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Automotive engines especially turbocharged diesel engines produce higher level of emissions during transient operation than in steady state. In order to improve understanding of the engine transients and develop advanced technologies to reduce the transient emissions, the engine researchers require accurate data acquisition and appropriate post-processing techniques which are capable of dealing with noise and synchronization issues. Four alternative automated methods namely FFT (Fast Fourier Transform), low-pass, linear and zero-phase filters were implemented on in-cylinder pressure. The data of each individual cycle was compared and analyzed for the suitability of combustion diagnostic. FFT filtering was the best suited method since it eliminated most pressure fluctuation and provided smooth rate of heat release profiles for each cycle.

The major characteristics of the combustion in Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engines, irrespective of the technological strategy used to enable the ‘controlled auto-ignition’, are that the mixture of fuel and air is preferably premixed and largely homogeneous. Ignition tends to take place simultaneously at multiple points and there is no bulk flame propagation as in conventional spark-ignition (SI) engines. This paper presents an experimental study of flame development in an optical engine operating in HCCI combustion mode. High resolution and high-speed charge coupled device (CCD) cameras were used to take images of the flame during the combustion process. Fuels include gasoline, natural gas (NG) and hydrogen addition to NG all at stoichiometric conditions, permitting the investigation of combustion development for each fuel. The flame imaging data was supplemented by simultaneously recorded in-cylinder pressure data.

The differences between modern diesel and gasoline engine configurations are now becoming smaller and smaller, and in fact will be even smaller in the near future. They will all use moderately high compression ratios and complex direct injection strategies. The HCCI combustion mode is likely to lead to the merging of gasoline and diesel engine technologies to handle the challenges they are facing, offering a number of opportunities for the development of the fuels, engine control and after-treatment. The authors' recent experimental research into the HCCI combustion quality of gasoline and diesel blend fuels has referred to the new combustion technology as ‘Dieseline’.

There is an increasing recognition of injector deposit (ID) formation in fuel injection equipment as direct injection spark ignition (DISI) engine technologies advance to meet increasingly stringent emission legislation and fuel economy requirements. While it is known that the phenomena of ID in DISI engines can be influenced by changes in fuel composition, including increasing usage of aliphatic alcohols and additive chemistries to enhance fuel performance, there is however still a great deal of uncertainty regarding the physical and chemical structure of these deposits, and the mechanisms of deposit formation. In this study, a mechanical cracking sample preparation technique was developed to assess the deposits across DISI injectors fuelled with gasoline and blends of 85% ethanol (E85).

While Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) is a promising combustion mode with significant advantages in fuel economy improvement and emission reductions for vehicle engines, it is subject to a number of limitations, for example, hardware and control complexity, or NOx and NVH deterioration near its operating upper load boundary, diminishing its advantages. Conventional spark-ignition combustion mode is required for higher loads and speeds, thus the operating conditions near the HCCI boundaries and their corresponding alternatives in SI mode must be studied carefully in order to identify practical strategies to minimise the impact of the combustion mode transition on the performance of the engine. This paper presents the results of an investigation of the combustion mode transitions between SI and HCCI, using a combination of an engine cycle simulation code with a chemical kinetics based HCCI combustion code.

The new fuel, 2, 5-dimenthylfuran, known as DMF, captured worldwide attention since the discovery of its new production method. As a potential bio-fuel, DMF is competitive to gasoline in many areas, such as energy density, combustion efficiency and emissions. However, little work has been performed on its unconventional combustion mode. In this work, high speed imaging and thermal investigation are carried out to study DMF and gasoline dual-injection on a single cylinder, direct injection spark ignition optical engine. This dual-injection strategy combines direct injection (DI) and port fuel injection (PFI) simultaneously which means two different fuels can blend in the cylinder with any ratio. It provides a flexible way to use bio-fuels with gasoline. DMF DI with gasoline PFI and ethanol DI with gasoline PFI are studied under different injection proportions (by volume) and IMEPs.

The application of Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) combustion to naturally aspirated engines has shown a much reduced usable load range as compared to spark ignition (SI) engines. The approach documented here applies inlet charge boosting to gasoline HCCI operation on an engine configuration that is typical for SI gasoline engines, in conjunction with residual gas trapping. The latter helps to retain the benefits of much reduced requirement for external heating. In the present work, the achievable engine load range is controlled by the level of boost pressure while varying the amount of trapped residual gas. In addition, it was found that there is a maximum amount of boost that can be applied without intake heating for any given amount of trapped residuals. NOx emissions decrease with increasing amounts of trapped residual.

