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The performance of three way and NOx catalysts was evaluated on vehicles utilizing non-feedback fuel control and electronic feedback fuel control. The vehicles accumulated 80,450 km (50,000 miles) using fuels representing the extremes in hydrogen-carbon ratio available for commercial use. Feedback carburetion compared to non-feedback carburetion improved highway fuel economy by about 0.4 km/l (1 mpg) and reduced deterioration of NOx with mileage accumulation. NOx emissions were higher with the low H/C fuel in the three way catalyst system; feedback reduced the fuel effect on NOx in these cars by improving conversion efficiency with the low H/C fuel. Feedback had no measureable effect on HC and CO catalyst efficiency. Hydrocarbon emissions were lower with the low H/C fuel in all cars. Unleaded gasoline octane improver, MMT, at 0.015g Mn/l (0.06 g/gal) increased tailpipe hydrocarbon emissions by 0.05 g/km (0.08 g/mile).

Two oxygenated fuels were evaluated on a single-cylinder diesel engine and compared to three hydrocarbon diesel fuels. The oxygenated fuels included canola biodiesel (canola methyl esters, CME) and CME blended with dibutyl succinate (DBS), both of which are or have the potential to be bio-derived. DBS was added to improve the cold flow properties, but also reduced the cetane number and net heating value of the resulting blend. A 60-40 blend of the two (60% vol CME and 40% vol DBS) provided desirable cold flow benefits while staying above the U.S. minimum cetane number requirement. Contrary to prior vehicle test results and numerous literature reports, single-cylinder engine testing of both CME and the 60-40 blend showed no statistically discernable change in NOx emissions relative to diesel fuel, but only when constant intake oxygen was maintained.

Combustion in modern spark-ignition (SI) engines is increasingly knock-limited with the wide adoption of downsizing and turbocharging technologies. Fuel autoignition conditions are different in these engines compared to the standard Research Octane Number (RON) and Motor Octane Numbers (MON) tests. The Octane Index, OI = RON - K(RON-MON), has been proposed as a means to characterize the actual fuel anti-knock performance in modern engines. The K-factor, by definition equal to 0 and 1 for the RON and MON tests respectively, is intended to characterize the deviation of modern engine operation from these standard octane tests. Accurate knowledge of K is of central importance to the OI model; however, a single method for determining K has not been well accepted in the literature.

In a recent study, quantitative measurements were presented of in-cylinder spatial distributions of mixture equivalence ratio in a single-cylinder light-duty optical diesel engine, operated with a non-reactive mixture at conditions similar to an early injection low-temperature combustion mode. In the experiments a planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) methodology was used to obtain local mixture equivalence ratio values based on a diesel fuel surrogate (75% n-heptane, 25% iso-octane), with a small fraction of toluene as fluorescing tracer (0.5% by mass). Significant changes in the mixture's structure and composition at the walls were observed due to increased charge motion at high swirl and injection pressure levels. This suggested a non-negligible impact on wall heat transfer and, ultimately, on efficiency and engine-out emissions.

A fuel vapor system model (FVSMOD) has been developed to simulate vehicle evaporative emission control system behavior. The fuel system components incorporated into the model include the fuel tank and pump, filler cap, liquid supply and return lines, fuel rail, vent valves, vent line, carbon canister and purge line. The system is modeled as a vented system of liquid fuel and vapor in equilibrium, subject to a thermal environment characterized by underhood and underbody temperatures and heat transfer parameters assumed known or determined by calibration with experimental liquid temperature data. The vapor/liquid equilibrium is calculated by simple empirical equations which take into account the weathering of the fuel, while the canister is modeled as a 1-dimensional unsteady absorptive and diffusive bed. Both fuel and canister submodels have been described in previous publications. This paper presents the system equations along with validation against experimental data.

Knowledge of fuel mass injected in an individual cycle is important for engine performance and modeling. At the moment, such measurements are not possible on engine or in real time. In this article, a new method using Coriolis flow meters (CFMs) and a new, patented, signal processing technique, known as the Prism, are introduced. CFMs are extensively used for flow measurement both in the automotive industry and further afield and, when coupled with the Prism, have the potential to make these challenging high-speed measurements. A rig-based feasibility study was conducted injecting very small quantities of diesel (3 mg) at pressures of up to 1000 bar at simulated engine speeds of up to 4000 rpm. The results show that these small quantities can in principle be measured. The results also reveal a previously unknown behavior of CFMs when measuring very low flow rates at high speed.

