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Further improvement in fuel consumption is needed for diesel engines to address regulatory requirement particularly for heavy duty diesel in Japan enforced in 2015, in addition to the compliance to the regulatory requirements for exhaust emission, which seems to be more stringent in future. The authors have participated in the project of “Comprehensive Technological Development of Innovative, Next-Generation, Low-Pollution Vehicles” organized by New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), and innovative devices such as multi stage boosting system, ultra high-pressure fuel injection system and variable valve actuation (camless) system had been developed in this project from a standpoint of simultaneous improvement of fuel consumption and exhaust emission. In camless system, intake and exhaust valves are driven by hydraulic pressure. So, fully flexible setting of opening and closure timings and lift of the intake and exhaust valves is possible.

Hydrogen can be produced by electrolyzation with renewable electricity and the combustion products of hydrogen mixture include no CO, CO2 and hydrocarbons. In this study, engine performance with hydrogen / diesel dual fuel (hydrogen DDF) operation in a multi-cylinder diesel engine is investigated due to clarify advantages and disadvantages of hydrogen DDF operation. Hydrogen DDF operation under several brake power conditions are evaluated by changing a rate of hydrogen to total input energy (H2 rate). As H2 rate is increased, an amount of diesel fuel is decreased to keep a given torque constant. When the hydrogen DDF engine is operated with EGR, Exhaust gas components including carbon are improved or suppressed to same level as conventional diesel combustion. In addition, brake thermal efficiency is improved to 40% by increase in H2 rate that advances combustion phasing under higher power condition. On the other hand, NOx emission is much higher than one of conventional diesel engine.

Study of DME diesel engines was conducted to improve fuel consumption and emissions of its. Additionally, DME trucks were built for the promotion and the road tests of these trucks were executed on EFV21 project. In this paper, results of diesel engine tests and DME truck driving tests are presented. As for DME diesel engines, the performance of a DME turbocharged diesel engine with LPL-EGR was evaluated and the influence of the compression ratio was also explored. As for DME trucks, a 100,000km road test was conducted on a DME light duty truck. After the road test, the engine was disassembled for investigation. Furthermore, two DME medium duty trucks have been developed and are now the undergoing practical road testing in each area of two transportation companies in Japan.

Newly designed laboratory measurement system, which reproduces particle number size distributions of both nuclei and accumulation mode particles in exhaust emissions, was developed. It enables continuous measurement of nano particle emissions in the size range between 5 and 1000 nm. Evaluations of particle number size distributions were conducted for diesel vehicles with a variety of emission aftertreatment devices and for gasoline vehicles with different combustion systems. For diesel vehicles, Diesel Oxidation Catalyst (DOC), urea-Selective Catalytic Reduction (urea-SCR) system and catalyzed Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) were evaluated. For gasoline vehicles, Lean-burn Direct Injection Spark Ignition (DISI), Stoichiometric DISI and Multi Point Injection (MPI) were evaluated. Japanese latest transient test cycles were used for the evaluation: JE05 mode driving cycle for heavy duty vehicles and JC08 mode driving cycle for light duty vehicles.

Application of biodiesel fuel (BDF) to diesel engine is very effective to reduce CO2 emission, because biodiesel is carbon neutral in principle. However, biodiesels yield an increase in NOx emission from conventional diesel engine, compared with diesel fuel case. Therefore, some strategies are needed for meeting the future emission regulations when using biodiesel. In this study, rapeseed oil methyl ester (RME) was applied to diesel engine equipped with exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) system and NOx storage reduction (NSR) catalyst. NOx reduction rate of NSR catalyst was drastically decreased by using RME, even if injection quantity of RME for rich spike was enhanced. However, an increase in EGR rate could reduce NOx emission without the deterioration in smoke and PM emissions.

Various premixed diesel combustion concepts are suggested as the way of simultaneous reduction of NOx and PM emission from diesel engines. However, every combustion concept has common problems, such as difficulty of ignition timing control, a great deal of HC and CO emissions and limiting the operation region to low load operation. The purpose of this study is to expand the operation region of Premixed Compression Ignition (PCI) combustion, which is a premixed diesel combustion concept that realizes the fuel injection around the top dead center. As a result of examining it with EGR, supercharging operation and low compression ratio piston, PCI combustion region was expanded to cover higher load operation. And the high load region was limited by not only stoichiometric air fuel ratio but also permissible maximum in-cylinder pressure.

