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NOx emissions from diesel passenger vehicles affect the atmospheric environment. It is difficult to evaluate the NOx emissions influenced by environmental conditions such as humidity and temperature, traffic conditions, driving patterns, etc. In the authors’ previous study, real-driving experiments were performed on city and highway routes using a diesel passenger car with only an exhaust gas recirculation system. A statistical prediction model of NOx emissions was considered for simple estimations in the real world using instantaneous vehicle data measured by the portable emissions measurement system and global positioning system. The prediction model consisted of explanatory variables, such as velocity, acceleration, road gradient, and position of transmission gear. Using the explanatory variables, NOx emissions on the city and highway routes was well predicted using a diesel vehicle without NOx reduction devices.

The authors have explored the potential of fuel to control spray and its combustion processes in a diesel engine. Fuel has some potential for low emission and high thermal efficiency because its volatility and ignitability are one of the ultimate performing factors of the engines. In present study, the ignition process of mixed fuel spray was investigated in a constant volume combustion vessel and in a rapid compression and expansion machine, The ignition delay based on the diagram of rate of the heat release, the imaging of natural flame emissions and the numerical simulation were carried out to clarify the effect of the physical and chemical properties of mixed fuel on ignition characteristics.

N₂O is known to have a significantly high global warming potential. We measured N₂O emissions in engine-bench tests by changing the NO/NH₃ ratio and exhaust gas temperature at the oxidation catalyst inlet in a heavy-duty diesel engine equipped with a urea SCR (selective catalytic reduction) system. The results showed that the peak N₂O production ratio occurred at an exhaust gas temperature of around 200°C and the maximum value was 84%. Moreover, the N₂O production ratio increased with increasing NO/NH₃. Thus, we concluded that N₂O is produced via the NO branching reaction. Based on our results, two methods were proposed to decrease N₂O formation. At low temperatures ~200°C, NO should be reduced by controlling diesel combustion to lower the contribution of NO to N₂O production. This is essential because the SCR system cannot reduce NOx at low temperatures.

A variable valve timing (VVT) mechanism was applied to achieve premixed diesel combustion at higher load for low emissions and high thermal efficiency in a light duty diesel engine. By means of late intake valve closing (LIVC), compressed gas temperatures near the top dead center are lowered, thereby preventing too early ignition and increasing ignition delay to enhance fuel-air mixing. The variability of effective compression ratio has significant potential for ignition timing control of conventional diesel fuel mixtures. At the same time, the expansion ratio is kept constant to ensure thermal efficiency. Combining the control of LIVC, EGR, supercharging systems and high-pressure fuel injection equipment can simultaneously reduce NOx and smoke. The NOx and smoke suppression mechanism in the premixed diesel combustion was analyzed using the 3D-CFD code combined with detailed chemistry.

NOx selective reducing catalysts are expected to be used for lean-burn gasoline engines and diesel engines as an effective NOx reduction measure. We are interested in the combination of methanol, as a reducing agent, and alumina catalyst, and have considered the NOx reduction method using effectively much unburned methanol. In this report, in order to investigate the effect of NOx reduction by the alumina catalyst, the experiment was carried out by feeding the actual exhaust gas from the methanol engine into the alumina catalyst. As a result, it was confirmed that, without addition of any other reducing agents into the exhaust gas, the alumina catalyst has activity to reduce NOx.

Reduction of exhaust emissions and BSFC has been studied using a high boost, a wide range and high-rate EGR in a Super Clean Diesel, six-cylinder heavy duty engine. In the previous single-turbocharging system, the turbocharger was selected to yield maximum torque and power. The selected turbocharger was designed for high boosting, with maximum pressure of about twice that of the current one, using a titanium compressor. However, an important issue arose in this system: avoidance of high boosting at low engine speed. A sequential and series turbo system was proposed to improve the torque at low engine speeds. This turbo system has two turbochargers of different sizes with variable geometry turbines. At low engine speed, the small turbocharger performs most of the work. At medium engine speed, the small turbocharger and large turbocharger mainly work in series.

A natural gas direct injection test engine equipped with a newly developed natural gas injector was built. High total hydrocarbon (THC) emission at part-load and high NOx emission at high-load remain as problems for direct injection natural gas engines. THC reduction and combustion improvement by throttling and NOx reduction by EGR were investigated. The following results were obtained: (1) the combustion at light and medium load conditions is improved by throttling. It is possible to improve the thermal efficiency at light-load in spite of the pumping loss by throttling. THC emissions are greatly decreased in this condition; (2) a large NOx reduction can be obtained without combustion deterioration by appropriate EGR at high-load conditions; and (3) it is possible to decrease both THC and NOx emissions by both throttling and EGR at part-load conditions.

