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Recent pressures on vehicle manufacturers to reduce their average fleet levels of CO2 emissions have resulted in an increased drive to improve fuel economy and enable use of fuels developed from renewable sources that can achieve a net reduction in the CO2 output of each vehicle. The most popular choice for spark-ignition engines has been the blending of ethanol with gasoline, where the ethanol is derived either from agricultural or cellulosic sources such as sugar cane, corn or decomposed plant matter. However, other fuels, such as butanol, have also arisen as potential candidates due to their similarities to gasoline, e.g. higher energy density than ethanol. To extract the maximum benefits from these new fuels through optimized engine design and calibration, an understanding of the behaviour of these fuels in modern engines is necessary.

Hydrogen has been largely proposed as a possible alternative fuel for internal combustion engines. Its wide flammability range allows higher engine efficiency with leaner operation than conventional fuels, for both reduced toxic emissions and no CO2 gases. Independently, Homogenous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) also allows higher thermal efficiency and lower fuel consumption with reduced NOX emissions when compared to Spark-Ignition (SI) engine operation. For HCCI combustion, a mixture of air and fuel is supplied to the cylinder and autoignition occurs from compression; engine is operated throttle-less and load is controlled by the quality of the mixture, avoiding the large fluid-dynamic losses in the intake manifold of SI engines. HCCI can be induced and controlled by varying the mixture temperature, either by Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) or intake air pre-heating.