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Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE), an intermediate product in the ABE fermentation process for producing bio-butanol, is considered a promising alternative fuel because it not only preserves the advantages of oxygenated fuel which typically emit less pollutants compared to conventional diesel, but also lowers the cost of fuel recovery for each individual component during the fermentation. With the development of advanced ABE fermentation technology, the volumetric percentage of acetone, butanol and ethanol in the bio-solvents can be precisely controlled. In this respect, it is desirable to estimate the performance of different ABE blends to determine the best blend and optimize the production process accordingly. ABE fuels with different component ratio, (A: B: E: 6:3:1; 3:6:1; 0:10:0, vol. %), were blended with diesel and tested in a constant volume chamber.

Compared with petroleum fuel, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) demonstrates advantages in low CO2 emission because of propane and butane, which are the main components of LPG, making H/C ratio higher. In addition, LPG is suitable for high efficient operation of a spark ignition (SI) engine due to its higher research octane number (RON). Because of these advantages, that is, diversity of energy source and reduction of CO2, in the past several years, LPG vehicles have widely used as the alternate to gasoline vehicles all over the world. Consequently, it is absolutely essential for the performance increase of LPG vehicles to comprehend the combustion characteristics of LPG and to obtain the guideline for engine design and calibration. In this study, an LPG-SI engine was built up by converting fuel supply system of an in-line 4-cylinder gasoline engine, which has 1997 cm3 displacement with MPI system, to LPG liquid fuel injection system [1].

This paper presents an experimental study of the emission characteristics of a small Spark-Ignited, LPG engine. A single cylinder, four-stroke, water-cooled, 125cc SI engine for motorcycle is modified for using LPG fuel. The power output of LPG is above 95% power output of gasoline. The emission characteristics of LPG are compared with the gasoline. The test result shows that LPG for small SI engine will help to reduce the emission level of motorcycles. The HC and CO emission level can be reduced greatly, but NOx emissions are increased. The emission of motorcycle using LPG shows the potential to meet the more strict regulation.

In recent years, attention has focused on smokeless, sulfur-free dimethyl ethyl (DME) as a clean fuel for heavy-duty diesel vehicles [1]. In this development, the DME engine applied for 20-ton GVW truck was developed under the auspices of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of Japan, the first known instance worldwide. With careful design of the fuel system considering DME's unique fuel characteristics and suitable combustion improvement, higher torque was obtained with DME, compared to diesel fueling. and also use of the proper EGR and catalyst, exhaust emissions levels were generally less than one-fourth of new long-term regulation value promulgated in 2005 Japan.

This paper presents the development of an electronic control LPG gas injection system and its application in a small SI engine. The tests results show that the developed LPG gas injection system can meet the needs for the goal of high engine power output and low exhaust emissions based on the engine bench tests. With the LPG electronic gas injection system, the air-fuel ratio can be optimized based on the requirements and CO and NOx emission levels are decreased significantly compared with the LPG mechanical mixer fuel supply system, based on the same HC emission levels. With the new gas phase LPG electronic control injection system, the HC emission level is controlled below the 300 ppm under most engine conditions and under 200 ppm when the engine speed is over 3000 r/min. The NOx emission level is under 2600 ppm in the whole range of engine operation conditions and is decreased by 2000 ppm compared with the LPG mechanical mixer system.

The effect of boiling point difference as well as the flash boiling of two-component normal paraffin fuels on combustion and exhaust emission has been examined under different test conditions. To obtain a wide variation in boiling point between components different high boiling point fuels (n-undecane, n-tridecane and n-hexadecane) were blended with a low boiling point fuel (n-pentane) and different low boiling point fuels (n-pentane, n-hexane, and n-heptane) were blended with a high boiling point fuel (n-hexadecane). In addition the volume fraction of n-pentane was varied to have the best mixture ratio with n-tridecane. These fuel combinations exhibit different potential for flash boiling based on a certain ambient condition. The results indicate that though the potential for flash boiling is the highest for a mixture of n-pentane and n-hexadecane it emits about 20% higher PM than a mixture of n-pentane and n-tridecane.

Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) is effective for the simultaneous reduction of soot and NOx emissions from diesel engine. In general, high octane number and volatility fuels (gasoline components or gaseous fuels) are used for HCCI operation, because very lean mixture must be formed during ignition delay of the fuel. However, it is necessary to improve fuel injection systems, when these fuels are used in diesel engine. The purpose of the present study is the achievement of HCCI combustion in DI diesel engine without the large-scale improvements of engine components. Various high octane number fuels are mixed with diesel fuel as a base fuel, and the mixed fuels are directly applied to DI diesel engine. At first, the cylinder pressure and heat release rate of each mixed fuel are analyzed. The ignition delay of HCCI operation decreases with an increase in the operation load, although that of conventional diesel operation does not almost varied.

Recently there has been much interest in Dimethyl Ether (DME) as a new fuel for diesel cycle engines. DME combines the advantages of a high cetane number with soot-free combustion, which makes it eminently suitable for compression engines. According to the latest engine test results, however, DME engine energy consumption was inferior to a diesel engine's under a heavy load. DME probably requires strong air-fuel mixing and short fuel injection. Some tests have reported that DME engine performance almost equals a diesel engine's by injecting high rail pressure DME into standard or slightly modified diesel common rail injection equipment. The effect, however, of higher injection pressure on the rates of heat release and spray distribution is unclear. In this study the rail pressure levels examined included 20, 25, 30, and 35 MPa. The results obtained from a single cylinder heavy-duty engine test show that the rate of heat release increases during the premixed combustion phase.

Hydrogen engines are required to provide high thermal efficiency and low nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. There are many possible combinations of injection pressure, injection timing, ignition timing, lambda and EGR rate that can be used in a direct-injection system for achieving such performance. In this study, several different combinations of injection and ignition timings were classified as possible combustion regimes, and experiments were conducted to make clear the differences in combustion conditions attributable to these timings. Lambda and the EGR rate were also evaluated for achieving the desired performance, and indicated thermal efficiency of over 45% was obtained at IMEP of 0.95 MPa. It was found that a hydrogen engine with a high-pressure direct-injection system has a high potential for improving thermal efficiency and reducing NOx emissions.

A prototype CNG engine for heavy-duty trucks has been developed. The engine had sufficient output in practical use, and the green-house gas emission rate was below that of the base diesel engine. Furthermore, the NOx emission rate was reduced to 0.16 g/kWh in the JE05 mode as results of having fully adjusted air fuel ratio control. The measured emission characteristics of particles from the prototype CNG engine demonstrated that oil consumption was related to the number of particles. Moreover, when oil consumption is at an appropriate level, the accumulation mode particles are significantly reduced, and the nuclei mode particles are fewer than those of diesel-fueled engines.

A novel non-destroy repeatable-use impact theory based total cylinder sampling system has been established. This system is mainly composed of a knocking body and a sampling valve. The knocking body impacts the sampling valve with certain velocity resulting in huge force to open the sampling valve and most of the in-cylinder gas has been dumped to one sampling bag for after-treatment. The feasibility and sampling response characteristics of this impact theory based total cylinder sampling system were investigated by engine bench testing. Within 0 to 35°CA ATDC (Crank Angle After Top Dead Center) sample timing 50 percent to 80 percent of in-cylinder mass would be sampled, which was a little less compared with the traditional system. The half decay period of pressure drop was 10 to 20 degrees crank angle within 0 to 60°CA ATDC sample timing, which was about 2-3 times of the traditional system.

The incomplete combustion and misfire of diesel engine during starting result in unwanted white smoke. The histories of combustion and emission in different phases under different start conditions were studied in this paper. The optimization of the fuel injection control strategy under start conditions was performed. When the diesel engine is started under low temperature, the control strategy adapted to start the engine with a certain constant fuel mass injected per cycle, there may be misfire cycles in the initial period or in the transitional process, which is mainly caused by the mismatch between the fuel mass injected per cycle and the instantaneous engine speed. Therefore, an optimized control strategy was put forward, namely, the engine starts with high fuel mass injection in the first several cycles and then decreases step by step during the transitional period until it operates at idle condition. This strategy was validated to decrease significantly the misfire cycles.

