen. As a first step towards a fuel independent heat transfer model, we have investigated the effect of the gas properties on the heat flux in a spark ignition engine.

Diesel spray experimentation at controlled high-temperature and high-pressure conditions is intended to provide a more fundamental understanding of diesel combustion than can be achieved in engine experiments. This level of understanding is needed to develop the high-fidelity multi-scale CFD models that will be used to optimize future engine designs. Several spray chamber facilities capable of high-temperature, high-pressure conditions typical of engine combustion have been developed, but because of the uniqueness of each facility, there are uncertainties about their operation. The Engine Combustion Network (ECN) is a worldwide group of institutions using combustion vessels, whose aim is to advance the state of spray and combustion knowledge at engine-relevant conditions. A key activity is the use of spray chamber facilities operated at specific target conditions in order to leverage research capabilities and advanced diagnostics of all ECN participants.

Diesel engines are one of the most important power generating units these days. Increasing greenhouse gas emission level and the need for energy security has prompted increasing research into alternative fuels for diesel engines. Biodiesel is the most popular among the alternatives for diesel fuel as it is biodegradable and renewable and can be produced domestically from vegetable oils. In recent years, hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) has also gained popularity due to some of its advantages over biodiesel such as higher cetane number, lower deposit formation, storage stability, etc. HVO is a renewable, paraffinic biobased alternative fuel for diesel engines similar to biodiesel. Unlike biodiesel, the production process for HVO involves hydrogen as catalyst instead of methanol which removes oxygen content from vegetable oil.

In 2004 the European Parliament ratified the Euro III and IV standards limiting the pollutant emission of, among others, rail and marine diesel engines. In these sectors, it is particularly important to keep any fuel consumption penalty, when reducing emissions, to a strict minimum. Furthermore, exhaust gas after treatment is mostly avoided for cost reasons. Thus, manufacturers are looking to pretreatment of fuels, alternative fuels, and limiting engine-out emissions as ways to attain the required emission levels. This paper discusses the experimental work done on a 1324 kW, 1000 rpm six cylinder marine diesel engine equipped with mechanical unit injectors. The aim was to determine the influence of compression ratio and fuel injection parameters on engine-out emissions, with emphasis on NOx emissions. A range of fuel injection parameters were examined, varying the start of injection, pump plunger diameter, injection pressure, and injector nozzle geometry.

There is a growing consensus that there will not be a single alternative to fossil fuels, but rather different fuels, fuel feedstocks, engine types and operating strategies. For stationary diesel engines, straight vegetable oils are an interesting alternative to fossil diesel, because of their potential for lower life cycle greenhouse gas emissions. Using animal fats is also compelling, as it does not imply the cultivation of oil-bearing seeds and related emissions, not to mention the ‘food versus fuel’ debate. The aim of the present work is to correlate engine performance and durability with the properties (composition) of these alternative fuels, to provide a basis from which standards can be formulated for the properties of oils and fats to be used as engine fuel. Tests on different oils and fats are reported.

Hydrogen is seen as one of the important energy vectors of the next century. Hydrogen as a renewable energy source, provides the potential for a sustainable development particularly in the transportation sector. Hydrogen-driven vehicles reduce both local as well as global emissions. The laboratory of transport technology (University of Gent) converted a General Motors Corporation/Crusader V-8 engine for hydrogen use. Once the engine is optimized, it will be built in a low-floor midsize hydrogen city bus for public demonstration. For a complete control of the combustion process and to increase the resistance to backfire (explosion of the air-fuel mixture in the inlet manifold), a sequential timed multipoint injection of hydrogen and an electronic management system is chosen. The results as a function of the engine parameters (ignition timing, injection timing and duration, injection pressure) are given.

Engine optimization requires a good understanding of the in-cylinder heat transfer since it affects the power output, engine efficiency and emissions of the engine. However little is known about the convective heat transfer inside the combustion chamber due to its complexity. To aid the understanding of the heat transfer phenomena in a Spark Ignition (SI) engine, accurate measurements of the local instantaneous heat flux are wanted. An improved understanding will lead to better heat transfer modelling, which will improve the accuracy of current simulation software. In this research, prototype thin film gauge (TFG) heat flux sensors are used to capture the transient in-cylinder heat flux within a Cooperative Fuel Research (CFR) engine. A two-zone temperature model is linked with the heat flux data. This allows the distinction between the convection coefficient in the unburned and burned zone.

Methanol fueled spark ignition (SI) engines have the potential for very high efficiency using an advanced heat recovery system for fuel reforming. In order to allow simulation of such an engine system, several sub-models are needed. This paper reports the development of two laminar burning velocity correlations, corresponding to two reforming concepts, one in which the reformer uses water from an extra tank to produce hydrogen rich gas (syngas) and another that employs the water vapor in the exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) stream to produce reformed-EGR (R-EGR). This work uses a one-dimensional (1D) flame simulation tool with a comprehensive chemical kinetic mechanism to predict the laminar burning velocities of methanol/syngas blends and correlate it. The syngas is a mixture of H2/CO/CO2 with a CO selectivity of 6.5% to simulate the methanol steam reforming products over a Cu-Mn/Al catalyst.

In order to reduce nitrogen oxides (NOx) and soot emissions while maintaining high thermal efficiency, more advanced combustion concepts have been developed over the years, such as Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) and Partially Premixed Combustion (PPC), as possible combustion processes in commercial engines. Compared to HCCI, PPC has advantages of lower unburned hydrocarbon (UHC) and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions; however, due to increased fuel stratifications, soot emissions can be a challenge when adding Exhaust-Gas Recirculation (EGR) gas. The current work presents particle size distribution measurements performed from HCCI-like combustion with very early (120 CAD BTDC) to PPC combustion with late injection timing (11 CAD BTDC) at two intake oxygen rates, 21% and 15% respectively. Particle size distributions were measured using a differential mobility spectrometer DMS500.