In this research, propane flash boiling sprays discharged from a five-hole gasoline direct injector were studied in a constant volume vessel. The fuel temperature (Tfuel) ranged from 30 °C to 90 °C, and the ambient pressure (Pamb) varied from 0.05 bar to 11.0 bar. Different flash boiling spray behavior compared to that under sub-atmospheric conditions was found at high Pamb. Specifically, at the sub-atmospheric pressures, the individual flashing jets merged into one single jet due to the strong spray collapse. In contrast, at Pamb above 3.0 bar and Tfuel above 50 °C, the spray collapse was mitigated and the flashing jets were separated from each other. Further analyses revealed that the mitigation of spray collapse at high Pamb was ascribed to the suppression of jet expansion. In addition, it was found that the spray structure was much different at similar Rp, indicating that Rp lacked the generality in describing the structure of flash boiling sprays.

In this paper blends of diesel and gasoline (dieseline) fuelled Partially Premixed Compression Ignition (PPCI) combustion and the comparison to conventional diesel combustion is investigated. The tests are carried out using a light duty four cylinder Euro IV diesel engine. The engine condition is maintained at 1800 rpm, 52 Nm (equivalent IMEP around 4.3 bar). Different injection timings and different amounts of EGR are used to achieve the PPCI combustion. The results show that compared to the conventional diesel combustion, the smoke and NOx emissions can be reduced by more than 95% simultaneously with dieseline fuelled PPCI combustion. The particle number total concentration can be reduced by 90% as well as the mean diameter (from 54 nm for conventional diesel to 16 nm for G50 fuelled PPCI). The penalty is a slightly increased noise level and lower indicated efficiency, which is decreased from 40% to 38.5%.

In this paper, the microscopic spray characteristics of diesel, Rapeseed Methyl Ester (RME) and Gas-to-Liquid (GTL) fuel, were studied at different injection pressures and measuring positions using Phase Doppler Anemometry (PDA) technique and the velocity development and size distributions of the fuel droplets were analysed in order to understand spray atomisation process. The injection pressures ranged from 80MPa to 150MPa, and the measuring position varied from 20mm to 70mm downstream the nozzle. It was found that the data rate is quite low in the near nozzle region and at high injection pressure. Sauter Mean Diameter (SMD) of all fuels obviously decreases when the injection pressure increases from 80MPa to 120MPa; but the injection pressure has little promotion on the axial velocity of droplets.

For spark ignition (SI) engines, the optimum spark timing is crucial for maximum efficiency. However, as the spark timing is advanced, so the propensity to knock increases, thus compromising efficiency. One method to suppress knock is to use high octane fuel additives. However, the blend ratio of these additives cannot be varied on demand. Therefore, with the advent of aggressive downsizing, new knock mitigation techniques are required. Fortuitously, there are two well-known lower alcohols which exhibit attractive knock mitigation properties: ethanol and methanol. Both not only have high octane ratings, but also result in greater charge-cooling than with gasoline. In the current work, the authors have exploited these attractive properties with the dual-injection, or the dual-fuel concept (gasoline in PFI and fuel additive in DI) using pure ethanol and methanol.

The paper presents analysis of performance and emission characteristics of a common rail diesel engine operating with RME, with and without EGR. In both cases, the RME fuel was pre-heated in a heat exchanger to control its temperature before being pumped to the common rail. The studied parameters include the in-cylinder pressure history, rate of heat release, mass fraction burned, and exhaust emissions. The results show that when the fuel temperature increases and the engine is operated without EGR, the brake specific fuel consumption (bsfc) decreases, engine efficiency increases and NOx emission slightly decreases. However, when EGR is used while fuel temperature is increased, the bsfc and engine efficiency is independent of fuel temperature while NOx slightly increases.

Natural gas has a high auto-ignition temperature, requiring high compression ratios and/or intake charge heating to achieve HCCI (homogeneous charge compression ignition) engine operation. Previous work by the authors has shown that hydrogen addition improves combustion stability in various difficult combustion conditions. It is shown here that hydrogen, together with residual gas trapping, helps also in lowering the intake temperature required for HCCI. It has been argued in literature that the addition of hydrogen advances the start of combustion in the cylinder. This would translate into the lowering of the minimum intake temperature required for auto-ignition to occur during the compression stroke. The experimental results of this work show that, with hydrogen replacing part of the fuel, a decrease in intake air temperature requirement is observed for a range of engine loads, with larger reductions in temperature noted at lower loads.

With boosted HCCI operation on gasoline using residual gas trapping, the amount of residuals was found to be of importance in determining the boundaries of stable combustion at various boost pressures. This paper represents a development of this approach by concentrating on the effects of inlet valve events on the parameters of boosted HCCI combustion with residual gas trapping. It was found that an optimum inlet valve timing could be found in order to minimize NOx emissions. When the valve timing is significantly advanced or retarded away from this optimum, NOx emissions increase due to the richer air / fuel ratios required for stable combustion. These richer conditions are necessary as a result of either the trapped residual gases becoming cooled in early backflow or because of lowering of the effective compression ratio. The paper also examines the feasibility of using inlet valve timing as a method of controlling the combustion phasing for boosted HCCI with residual gas trapping.