Recently, particulate matter (PM) emission from internal combustion engines, especially particles having the diameter of less than 100 nm (Nano-particles) are being considered for their potential hazards posed to human health and the environment. Nano-particles are unstable and easily influenced by the conditions of engine operation and measurement techniques. In this study, the influences of cooling and dilution processes on nano- particles are presented to understand the generation and dilution mechanisms, and to further development of an accurate measurement method. It is found that the thermo-dilurter is necessary for measuring the nano-particles with higher accuracy. Accurate measurement of nano-particles requires immediate dilution of the exhaust gases by hot air.

This paper presents an investigation of cold starts based on a cycle-by-cycle control strategy in an LPG EFI engine. Experiments were carried out in a four-stroke, water-cooled, single cylinder, 125cc SI engine with an EFI system. Effects of the first injection pulse width and the first combustion cycle on the characteristics of the cold-start were analyzed based on the histories of transient engine speeds and cylinder pressures. The study focuses on how to realize the controllable ignition cycle and the single-cycle and multi-cycle combustions were tested based on the single starting injection pulse width. Test results show that the first combustion cycle has an important effect on HC emission and combustion stability of following cycles at cold-start. The injection pulse width is the key factor determining the characteristics of an ignition cycle during the cold-start.

Fuel design for internal combustion engines has been proposed in our study. In this concept, the multicomponent fuel with high and low volatility fuels are used in order to control the spray and combustion processes in internal combustion engine. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the spray and combustion characteristics of the multicomponent fuels in detail. In the present study, the modeling of multicomponent spray vaporization was conducted using KIVA3V code. The physical fuel properties of multicomponent fuel were estimated using the source code of NIST Mixture Property Database. Peng-Robinson equation of state and fugacity calculation were applied to the estimation of liquid-vapor equilibrium in order to take account for non-ideal vaporization process. Two-zone model in which fuel droplet was divided into droplet surface and inner core was introduced in order to simply consider the temperature distribution in fuel droplet.

A new ignition-combustion concept named PCC (Plume Ignition Combustion Concept), which ignite rich mixture plume in the middle of injection period or right after injection of hydrogen is completed, is proposed by the authors in order to reduce NOx emissions in high engine load conditions with minimizing trade-offs on thermal efficiency. In this study fundamental requirements of hydrogen jet to optimize PCC are investigated by using single and multi-hole nozzle with a combination of high speed laser shadowgraphy to visualize propagating flame. As a result, it was infered that igniting the mixture plume in the middle of injection period with minimizing jet penetration to chamber wall is effective reducing NOx formation even further.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of two-stage pilot injection parameters on the combustion and emissions of pilot diesel compression ignition natural gas (CING) engine at low load. Experiments were performed using a diesel/natural gas dual-fuel engine, which was modified from a six-cylinder diesel engine. The effect of injection timing and injection pressure of two-stage pilot diesel were analyzed in order to reduce both the fuel consumption and total hydrocarbon (HC) and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions under low load conditions. The results indicate that, because injection timing can determine the degree of pilot diesel stratification, in-cylinder thermodynamic state, and the available mixing time prior to the combustion, the combustion process can be controlled and optimized through adjusting injection timing.

Particulate matter (PM) and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) were measured under steady state engine operating conditions in the exhaust of a DI diesel engine that meets the Japanese 1994 heavy-duty vehicle standards. In this study, to examine and discuss the effects of pyrene and sulfur contents in fuels on PM and PAH emissions, experiments were performed using both ordinary diesel fuel and a specified fuel having simple hydrocarbon components and very few aromatics. In the experiments, pyrene and sulfur contents in the fuels were changed by the addition of reagents to the fuel. The following conclusions were obtained. (1) From the experiments using ordinary JIS No. 2 diesel fuel with a pyrene reagent added to yield 400ppm pyrene, it was found that pyrene addition brings about an increase in soluble organic fraction (SOF) under low load engine operating conditions.