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Premixed diesel combustion blending high volatility fuels into diesel fuel were investigated in a modern diesel engine. First, various fractions of normal heptane and diesel fuel were examined to determine the influence of the blending of a highly ignitable and volatile fuel into diesel fuel. The indicated thermal efficiency improves almost linearly with increasing normal heptane fraction, particularly at advanced injection timings when the fuel is not injected directly into the piston cavity. This improvement is mainly due to decreases in the other losses, ϕother which are calculated with the following equation based on the energy balance. ηu: The combustion efficiency calculated from the exhaust gas compositions ηi: The indicated thermal efficiency ϕex: The exhaust loss calculated from the enthalpy difference between intake and exhaust gas The decreases in the other losses with normal heptane blends are due to a reduction in the unburned fuel which does not reach the gas analyzer.

This study makes use of the detailed mechanisms of n-heptane combustion, from gas reactions to soot particle formation and oxidation, and a two-stage model based on the CHEMKIN reactor network is developed and used to investigate the trade-off between soot and NOx emissions. The effects of the equivalence ratio, EGR, ambient pressure and temperature, and initial particle diameter are observed for various residence times. The results show that high rates of NOx formation are unavoidable under conditions where high reduction rates of soot particles are obtained. This suggests that suppression of the amount of soot during the formation stage is essential for simultaneous reductions in engine-out soot and NOx emissions.

The influence of fuel properties on the operational range and the thermal efficiency of premixed diesel combustion was evaluated with an ordinary diesel fuel, a primary reference fuel for cetane numbers, three primary reference fuels for octane numbers, and two normal heptane-toluene blend fuels in a single-cylinder DI diesel engine. The fuel injection timing was set at 25°CA BTDC and the maximum rate of pressure rise was maintained below 1.0 MPa/°CA when lowering the intake oxygen concentration by cooled EGR. With increasing octane numbers, the higher intake oxygen concentration can be used, resulting in higher indicated thermal efficiency due to a higher combustion efficiency. The best thermal efficiency at the optimum intake oxygen concentration with the ordinary diesel fuel is lower than with the primary reference fuels with the similar ignitability but higher volatility.

Water and diesel fuel emulsions containing 13% and 26% water by volume were investigated in a modern diesel engine with relatively early pilot injection, supercharging, and cooled EGR. The heat release from the pilot injection with water emulsions is retarded toward the top dead center due to the poor ignitability, which enables larger pilot and smaller main injection quantities. This characteristic results in improvements in the thermal efficiency due to the larger heat release near the top dead center and the smaller afterburning. With the 26% water emulsion, mild, smokeless, and very low NOx operation is possible at an optimum pilot injection quantity and 15% intake oxygen with EGR at or below 0.9 MPa IMEP, a condition where large smoke emissions are unavoidable with regular unblended diesel fuel. Heat transfer analysis with Woschni's equation did not show the decrease in cooling loss with the water emulsion fuels.

Combustion and exhaust gas emissions of alcohol and vegetable oil blends including a 20% ethanol + 40% 1-butanol + 40% vegetable oil blend and a 50% 1-butanol + 50% vegetable oil blend were examined in a single cylinder, four-stroke cycle, 0.83L direct injection diesel engine, with a supercharger and a common rail fuel injection system. A 50% diesel oil + 50% vegetable oil blend and regular unblended diesel fuel were used as reference fuels. The boost pressure was kept constant at 160 kPa (absolute pressure), and the cooled low pressure loop EGR was realized by mixing with a part of the exhaust gas. Pilot injection is effective to suppress rapid combustion due to the lower ignitability of the alcohol and vegetable oil blends. The effects of reductions in the intake oxygen concentration with cooled EGR and changes in the fuel injection pressure were investigated for the blended fuels.

Premixed diesel combustion modes including low temperature combustion and MK combustion are expected to realize smokeless and low NOx emissions. As ignition must be delayed until after the end of fuel injection to establish these combustion modes, methods for active ignition control are being actively pursued. It is reported that alcohols including methanol and ethanol strongly inhibit low temperature oxidation in HCCI combustion offering the possibility to control ignition with alcohol induction. In this research improvement of diesel combustion and emissions by ethanol intake port injection for the promotion of premixing of the in-cylinder injected diesel fuel, and by increased EGR for the reduction of combustion temperature.

