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Diesel emissions are significant issue worldwide, and emissions requirements have become so tough that. the application of after-treatment systems is now indispensable in many countries To meet even more stringent future emissions requirements, it has become apparent that the improvement of market fuel quality is essential as well as the development in engine and exhaust after-treatment technology. Japan Clean Air Program II (JCAP II) is being conducted to assess the direction of future technologies through the evaluation of current automobile and fuel technologies and consequently to realize near zero emissions and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reduction. In this program, effects of fuel properties on the performance of diesel engines and a vehicle equipped with two types of diesel NOx emission after-treatment devices, a Urea-SCR system and a NOx storage reduction (NSR) catalyst system, were examined.

Combustion chamber deposits (CCD) in wall-guided stratified charged direct injection spark ignition (DISI) engines affect combustion significantly because CCD may disturb the air-fuel mixture formation and, as a result, cause emission deterioration. For the design of engines and fuels, it is therefore important to determine the effects of CCD on emissions from DISI engines. In this study, the effects of CCD on emissions from a DISI engine using different fuel distillation properties were investigated. The study results show that, during stratified charged operation, an increase in CCD increased the total hydrocarbon (THC) emissions under high speed conditions and the NOx emissions under the low speed conditions.

In recent years, alternative sources of fuel are receiving a lot of attention in the automotive industry. Fuels derived from an agricultural feedstock are an attractive option. Bio-fuels based on vegetable oils offer the advantage being a sustainable, annually renewable source of automobile fuel. One of key issues in using vegetable oil based fuels is its oxidation stability. Since diesel fuels from fossil oil have good oxidation stability, automobile companies have not considered fuel degradation when developing diesel engines and vehicles as compared with gasoline engines. This paper presents the results of oxidation stability testing on bio-fuels. Oxidation stability was determined using three test methods, ASTM D525, EN14112 and ASTM D2274. The effects of storage condition, bio-fuel composition and antioxidants on the degradation of bio-fuels were all investigated. ASTM D525 is an effective test method to determine the effects of storage condition on bio-fuels stability.

An investigation of throttle response of engines during warm-up was conducted using various gasolines. Test data were obtained from an engine on a test bench at intermediate temperature around 20∼ 30 °C. By using the engine test bench data, correlation coefficients between engine response time and gasoline characteristics were calculated. The result shows that the middle range of distillation temperature is an important factor in gasoline characteristics for warm-up driveability of fuel injected engines. It also shows that 50% distillation temperature can be used as one indication of warm-up driveability. This indication is effective only for hydrocarbon type gasolines. In the case of MTBE blended gasoline, the distillation temperature becomes low when MTBE is blended to gasoline, but throttle response was not improved. It is also found that the effect of gasoline distillation on throttle response is enhanced by intake valve deposits.