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GTL (Gas-To-Liquid) fuel is well known to improve tailpipe emissions when fuelling a conventional diesel vehicle, that is, one optimized to conventional fuel. This investigation assesses the additional potential for GTL fuel in a GTL-dedicated vehicle. This potential for GTL fuel was quantified in an EU 4 6-cylinder serial production engine. In the first stage, a comparison of engine performance was made of GTL fuel against conventional diesel, using identical engine calibrations. Next, adaptations enabled the full potential of GTL fuel within a dedicated calibration to be assessed. For this stage, two optimization goals were investigated: - Minimization of NOx emissions and - Minimization of fuel consumption. For each optimization the boundary condition was that emissions should be within the EU5 level. An additional constraint on the latter strategy required noise levels to remain within the baseline reference.

World wide, energy policy makers are increasingly keen to move away from petroleum based fuels to more diverse and renewable sources of energy for reasons of environmental protection, energy security and continued economic development. A well-known example is Gas-To-Liquid (GTL) diesel fuel which is derived from natural gas and thus provides a diversification away from crude oil, which is the feedstock for 97% of the world transport fuels. Towards the same goal, Fatty Acid Methyl Esters (FAME), from vegetable oils, recycled oils, or animal fat, are being used with increasing frequency as blends with diesel fuel, even at a concentration of 30% in some captive fleets (B30). In this paper, the impacts on engine pollutant emissions and performance are evaluated.

Modern powertrain development is targeting to meet challenging, to some degrees contradictory development goals in a short timeframe. Looking to a development time schedule of 36 months from concept to SOP, it becomes a prerequisite that unnecessary design loops have to be avoided by all means. Now, in addition, the experimental development work has to be conducted more efficiently than in the past. In recent years methods for an efficient design process have been successfully applied. Testing and vehicle application work can take advantage of methods empowered by model based approaches. Today, models with different levels of detail are able to significantly improve nearly every development phase. Supported by standardized and automated test bench and vehicle procedures an efficient and comprehensive development process can be established and utilized, which is also necessary to tackle growing complexity.