There is keen interest in understanding the origins of engine-out unburned hydrocarbons emitted during SI engine cold start. This is especially true for the first few firing cycles, which can contribute disproportionately to the total emissions measured over standard drive cycles such as the US Federal Test Procedure (FTP). This study reports on the development of a novel methodology for capturing and quantifying unburned hydrocarbon emissions (HC), CO, and CO2 on a cycle-by-cycle basis during an engine cold start. The method was demonstrated by applying it to a 4 cylinder 2 liter GTDI (Gasoline Turbocharged Direct Injection) engine for cold start conditions at an ambient temperature of 22°C. For this technique, the entirety of the engine exhaust gas was captured for a predetermined number of firing cycles.

Particulate emissions from gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines continue to be a topic of substantial research interest. Forthcoming regulation both in the USA and the EU will further reduce their emission and drive innovation. Substantial research effort is spent undertaking experiments to understand, characterize, and research particle number (PN) emissions from engines and vehicles. Recent advances in computing power, data storage, and understanding of artificial intelligence algorithms now mean that these are becoming an important tool in engine research. In this work a random forest (RF) algorithm is used for the prediction of PN emissions from a highly boosted (up to 32 bar BMEP) GDI engine. Particle size, concentration, and the accumulation mode geometric standard deviation (GSD) are all predicted by the model. The results are analysed and an in depth study on parameter importance is carried out.

Particulate emissions from Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) engines have been an important topic of recent research interest due to their known environmental effects. This review paper will characterise the influence of different gasoline direct injection fuel systems on particle number (PN) emissions. The findings will be reviewed for engine and vehicle measurements with appropriate driving cycles (especially real driving cycles) to evaluate effects of the fuel injection systems on PN emissions. Recent technological developments alongside the trends of the influence of system pressure and nozzle design on injector tip wetting and deposits will be considered. Besides the engine and fuel system it is known that fuel composition will have an important effect on GDI engine PN emissions. The evaporation qualities of fuels have a substantial influence on mixture preparation, as does the composition of the fuel itself.

Dual fuel injection systems, like PFI+DI (port fuel injection + direct injection system) are being increasingly used in gasoline engine applications to increase the engine performance, fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. At a given engine operating condition, the air/fuel error is a function of the fraction of fuel injected by each of the fuel systems. If the fraction of fuel from each of the fuel system is changed at a given operating condition, the fuel system error will change as well making it challenging to learn the fuel system errors. This paper aims at describing the adaptive fueling control algorithm to estimate the fuel error contribution from each individual fuel system. Considering the fuel injection system slope errors to be the significant cause for air-fuel errors, a model structure was developed to calculate the fuel system adaptive correction factor as a function of changing fraction of fueling between the fuel systems.

The regeneration process of a Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) consists of an increase in the engine exhaust gas temperature by using post injections and/or exhaust fuel injection during a period of time in order to burn previously trapped soot. The DPF regeneration is usually performed during a real drive cycle, with continuously changing driving conditions. The quantity of post injection/exhaust fuel to use for regeneration is calculated using a combination of an open loop term based on engine speed, load and exhaust gas flow and a closed loop term based on an exhaust gas temperature target and the feedback from a number of sensors. Due to the nature of the system and the slow response of the closed loop term for correcting large deviations, the authority of the fuel calculation is strongly biased to the open loop. However, the open loop fuel calculation might not be accurate enough to provide adequate temperature tracking due to several disturbances in the system.

Today numerical models are a major part of the diesel engine development. They are applied during several stages of the development process to perform extensive parameter studies and to investigate flow and combustion phenomena in detail. The models are divided by complexity and computational costs since one has to decide what the best choice for the task is. 0D models are suitable for problems with large parameter spaces and multiple operating points, e.g. engine map simulation and parameter sweeps. Therefore, it is necessary to incorporate physical models to improve the predictive capability of these models. This work focuses on turbulence and mixing modeling within a 0D direct injection stochastic reactor model. The model is based on a probability density function approach and incorporates submodels for direct fuel injection, vaporization, heat transfer, turbulent mixing and detailed chemistry.

Fuel cell vehicles are entering the automotive market with significant potential benefits to reduce harmful greenhouse emissions, facilitate energy security, and increase vehicle efficiency while providing customer expected driving range and fill times when compared to conventional vehicles. One of the challenges for successful commercialization of fuel cell vehicles is transitioning the on-board fuel system from liquid gasoline to compressed hydrogen gas. Storing high pressurized hydrogen requires a specialized structural pressure vessel, significantly different in function, size, and construction from a gasoline container. In comparison to a gasoline tank at near ambient pressures, OEMs have aligned to a nominal working pressure of 700 bar for hydrogen tanks in order to achieve the customer expected driving range of 300 miles.