In this study, we investigated the combustion technology for the direct injection (DI) methanol engine for a heavy-duty vehicle that makes use of the fuel characteristics of methanol and achieves smokeless burning with high efficiency and low NOx emissions under the heavy load condition. A 3.3-liter 4-cylinder spark-assisted DI methanol engine was tested to investigate the combustion and NOx emission characteristics under the full load condition with supercharging and/or EGR. We believe that supercharging suppressed the stratified charge combustion, but accelerated the premixed combustion to increase the indicated mean effective pressure. Moreover, supercharging was helpful in carrying out EGR under the full load condition without deteriorating the thermal efficiency. Furthermore, heavy EGR during supercharging reduced the NOx emissions dramatically while maintaining the high thermal efficiency and controlling the unburned hydrocarbons emissions.

The effects of methanol and EGR on HCCI combustion of dimethyl ether have been tested separately in a diesel engine. The engine was equipped with a common rail injection system which allowed for random injection of DME. The engine could therefore be operated either as a normal DI CI engine or, by advancing the injection timing 360 CAD, as an HCCI engine. The compression ratio of the engine was reduced to 14.5 by enlarging the piston bowls. The engine was operated in HCCI mode with DME at an equivalence ratio of 0.25. To retard the combustion timing, methanol was port fuel injected and the optimum quantity required was determined. The added methanol increased the BMEP by increasing the total heat release and retarding the combustion to after TDC. Engine knock was reduced with increasing quantities of methanol. The highest BMEP was achieved when the equivalence ratio of methanol was around 0.12 at 1000 RPM, and around 0.76 at 1800 RPM. EGR was also used to retarding the timing.

Degradation of the deNOx performance has been found in in-use heavy-duty vehicles with a urea-SCR system in Japan. The causes of the degradation were studied, and two major reasons are suggested here: HC poisoning and deactivation of pre-oxidation catalysts. Hydrocarbons that accumulated on the catalysts inhibited the catalysis. Although they were easily removed by a simple heat treatment, the treatment could only partially recover the original catalytic performance for the deNOx reaction. The unrecovered catalytic activity was found to result from the decrease in conversion of NO to NO2 on the pre-oxidation catalyst. The pre-oxidation catalyst was thus studied in detail by various techniques to reveal the causes of the degradation: Exhaust emission tests for in-use vehicles, effect of heat treatment on the urea-SCR systems, structural changes and chemical changes in active components during the deactivation were systematically investigated.

To find a clue to reduction techniques for Nitrous Oxide (N2O) emission from three-way catalyst equipped vehicles, four test samples of three-way catalysts with typical noble metal compositions were fabricated by way of experiment and their N2O formation characteristics have been experimentally studied. Then, these catalyst samples were conditioned artificially by aging with real automotive exhaust gas and the N2O formation characteristics after aging has been also observed. As results, catalyst temperature zones and concentration levels of N2O formation varies greatly by the catalyst composition. In general, a catalyst with lower metal content showed lower N2O mass emission at both fresh and after aging conditions. The tendency of the increase in N2O mass emission due to the deterioration is also different among the tested catalyst samples.

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.

In recent years, the dimethyl ether (DME) fuel has been attracting attention as an alternative engine in terms of diesel utilization. This is (a) because its cetane number is close to that of diesel fuel, (b) an innovative chemical process has been developed to produce DME efficiently from natural gas and coal, and (c) DME as a fuel has fewer environment-polluting characteristics than diesel fuel. Inasmuch as DME fuel have lower molecular weights, a molecular C-O bond, and are much more volatile or evaporative than diesel fuel, it is possible to control particulate matters much more easily when DME is used instead of diesel fuel. As for NOx, however, even when using DME, there still remain problems under stringent exhaust gas regulations. Developed and optimized accordingly has been the NOx storage-reduction (NSR) system, using the DME engine with a common-rail injection system. The NSR system is coated with an NOx storage catalyst principally comprised of Pt and Rh.

To establish NOx Storage Reduction(NSR) system, the effect of post fuel injection in exhaust pipe with rich spike on NOx conversion rate was investigated. With post fuel injection, a higher injection pressure and the rich spike close to the NSR catalyst (just before the NSR catalyst) shows better NOx reduction performance. Based on these results, exhaust emission was tested in transient driving mode (JE-05). In this driving mode test, it was possible to reduce NOx emission less than 0.5 g/kWh for only a 1% of fuel penalty controlling the rich spike injection precisely.