Smokeless and ultra low NOx combustion without knocking in a dual-fuel diesel engine with induced LPG as the main fuel was established with a uniquely developed piston cavity divided by a lip in the sidewall. A small quantity of diesel fuel was directly injected at early compression stroke into the lower part of the cavity as an ignition source for this confined area, and this suppressed explosively rapid combustion just after ignition and spark-knock like combustion at later stage. A combination of the divided cavity, EGR, and intake air throttling was effective to simultaneously eliminate knocking, and reduce THC and NOx significantly.

This paper presents a theoretical and experimental study on the possibility of combustion similarity in differently sized diesel engines. Combustion similarity means that the flow pattern and flame distribution develop similarly in differently sized engines. The study contributes to an understanding and correlating of data which are presently limited to specific engine designs. The theoretical consideration shows the possibility of combustion similarity, and the similarity conditions were identified. To verify the theory, a comparison of experimental data from real engines was performed; and a comparison of results of a three dimensional computer simulation for different engine sizes was also attempted. The results showed good agreement with the theoretical predictions. THE PURPOSE of this research is to determine the possibility of the existence of combustion similarity in differently sized diesel engines, and to propose conditions for realizing model experiments.

To monitor emission-related components/systems and to evaluate the presence of malfunctioning or failures that can affect emissions, current diesel engine regulations require the use of on-board diagnostics (OBD). For diesel particulate filters (DPF), the pressure drop across the DPF is monitored by the OBD as the pressure drop is approximately linear related to the soot mass deposited in a filter. However, sudden acceleration may cause a sudden decrease in DPF pressure drop under cold start conditions. This appears to be caused by water that has condensed in the exhaust pipe, but no detailed mechanism for this decrease has been established. The present study developed an experimental apparatus that reproduces rapid increases of the exhaust gas flow under cold start conditions and enables independent control of the amount of water as well as the gas flow rate supplied to the DPF.

Silent, clean, and efficient combustion was realized with emulsified blends of aqueous ethanol and diesel fuel in a DI diesel with pilot injection and cooled EGR. The pilot injection sufficiently suppressed the rapid combustion to acceptable levels. The thermal efficiency with the emulsified fuel improved as the heat release with the pilot injection was retarded to near top dead center, due to poor ignitability and also due to a reduction in afterburning. With the emulsified fuel containing 40 vol% ethanol and 10 vol% water (E40W10), the smokeless operation range can be considerably extended even under low fuel injection pressure or low intake oxygen content conditions.

Low NOx and soot free premixed diesel combustion can be realized by increasing ignition delays in low oxygen atmospheres, as well as the combustion here also depends on fuel ignitability. In this report single intermittent spray combustion with primary reference fuels and a normal heptane-toluene blend fuel under several oxygen concentrations in a constant volume combustion vessel was analyzed with high-speed color video and pressure data. Temperature and KL factor distributions are displayed with a 2-D two-color method. The results show that premixing is promoted with a decrease in oxygen concentration, and the local high temperature regions, above 2200 K, as well as the duration of their appearance decreases with the oxygen concentration. With normal heptane, mild premixed diesel combustion can be realized at 15 vol% oxygen and there is little luminous flame.

This paper presents experimental results of the reduction of both particulate and NOx emitted from direct injection diesel engines by a two stage combustion process. The primary combustion is made very rich to reduce NOx and then the particulate is oxidized by strong turbulence generated during the secondary combustion. The rich mixture is formed by low pressure fuel injection and a small cavity combustion chamber configuration. The strong turbulence is generated by a jet of burned gas from an auxiliary chamber installed at the cylinder head. The results showed that NOx was reduced significantly while maintaining fuel consumption and particulate emissions. An investigation was also carried out on the particulate reduction process in the combustion chamber with the turbulence by gas sampling and in-cylinder observation with an optical fiber scope and a high speed camera.

Time series analysis of diesel exhaust gas emissions under transient operation was carried out using a uniquely developed gas sampling system to efficiently collect all exhaust gas throughout transient cycles. The effects of fuel properties and other engine operation parameters on the exhaust emissions under transient runs when fuel amounts abruptly increase were analyzed. The results showed that THC increased abruptly to 2 or 6 times the final steady-state concentration immediately after the start of acceleration and then decreased to the steady-state values after 70∼200 cycles. At acceleration, NOx increased abruptly to about 80 % of the final NOx concentration, and then increased gradually to reach the final values after 60∼500 cycles. The behaviors of THC and NOx during transient operation can be described by exponential functions of the elapsed cycle numbers and the final emission concentrations.

