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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.

The main tasks for all future powertrain developments are: regulated emissions, CO2-values, comfort, good drivability, high reliability and affordable costs. One widely discussed approach for fuel consumption improvement within passenger car applications, is to incorporate the downsizing effect. To attain constant engine performance an increase of boost pressure and/or rated speed is mandatory. In both cases, the mass flow rate through the intake and exhaust ports and valves will rise. In this context, the impact of the port layout on the system has to be reassessed. In this paper, the impact of the port layout on a modern diesel combustion system will be discussed and a promising concept shall be described in detail. The investigations shown include flow measurements, PIV measurements of intake flow, CFD simulations of the flow field during intake and results from the thermodynamic test bench. One of the important topics is to prove the impact of the flow quality on the combustion.