Phthalates have been extensively used in rubbers formulation as plasticizer additive for PVC and NBR promoting processing parameters or for cost reduction. The most commonly used plasticizer in PVC compounds was di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) currently not recommend due toxicity. DEHP is listed as prohibited to the Global Automotive Declarable Substance List (GADSL). Phthalates alternatives are already available but the compatibility in automotive fuel system with biodiesel was not extensively understood. This aspect is important since plasticizer may migrate and change rubber properties. Tri-2-ethylhexyl trimellitate (TOTM) and di-2-ethylhexyl terephthalate (DEHT) were selected in this work as alternative additives to a rubber formulation since is not listed to GADSL and have good potential as plasticizer.

The AFR control accuracy in the cold start is crucial to lowering emissions from IC-engine vehicles. An artificial UEGO “sensor” for estimating the real-time AFR during the engine cold start has been developed on the basis of a fuel-perturbation algorithm at Ford Scientific Research Labs. The AFR values calculated by the artificial UEGO sensor have been used in the closed-loop fuel control. Considering that the engine cold start AFR is an uncertain, non-linear problem, some other techniques for optimizing the input stimulation signal and the output-filtering model are integrated together with the fuel perturbation. This artificial sensor was realized and its performance was tested on a Ford vehicle for EPA75 cold 505 test. The assessment of the artificial sensor was quite different in comparison with that of a real UEGO sensor.

In gasoline Powertrain systems, the evaporative emission control (EVAP) system canister purge valve (CPV) can be actuated by pulse-width modulated (PWM) signals. The CPV is an electronically actuated solenoid. The PWM controlled CPV, when actuated, creates pressure pulsations in the system. This pulsation is sent back to the rest of the EVAP system. Given the right conditions, the fill limit vent valve (FLVV) inside the fuel tank can be excited. The FLVV internal components can be excited and produce noise. This noise can be objectionable to the occupants. Additional components within the EVAP system may also be excited in a similar way. This paper presents a bench test method using parts from vehicle’s EVAP system and other key fuel system components.

The burn rate and the instantaneous in-cylinder heat transfer have been studied experimentally in a spray-guided direct-injection spark-ignition engine with three different fuels: gasoline, iso-octane and toluene. The effects of the ignition timing, air fuel ratio, fuel injection timing and injection strategy (direct injection or port injection) on the burn rate and the in-cylinder heat transfer have been experimentally investigated at a standard mapping point (1500 rpm and 0.521 bar MAP) with the three different fuels. The burn rate analysis was deduced from the in-cylinder pressure measurement. A two-dimensional heat conduction model of the thermocouple was used to calculate the heat flux from the measured surface temperature. An engine thermodynamic simulation code was used to predict the gas-to-wall heat transfer.

A jet pump (also known as ejector) uses momentum of a high velocity jet (primary flow) as a driving mechanism. The jet is created by a nozzle that converts the pressure head of the primary flow to velocity head. The high velocity primary flow exiting the nozzle creates low pressure zone that entrains fluid from a secondary inlet and transfers the total flow to desired location. For a given pressure of primary inlet flow, it is desired to entrain maximum flow from secondary inlet. Jet pumps have been used in automobiles for a variety of applications such as: filling the Fuel Delivery Module (FDM) with liquid fuel from the fuel tank, transferring liquid fuel between two halves of the saddle type fuel tank and entraining fresh coolant in the cooling circuit. Recently, jet pumps have been introduced in evaporative emission control system for turbocharged engines to remove gaseous hydrocarbons stored in carbon canister and supply it to engine intake manifold (canister purging).

Vehicle certification data are used to study the effectiveness of the major powertrain technologies used by car manufacturers to reduce fuel consumption. Methods for differentiating vehicles effectively were developed by leveraging theoretical models of engine and vehicle fuel consumption. One approach normalizes by displacement per unit distance, which puts both fuel used and vehicle work in mean effective pressure units, and is useful when comparing engine technologies. The other normalizes by engine rated power, a customer-relevant output metric. The normalized work/power is proportional to weight/power, the most fundamental performance metric. Certification data for 2016 and 2017 U.S. vehicles with different powertrain technologies are compared to baseline vehicles with port fuel injection (PFI) naturally aspirated engines and six-speed automatic transmissions.

Urea SCR is an established method to reduce NOx in dilute exhaust gas. The method is being used currently with stationary powerplants, and successful trials on motor vehicles have been conducted. The reason most often cited for rejecting urea SCR is lack of urea supply infrastructure, yet urea and other high nitrogen products are traded as commodities on the world market as a fertilizer grade, and an industrial grade is emerging. For a subset of commercial vehicles, urea can be provided by service personnel at designated terminals. But this approach does not support long distance carriers and personal use vehicles. The preferred delivery method is to add urea during vehicle refueling through a common fuel nozzle and fill pipe interface: urea / diesel co-fueling. Aqueous urea is well suited to delivery in this fashion.