Search Results

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles have the potential of combining the benefits of electric vehicle in terms of low emissions and internal combustion engine vehicles in terms of vehicle range. With the addition of a renewable fuel, the CO2 potential reduction increase even more. The last trends for PHEV are small combustion engine known as range extender, with battery package between full hybrid and electric powertrains. Thus, allowing an improvement in vehicle’s range, reducing battery materials while converting fuel energy through a highly efficient path. Although these vehicles have been proved to be a convenient strategy for decarbonizing the light vehicles, the use of alternative fuels is poorly studied. In this work, hydrous ethanol is chosen because is already available in some countries, such as USA and Brazil, and have an ultra-low well-to-tank CO2 emission.

In the last few decades a significant effort has been stablished in the automotive industry as well as in academic community towards increasing the renewable fuels applications in internal combustion engines, such as alcohol and gas derived sources. Meanwhile, turbo charging direct-injection spark-ignition engines have become fundamental features to achieve downsizing purposes, increasing power generation efficiency and attending high restrictive emissions regulations that have being taking place recently. For this study, experimental tests were carried out in a single cylinder research engine considering direct injection (DI) and port fuel injection (PFI) operations with anhydrous ethanol. The aim of this paper is to present a review and conduct further investigation about methodologies applied for imaging post processing considering chemiluminescence technique applied in an optical research engine.

Pressures on vehicle manufacturers to reduce emissions have resulted in an increased interest to improve fuel economy and enable use of fuels developed from renewable sources that can achieve a net reduction in the CO2 output per vehicle. The use of bio-gas fuels in internal combustion engines has become a real alternative to traditional liquid fuels derived from petroleum. To extract the maximum benefits from these emergent fuels through optimized engine design and calibration, a deep understanding of the behavior is necessary. The combustion process of a single cylinder research engine with optical access, four stroke PFI-SI, was experimentally investigated. High spatial resolution cycle resolved digital imaging, in the visible and UV spectral range was used to characterize the flame front propagation.