Biodiesel is an oxygenated alternative fuel made from vegetable oils and animal fats via transesterification and the feedstock of biodiesel is diverse and varies between the local agriculture and market scenarios. Use of various feedstock for biodiesel production result in variations in the fuel properties of biodiesel. In this study, biodiesels produced from a variety of real world feedstock was examined to assess the performance and emissions in a light-duty engine. The objective was to understand the impact of biodiesel properties on engine performances and emissions. A group of six biodiesels produced from the most common feedstock blended with zero-sulphur diesel in 10%, 30% and 60% by volume are selected for the study. All the biodiesel blends were tested on a light-duty, twin-turbocharged common rail V6 engine. Their gaseous emissions (NOx, THC, CO and CO2) and smoke number were measured for the study.

Ethanol has long been regarded as the optimal gasoline-alternative biofuel for spark-ignition (SI) engines. It is used widely in Latin and North America and is increasingly accepted as an attractive option across Europe. Nevertheless, its low energy density requires a high rate of manufacture; in areas which are deficient of arable land, such rates might prove problematic. Therefore, fuels with higher calorific values, such as butanol or 2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF) deserve consideration; a similar yield to ethanol, in theory, would require much less land. This report addresses the suitability of DMF, to meet the needs as a biofuel substitute for gasoline in SI engines, using ethanol as the biofuel benchmark. Specific attention is given to the sensitivity of DMF to various engine control parameters: combustion phasing (ignition timing), injection timing, relative air-fuel ratio and valve timing (intake and exhaust).

Ethanol fuel blends with gasoline for spark ignition (SI) internal combustion engines are widely used on account of their advantages in terms of fuel economy and emissions reduction potential. The focus of this paper is to study the effects of these blends on combustion characteristics such as in-cylinder pressure profiles, gas-phase emissions (e.g., unburned hydrocarbons, NOx) and particulates (e.g., particulate matter and particle number) using both measurement campaigns and digital engineering workflows. Nineteen load-speed operating points in a 1L 3-cylinder GDI SI engine were measured and modelled. The measurements for in-cylinder pressure and emissions were repeated at each operating point for three types of fuel: gasoline (E0, 0% by volume of ethanol blend), E10 (10 % by volume of ethanol blend) and E20 (20% by volume of ethanol blend).

Gasoline and diesel, the two fuels with very different characteristics and with wide availability for conventional engine use, were blended as a HCCI engine fuel. Gasoline, with high volatility, easy vaporization and mixture formation, is used to form the homogeneous charge. Diesel fuel which has good ignitability and fast combustion at the conditions predominating in the HCCI environment, is used to dominate the auto-ignition and restrain the knocking combustion. It is expected that these two different fuels with opposite but complementary properties can be used to reach a good compromise in HCCI combustion. Experiments, conducted with moderate compression ratios (CR) and using two modes of HCCI control, i.e. intake heating with CR 15.0 and negative valve overlap (NVO) with CR 10.4, yielded results that prove this expectation.

Combustion behaviour and emissions characteristics of different blending ratios of diesel and gasoline fuels (Dieseline) were investigated in a light-duty 4-cylinder compression-ignition (CI) engine operating on partially premixed compression ignition (PPCI) mode. Experiments show that increasing volatility and reducing cetane number of fuels can help promote PPCI and consequently reduce particulate matter (PM) emissions while oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions reduction depends on the engine load. Three different blends, 0% (G0), 20% (G20) and 50% (G50) of gasoline mixed with diesel by volume, were studied and results were compared to the diesel-baseline with the same combustion phasing for all experiments. Engine speed was fixed at 1800rpm, while the engine load was varied from 1.38 to 7.85 bar BMEP with the exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) application.

Injection pressure oscillations are proven to determine considerable deviations from the expected mass flow rate, leading to the jet velocities non-uniformity, which in turn implies the uneven spatial distribution of A/F ratio. Furthermore, once the injector is triggered, these oscillations might lead the rail pressure to experience a decreasing stage, to the detriment of spray penetration length, radial propagation and jet break-up timing. This has urged the research community to develop models predicting injection-induced pressure fluctuations within the rail. Additionally, several devices have been designed to minimize and eliminate such fluctuations. However, despite the wide literature dealing with the injection-induced pressure oscillations, many aspects remain still unclear. Moreover, the compulsory compliance with environmental regulations has shifted focus onto alternative fuels, which represent a promising pathway for sustainable vehicle mobility.