Recently, after-treatment techniques for diesel engine emission have made remarkable progress with the development of suitable De-NOx catalysts. The urea-injection SCR system is one of the candidates for a high efficiency De-NOx method for diesel engine emissions. This system reduces NOx through a reaction with ammonia (NH3) that is generated from injected urea. In this system, it is very important to control the amount and timing of the urea injection so as to minimize the NH3 gas slip. Therefore, NH3 gas measurement is becoming important during the development of NOx after-treatment systems even though NH3 is not a target component of the current emission regulations. In this paper, a new NH3 gas analyzer utilizing a chemi-luminescence detection (CLD) method has been developed. The new NH3 analyzer consists of dual detectors (DCLDs) and a furnace for a NH3 oxidization catalyst. Real-time concentration of NH3 can be calculated from the difference of NOx readings of two detectors.

Exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) was applied in a spark-assisted, direct-injection (Dl) neat methanol engine for light duty vehicles. An experimental study has been carried out to analyse for major factors of EGR that influence in the reduction of NOx mass emission and improvement in brake thermal efficiency. EGR on the Dl methanol engine alters intake charge, especially increasing the concentrations of H2O and unburned methanol with rising intake charge temperature. The results of qualitative analyses show that this phenomenon suppresses rapid heat generation at the initial combustion stage, therefore lowering the combustion temperature in the cylinders and leading to a reduction in NOx production.

Reduction of exhaust emissions and BSFC was studied for high pressure, wide range, and high EGR rates in a Super-clean Diesel six-cylinder heavy duty engine. The GVW 25-ton vehicle has 10.52 L engine displacement, with maximum power of 300 kW and maximum torque of 1842 Nm. The engine is equipped with high-pressure fuel injection of a 200 MPa level common-rail system. A variable geometry turbocharger (VGT) was newly designed. The maximum pressure ratio of the compressor is about twice that of the previous design: 2.5. Additionally, wide range and a high EGR rate are achieved by high pressure-loop EGR (HP-EGR) and low pressure-loop EGR (LP-EGR) with described VGT and high-pressure fuel injection. The HP-EGR can reduce NOx concentrations in the exhaust pipe, but the high EGR rate worsens smoke. The HP-EGR system layout has an important shortcoming: it has great differences of the intake EGR gas amount into each cylinder, worsens smoke.

The emission reduction from diesel engines is one of major issues in heavy duty diesel engines. Super Clean Diesel (SCD) Engine for heavy-duty trucks has also been researched and developed since 2002. The main specifications of the SCD Engine are six cylinders in-line and 10.5 l with a turbo-intercooled and cooled EGR system. The common rail system, of which the maximum injection pressure is 200 MPa, is adopted. The turbocharger is capable of increasing boost pressure up to 501.3 kPa. The EGR system consists of both a high-pressure loop (HP) EGR system and a low-pressure loop (LP) EGR system. The combination of these EGR systems reduces NOx and PM emissions effectively in both steady-state and transient conditions. The emissions of the SCD Engine reach NOx=0.2 g/kWh and PM=0.01 g/kWh with aftertreatment system. The adopted aftertreatment system includes a Lean NOx Trap (LNT) and Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF).

Effects of measurement method, coolant temperature and fuel composition on soot emissions were examined by engine experiments. By reducing the pressure fluctuation in the sampling line, the measured soot emissions with better stability and reproducibility could be obtained. With lower coolant temperatures, larger soot emissions were yielded at much advanced fuel injection timings. Compared to gasoline, soot emissions with a blend fuel of normal heptane, isooctane and toluene were significantly decreased, suggesting the amounts of aromatic components (toluene or others) should be increased to obtain a representative fuel for the predictive model of particulate matter in SIDI engines.

In this study, an experimental investigation was conducted using a direct injection single-cylinder diesel engine equipped with a test common rail fuel injection system to clarify how dimethyl ether (DME) injection characteristics affect the heat release and exhaust emissions. For that purpose the common rail fuel injection system (injection pressure: 15 MPa) and injection nozzle (0.55 × 5-holes, 0.70 × 3-holes, same total holes area) have been used for the test. First, to characterize the effect of DME physical properties on the macroscopic spray behavior: injection quantity, injection rate, penetration, cone angle, volume were measured using high-pressure injection chamber (pressure: 4MPa). In order to clarify effects of the injection process on HC, CO, and NOx emissions, as well as the rate of heat release were investigated by single-cylinder engine test. The effects of the injection rate and swirl ratio on exhaust emissions and heat release were also investigated.