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The Swedish Biomimetics 3000's μMist® platform technology has been used to develop a radically new injection system. This prototype system, developed and characterized with support from Lotus, as part of Swedish Biomimetics 3000®'s V₂IO innovation accelerating model, delivers improved combustion efficiency through achieving exceptionally small droplets, at fuel rail pressures far less than conventional GDI systems and as low as PFI systems. The system gives the opportunity to prepare and deliver all of the fuel load for the engine while the intake valves are open and after the exhaust valves have closed, thereby offering the potential to use advanced charge scavenging techniques in PFI engines which have hitherto been restricted to direct-injection engines, and at a lower system cost than a GDI injection system.

There is a great deal of interest in new technologies to assist in reducing the CO2 output of passenger vehicles, as part of the drive to meet the limits agreed by the EU and the European Automobile Manufacturer's Association ACEA, itself a result of the Kyoto Protocol. For the internal combustion engine, the most promising of these include gasoline direct injection, downsizing and fully variable valve trains. While new types of spray-guided gasoline direct injection (GDI) combustion systems are finally set to yield the level of fuel consumption improvement which was originally promised for the so-called ‘first generation’ wall- and air-guided types of GDI, injectors for spray-guided combustion systems are not yet in production to help justify the added complication and cost of the NOx trap necessary with a stratified combustion concept.

Electrohydraulic and electromechanical valve train technologies for four-stroke engines are emerging which allow much greater flexibility and control of the valve events than can be achieved using mechanically-based systems. Much of the work done on exploiting the benefits of these systems has been directed towards improving engine fuel economy and reducing emissions. In the present work a study has been made, using an engine simulation program, in to some of the possible benefits to engine performance that may be facilitated by the flexibility of fully variable valve train (FVVT) systems. The simulation study indicates that FVVT systems, limited by realistic opening and closing rates, provide sufficient range in the valve event duration and timing to enable the engine to produce very high specific outputs whilst achieving a high level of torque in the low- and mid-speed range.