To optimize internal combustion engines (ICEs), a good understanding of engine operation is essential. The heat transfer from the working gases to the combustion chamber walls plays an important role, not only for the performance, but also for the emissions of the engine. Besides, thermal management of ICEs is becoming more and more important as an additional tool for optimizing efficiency and emission aftertreatment. In contrast little is known about the convective heat transfer inside the combustion chamber due to the complexity of the working processes. Heat transfer measurements inside the combustion chamber pose a challenge in instrumentation due to the harsh environment. Additionally, the heat loss in a spark ignition (SI) engine shows a high temporal and spatial variation. This poses certain requirements on the heat flux sensor. In this paper we examine the heat transfer in a production SI ICE through the use of Thin Film Gauge (TFG) heat flux sensors.

The use of methanol and ethanol in spark-ignition (SI) engines forms a promising approach to decarbonizing transport and securing domestic energy supply. The physico-chemical properties of these fuels enable engines with increased performance and efficiency compared to their fossil fuel counterparts. An engine cycle code valid for alcohol-fuelled engines could help to unlock their full potential. However, the development of such a code is currently hampered by the lack of a suitable correlation for the laminar flame speed of alcohol-air-diluent mixtures. A literature survey showed that none of the existing correlations covers the entire temperature, pressure and mixture composition range as encountered in spark-ignition engines. For this reason, we started working on new correlations based on simulations with a one-dimensional chemical kinetics code. In this paper the properties of methanol and ethanol are first presented, together with their application in modern SI engines.

Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engines can achieve both a high thermal efficiency and near-zero emissions of NOx and soot. However, their maximum attainable load is limited by the occurrence of a ringing combustion. At high loads, the fast combustion rate gives rise to pressure oscillations in the combustion chamber accompanied by a ringing or knocking sound. In this work, it is investigated how these pressure oscillations affect the in-cylinder heat transfer and what the best approach is to model the heat transfer during ringing combustion. The heat transfer is measured with a thermopile heat flux sensor inside a CFR engine converted to HCCI operation. A variation of the mass fuel rate at different compression ratios is performed to measure the heat transfer during three different operating conditions: no, light and severe ringing. The occurrence of ringing increases both the peak heat flux and the total heat loss.

The use of methanol as spark-ignition engine fuel can help to increase energy security and offers the prospect of carbon neutral transport. Methanol's properties enable considerable improvements in engine performance, efficiency and CO2 emissions compared to gasoline operation. SAE paper 2012-01-1283 showed that both flex-fuel and dedicated methanol engines can benefit from an operating strategy employing exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) to control the load while leaving the throttle wide open (WOT). Compared to throttled stoichiometric operation, this reduces pumping work, cooling losses, dissociation and engine-out NOx. The current paper presents follow-up work to determine to what extent these advantages still stand over an entire drive cycle. The average vehicle efficiency, overall CO2 and NOx emissions from a flexible fuel vehicle completing a drive cycle on gasoline and methanol were evaluated.

Medium speed diesel engines are well established today as a power source for heavy transport and stationary applications and it appears that they will remain so in the future. However, emission legislation becomes stricter, reducing the emission limits of various pollutants to extremely low values. Currently, many techniques that are well established for automotive diesel engines (common rail, after treatment, exhaust gas recirculation - EGR, …) are being tested on these large engines. Application of these techniques is far from straightforward given the different requirements and boundary conditions (fuel quality, durability, …). This paper reports on the development and experimental results of cooled, high pressure loop EGR operation on a 1326kW four stroke turbocharged medium speed diesel engine, with the primary goal of reducing the emission of oxides of nitrogen (NOx). Measurements were performed at various loads and for several EGR rates.

The internal combustion engine with compression ignition is still the most important power plant for heavy duty transport, railway transport, marine applications and generator sets. Fuel cost and emission regulations drive manufacturers to switch to alternative fuels. The understanding and prediction of these fuels in the spray and combustion process will be very important for these issues. In the past, lot of research was done for conventional diesel fuel by optically analyzing both spray and combustion. However comparison between different groups is difficult since qualitative results and accuracies are depending in the used definitions and methods. The goal of present research is to verify the behavior pure oils compared to more standard fuels while paying lot of attention to the interpretation of the measurement results.

Fuel atomization and combustion at engine-like conditions are complicated and sensitive processes which make it hard to perform quantitative experiments with high precision and reproducibility. A better understanding of the processes can be obtained by controlling the boundary conditions. Variable parameters with an important influence on the sprays include fuel temperature, chamber temperature, injection pressure, gas velocity. Controlling all these parameters in an experimental setup is not evident since a lot of them fluctuate with time or interact with each other. Constant volume combustion chambers, using the pre-combustion method, have already shown to be a useful experimental tool for this kind of research purposes. The obtained quantitative results can in a next step be used to evaluate either multi-dimensional or simplified lower dimensional models.

In this work a new design of a liquid fuelled combustion engine is proposed for small and light weight unmanned air vehicles (<10kg and 15-200N thrust). Ethanol and gasoline were selected as the potential fuels while pressurized air and hydrogen peroxide were used as the oxidizer. The engine combines features of both a common rocket and turbojet engine. The main features of the engine are the restart ability during flight, low cost, easy manufacturability, light weight, long operation time and high durability. The main difficulties that come along with this engine are the need for proper engine cooling (long term operation) and start-up ability at atmospheric conditions. The low temperatures and injection pressures are not favorable for the fuel atomization and ignition. The paper focuses on the design on low pressure injectors and a start-up mechanism for micro UAV's without the use of a large amount of additional fueling circuits or components.