It has been found that over Rh/a specified support NOx is eliminated using rich/lean excursions in a different reaction mechanism from a Lean NOx Trap system, where NO is decomposed into nitrogen and oxygen. The contribution of the transient NOx direct decomposition to NOx elimination depends on both reaction conditions and supports. 0.1-0.5wt%Rh and 0.5wt%Pd/a specified support: X can mainly catalyze the transient NO decomposition. On the other hand, on another Rh-based catalyst NO reduction proceeds mainly in the Lean NOx trap system. As expected from the NO elimination mechanism, the newly developed catalyst has shown a high tolerance against SOx.

1 A novel analysis approach called “Regression Density method” was developed for better understanding of fuel property effects on exhaust emission. The approach was applied to diesel emission data obtained in JCAP programs and emission models were conducted to analyze the effects of fuel properties and engine conditions on emissions. By introducing this analysis method, the relationship between density factor and aromatics factor (chemical composition factor) was identified, however, they have been reported previously as dominant factors in fuel properties. The effects of engine conditions and fuel properties on emissions were investigated quantitatively based on the statistically conducted emission models to clarify universal ways to emission reduction. The mechanism of emission formation of vehicles and engines with characteristic behavior was also examined.

Single cylinder engine testing was carried out to clearly understand the test results of multi-cylinder engines reported by the Diesel WG in JCAP (Japan Clean Air Program) (1), (2), (3) and (4). In this tests, engine specifications such as fuel injection pressure, nozzle hole diameter, turbo-charging pressure, EGR rate, and fuel properties such as 1-, 2-, 3-ring aromatics content, n-,i-paraffins content, and T90 were parametrically changed and their influence on the emissions were studied. PM emission generally increased in each engine condition with increased aromatic contents and T90. In particular, multi ring aromatics brought about large increases in PM regardless of the engine conditions. The influence of fuel properties on NOx emission is smaller than the influence on PM emission. Some other fuels that have various side chain structures of 1-ring aromatics, normal paraffins only and various naphthene contents were also investigated.

A series of NVH experiments were performed for a set of single cylinder engine models made of aluminum, consisting of a cylinder head, a cylinder block and a bed-plate. Each has the same outer size of 150mm × 150mm; the different heights are 100mm, 200mm and 80mm respectively. Those dimensions were determined following the dimensions for a diesel engine in lightweight commercial vehicle with the bore size of 100mm and the crankshaft main bearing diameter of 60mm. We chose 112 of measuring points on the structure surfaces and performed a series of impact tests, for the following cases: (a) When the cylinder head and the bed-plate were fastened to the cylinder block by two sets of four ISO M10 tap-bolts, each with the lengths ℓ1 =117mm and ℓ2 =97mm. (b) When the cylinder head and the bed-plate were fastened to the cylinder block together by a set of four ISO M10 through-bolts of grip length ℓ3 =380mm.

In order to reduce fine particle emission, a diesel particulate filter (DPF) has begun to be equipped to a diesel engine. During regeneration of DPF, nanoparticles are known to be formed downstream of DPF. VOCs emission during regeneration is of interest in view of toxicity and formation mechanism of nanoparticles. A heavy duty diesel engine equipped with DPF was investigated to measure particle and VOCs emissions using PTR-TOFMS (Proton Transfer Reaction - Time of Flight Mass Spectrometer). PTR-TOFMS is a new on-line mass spectrometer using chemical ionization and its application to engine exhaust measurements is new. During active regeneration of the DPF, fine particle emission was increased by nucleation. But VOCs as well as THC emissions increased prior to particle increase. After the regeneration the particle and VOCs emissions decreased immediately to the level of normal operation.

Urea/SCR systems have been proven effective at reducing NOx over a wide range of operating conditions on mid/heavy duty diesel vehicles. However, design changes due to reduction in the size of modern compact Urea/SCR systems and lower exhaust temperature have increased the possibility of urea deposit formation. Urea deposits are formed when urea in films and droplets undergoes undesirable secondary reactions and generate by-products such as ammelide, biuret and cyanuric Acid (CYA). Ammelide and CYA are difficult to decompose which lead to the formation of solid deposits on the surface. This phenomenon degrades the performance of the after treatment system by decreasing overall mixing efficiency, lowering de-NOx efficiency and increasing pressure drop. Therefore, mitigating urea deposits is a primary design goal of modern diesel after-treatment systems.

