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Historically, the opposed-piston two-stroke diesel engine set combined records for fuel efficiency and power density that have yet to be met by any other engine type. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the advent of modern emissions regulations stopped the wide-spread development of two-stroke engine for on-highway use. At Achates Power, modern analytical tools, materials, and engineering methods have been applied to the development process of an opposed-piston two-stroke engine, resulting in an engine design that has demonstrated a 15.5% fuel consumption improvement compared to a state-of-the-art 2010 medium-duty diesel engine at similar engine-out emissions levels. Furthermore, oil consumption has been measured to be less than 0.1% of fuel over the majority of the operating range. Additional benefits of the opposed-piston two-stroke diesel engine over a conventional four-stroke design are a reduced parts count and lower cost.

Heavy-duty vehicles, currently the second largest source of fuel consumption and carbon emissions are projected to be fastest growing mode in transportation sector in future. There is a clear need to increase fuel efficiency and lower emissions for these engines. The Opposed-Piston Engine (OP Engine) has the potential to address this growing need. In this paper, results are presented for a 9.8L three-cylinder two-stroke OP Engine that shows the potential of achieving 55% brake thermal efficiency (BTE), while simultaneously satisfying emission targets for tail pipe emissions. The two-stroke OP Engines are inherently more cost effective due to less engine parts. The OP Engine architecture presented in this paper can meet this performance without the use of waste heat recovery systems or turbo-compounding and hence is the most cost effective technology to deliver this level of fuel efficiency.

Reducing the greenhouse emissions from on-road freight vehicles to meet the climate change mitigation objectives, has become a prime focus of regulatory authorities all over the world. Besides India, the United States, the European Union, Canada, Japan, and China have already established or planned heavy-duty vehicle efficiency regulations addressing CO2 and NOX emissions. In addition, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and South Korea are all in various stages of developing policies to improve the efficiency of their commercial vehicle fleets. For CO2 emissions reduction standards, the U.S. mandates 27% reduction by 2027, EU is calling for 15% reduction by 2025, China for 27% by 2019 over 2012 levels, and India is mandating 10%-15% reduction by 2021 for phase 2 of the new standard. There has also been considerable focus on further reduction in NOX emissions from current levels (0.2 g/hp-hr), to the proposed ultra-low NOx standards (0.02 g/hp-hr) in the U.S. for heavy duty engines by 2024.