A new concept DISC engine equipped with a two-stage injection system was developed. The engine was modified from a single cylinder DI diesel engine with large cylinder diameter (135mm). Combustion characteristics and exhaust emissions with regular gasoline were examined, and the experiments were also made with gasoline-diesel fuel blends with higher boiling temperatures and lower octane numbers. To realize stratified mixture distribution in combustion chamber flexibly, the fuel was injected in two-stages: the first stage was before the compression stroke to create a uniform premixed lean mixture and the second stage was at the end of the compression stroke to maintain stable ignition and faster combustion. In this paper, the effect of the two-stage injection on combustion and exhaust emissions were analyzed under several operating conditions.

Dimethyl ether (DME) has very good compression ignition characteristics, and can be converted from methanol using a γ - alumina catalyst. A previous report investigated a compression ignition methanol engine with DME as an ignition improver. The results showed that the engine operation was sufficiently smooth without either spark or glow plugs. Two methods were studied, one was an aspiration method, and the other was a torch ignition chamber method (TIC method). The aspiration method allows a simple engine structure, but suffers from poor engine emissions and requires large amounts of DME. With the TIC method where the DME was introduced into a torch ignition chamber (TIC) during the intake stroke, the diffusion of the DME into the main combustion chamber was limited, and significant reductions in both the necessary quantity of DME and emissions were obtained [1][2].

The effect of direct water injection into the combustion chamber on NOx reduction in an IDI diesel engine was investigated. The temperature distribution in the swirl chamber was analyzed quantitatively with high speed photography and the two color method. Direct water injection into a swirl chamber prior to fuel injection reduced NOx emission significantly over a wide output range without sacrifice of BSFC. Other emissions were almost unchanged or slightly decreased with water injection. Water injection reduced the flame temperature at the center of the swirl chamber, while the mean gas temperature in the cylinder and the rate of heat release changed little.

The authors have previously reported significant reductions in particulate emissions by generating strong turbulence during the combustion process. Extending this, it was attempted to reduce NOx, particulate, and fuel consumption simultaneously by two-stage combustion: forming a fuel rich mixture at the initial combustion stage to prevent NOx formation, and inducing strong turbulence in the combustion chamber at the later stage of combustion to oxidize the particulate. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of two-stage combustion in emission control. The paper gives an evaluation of the NO reaction-kinetics of the system and experimental results for a combustion chamber specially made for the two-stage combustion. With this combustion system, it was possible to reduce NOx levels to 1/3 of the base engine. Combination of EGR and the two-stage combustion was also examined.

The effect of eight kinds of oxygenated agents added to diesel fuels on the combustion and emissions was investigated in a DI diesel engine. The results showed significant smoke and particulate suppression without increases in NOx with every oxygenated agent. The emissions decreased linearly with increasing oxygen content in the fuels, almost regardless of the kind of oxygenated agent. The improvement in smoke and particulate emissions with the oxygenated agent addition was more significant for lower volatility fuels. Combustion analysis with the two-dimensional two color method showed that soot concentration in the flame during the combustion process decreased with the addition of the oxygenated agent while the flame temperature distribution was almost unchanged.

The purpose of this investigation is to evaluate the feasibility of rapeseed oil and palm oil for diesel fuel substitution in a naturally aspirated D.I. diesel engine, and also to find means to reduce the carbon deposit buildup in vegetable oil combustion. In the experiments, the engine performance, exhaust gas emissions, and carbon deposits were measured for a number of fuels: rapeseed oil, palm oil, methylester of rapeseed oil, and these fuels blended with ethanol or diesel fuel with different fuel temperatures. It was found that both of the vegetable oil fuels generated an acceptable engine performance and exhaust gas emission levels for short term operation, but they caused carbon deposit buildups and sticking of piston rings after extended operation.

This paper is concerned with the effects of temperature of heavy fuels on combustion and engine performance in a naturally aspirated DI diesel engine. Engine performance and exhaust gas emissions were measured for rapeseed oil, B-heavy oil, and diesel fuel at fuel temperatures from 40°C to 400°C. With increased fuel temperature, mainly from improved efficiency of combustion there were significant reductions in the specific energy consumption and smoke emissions. It was found that the improvements were mainly a function of the fuel viscosity, and it was independent of the kind of fuel. The optimum temperature of the fuels with regard to specific energy consumption and smoke emission is about 90°C for diesel fuel, 240°C for B-heavy oil, and 300°C for rapeseed oil. At these temperatures, the viscosities of the fuels show nearly identical value, 0.9 - 3 cst. The optimum viscosity tends to increase slightly with increases in the swirl ratio in the combustion chamber.