Supercharging as the method of increasing the output of diesel engines has a long history. Recently, because the potential for lower exhaust emissions for a given power output, supercharging has been considered as a method to reach increasingly strict emissions standards. Some research investigating the effects of supercharging has shown favorable results in terms of emissions(e.g.[1][2][3] *). Also some fundamental studies have examined the effect of ambient pressures on the characteristics of spray and ignition in constant volume combustion borb[4][5][6][7]. However, for further improvement of combustion when utilizing supercharging, more detailed information inside of the combustion chamber is needed about the effects of supercharging on fuel spray and combustion. In order to gather this information, it is necessary to observe the processes within the combustion chamber of a supercharged engine.

This paper describes a method for effectively reducing a level of idling vibration in heavy-duty trucks, which has been the point at issue lately. In this method, the vibration level is significantly reduced by using a full vehicle model, which is made by finite elements, and varying parameters to study effects. In order to achieve high accuracy, engine excitation forces calculated from the measured fluctuation in the flywheel angular velocity are input to the model. An effective use of this method in an early development stage has enabled us to reduce development cost and the lead-time.

This paper introduced a very simple method to measure the liquid phase of spray in an optically accessible DI diesel engine. Particular attention was paid to easy usage and maintaining the compression ratio of the real engine. As a result, a less-expensive 4 W argon laser was used as the beam source and an E-10 high-speed camera was used for continuously observing the elastic-scatter liquid phase image. Meanwhile, the compression ratio can be kept as the real engines by this method. Through this method, the effects such as injection pressure, nozzle specification, intake air boost and temperature on liquid phase penetration before ignition were investigated. Reducing nozzle hole diameter decreased the length of the liquid phase. Increasing injection pressure hastened the evolution of liquid phase, while the liquid phase length varied complexly. Increasing intake air boost considerably shortened the liquid phase penetration and ignition delay.

Ultra-low energy consumption and ultra-low emission vehicle technologies have been developed by combining petroleum-alternative clean energy with a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) system. Their component technologies cover a wide range of vehicle types, such as passenger cars, delivery trucks, and city buses, adsorbed natural gas (ANG), compressed natural gas (CNG), and dimethyl ether (DME) as fuels, series (S-HEV) and series/parallel (SP-HEV) for hybrid types, and as energy storage systems (ESSs), flywheel batteries (FWBs), capacitors, and lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. Evaluation tests confirmed that the energy consumption of the developed vehicles is 1/2 of that of conventional diesel vehicles, and the exhaust emission levels are comparable to Japan's ultra-low emission vehicle (J-ULEV) level.

In-cylinder total sampling technique utilizing a single-cylinder diesel engine equipped with hydraulic valve actuation system has been developed. In this study, particulate matter (PM) included in the in-cylinder sample gas was collected on a quartz filter, and the polycyclic-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) component and soot were subsequently quantified by thermal desorption-gas chromatograph mass spectrometry (TD-GCMS) and a carbon analyzer, respectively. Cylinder-averaged histories of PAHs and soot were obtained by changing the sampling timing. It was found that decreasing intake oxygen concentration suppresses in-cylinder soot oxidation, and the fuel with higher aromatic and naphthenic contents accelerates soot production.

A reduced chemical kinetic model of diesel fuel, which can be applied to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation coupled with detailed chemistry using the CONVERGE software, is developed to simulate the particulate matter (PM) formation process. We analyzed the influence of varying intake oxygen concentrations and fuel composition on the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and soot formation processes. When the intake oxygen concentration was decreased, no significant difference was observed in PAH formation associated with soot formation, and the soot mass generated after the peak was high. When the fuel contained high levels of aromatics and naphthene, the PAH and soot formation mass increased. These tendencies were in good agreement with experimental results [1].

This study aimed to clarify the relationship between truck-pedestrian crash impact velocity and the risks of serious injury and fatality to pedestrians. We used micro and macro truck-pedestrian accident data from the Japanese Institute for Traffic Accident Research and Data Analysis (ITARDA) database. We classified vehicle type into five categories: heavy-duty trucks (gross vehicle weight [GVW] ≥11 × 103 kg [11 tons (t)], medium-duty trucks (5 × 103 kg [5 t] ≤ GVW < 11 × 103 kg [11 t]), light-duty trucks (GVW <5 × 103 kg [5 t]), box vans, and sedans. The fatality risk was ≤5% for light-duty trucks, box vans, and sedans at impact velocities ≤ 30 km/h and for medium-duty trucks at impact velocities ≤20 km/h. The fatality risk was ≤10% for heavy-duty trucks at impact velocities ≤10 km/h. Thus, fatality risk appears strongly associated with vehicle class.