Search Results

The search for alternative fuel for transport vehicles and also replacement of internal combustion engines in order to reduce the harmful emissions have been forcing the vehicle manufacturers to innovate new technology solutions for meeting the stringent legislative targets. Mexico’s commitment for de-carbonisation of transport sector and meeting the environmental goals is shaping it especially, and with this, it favours the move towards electrification of the vehicles. The aim of the present work is to numerically evaluate the possibility of replacing the IC engine in the existing hybrid vehicles with the Hydrogen fuel cell system. This work modelled a Hydrogen fuel cell vehicle based on Toyota MIRAI and validated the fuel economy performance of the vehicle using experimental data. This validated model was used to estimate the fuel economy for real-world drive cycles generated in 2019 from Mexico City.

The present work attempted to investigate the performance and emission characteristics of a diesel engine using conventional diesel fuel with mixtures of animal and vegetable derived bio-diesel that are available in Mexico and ultra low sulphur diesel with varying proportions. This work aimed at studying the performance of the engine at representative ambient conditions of Mexico City which is at an altitude of 2240m above sea level. The work identified that the levels of CO in the exhaust has a strong correlation with the proportion of bio-diesel in the conventional diesel fuel used. However, the performance of the engine, torque and power, are not affected significantly by varying the proportion of animal and bio-derived fuels in diesel fuel. In addition it also identified the correlation between the proportions of bio-diesel in diesel with the engine out particulate matter and the performance of diesel oxidation catalyst.

This study attempted to identify the correlation between the gaseous species and nano-scale exhaust particles from a gasoline engine using simultaneous particulate and gaseous measurement. A fast particle spectrometer for particulates and a quadrupole mass spectrometer for gaseous species were employed in this work. Two commercially available super unleaded gasoline fuels were used in this study to establish a link between the gaseous species and nano-scale particulates. The possible correlations between the gaseous species such as acetylene, 1, 5 hexadyne, toluene, benzene and furaldehyde and nano-scale particles were identified and are detailed in this paper.

The present work evaluated the performance of a EURO-IV vehicle for real-world driving in Mexico City. This work also attempted to identify if it was possible to reduce green house gas emission and fuel consumption for real-world driving in Mexico City by using vehicle technology available in EURO-IV certified vehicles. It used three different drive cycles representing typical driving conditions in North, South and Central zones of Mexico City. These drive cycles were developed using a single instrumented-experimental vehicle and the data collected from 200 trips over a year covering peak and off-peak driving conditions. This work used a vehicle-powertrain model of a EURO-IV vehicle, which was validated by the authors using experimental data for four other drive cycles that represented typical driving conditions in the United Kingdom.

Recent developments in measurement techniques enabled researchers to measure ultra-fine particulates of nano-scale range and provided more evidence that the smaller particulates typically emitted from gasoline engines may have more severe impacts on human respiratory system than the bigger particulates from diesel engines. The knowledge of the characteristics of particulates from gasoline engines, especially, the effect of fuel borne additives is sparse. This work presents the findings from a study into the effect of aftermarket additives on nano-scale particulates. Four commercially available fuel borne additives used in gasoline engines mainly by private vehicle owners in the United Kingdom were selected for this study. The combustion and emission performance of the additive fuels were compared against that of commercially available gasoline fuel using a 4-stroke, throttle body injected gasoline engine.