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Advancing intake valve timing shortly after engine crank and run-up can potentially reduce vehicle cold start hydrocarbon (HC) emissions in port fuel injected (PFI) engines equipped with intake variable cam timing (iVCT). Due to the cold metal temperatures, there can be significant accumulation of liquid fuel in the intake system and in the cylinder. This accumulation of liquid fuel provides potential sources for unburned hydrocarbons (HCs). Since the entire vehicle exhaust system is cold, the catalyst will not mitigate the release of unburned HCs. By advancing the intake valve timing and increasing valve overlap, liquid fuel vaporization in the intake system is enhanced thereby increasing the amount of burnable fuel in the cylinder. This increase in burnable HCs must be countered by a reduction in injector-delivered fuel via a compensator that reacts to cam movement.

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the efficiency and emissions of an engine fuelled with a mixture of natural gas and approximately 15% hydrogen by volume. This mixture, called Hythane™, was compared with natural gas fuel using engine efficiency and engine-out emissions at various engine operating conditions as the basis of comparison. Throughout most of the experiment, fuel mixtures were slightly rich of stoichiometry. It was found that at low engine loads, using the same spark timing, engine efficiency increased under HythaneTM fuelling but at higher engine loads, natural gas and Hythane™ had the same efficiency. At low engine speed and load conditions with the same spark timing, engine-out total hydrocarbon (THC) emissions were lower for Hythane™ fuelling. When compared on a carbon specific basis, however, natural gas hydrocarbon emissions were lower. At some test conditions, engine-out carbon monoxide (CO) emissions were lower under Hythane™.