Onboard Optimisation of Engine Emissions and Consumption According to Diesel Fuel Quality

Eric Hermitte; Alain Lunati; Thaddaeus Delebinski

doi:10.4271/2012-01-1694

In response to the demand to lower CO2 emission, all engine developers face the challenge of drastically reducing fuel consumption. At the same time, they will need to meet future exhaust emission legislation by simultaneously employing internal measures and after treatment systems.

Additionally, they will have to deal with increasing fuel variability. As different properties can lead to very different behavior in engine operation, information onboard the vehicle providing the fuel composition would allow to adjust engine operating parameters accordingly, to make the most beneficial use of the available fuel quality. This will be obvious considering future diesel fuels blends, or the ever increasing amount of biodiesel content mixed into Diesel fuel, but could already be interesting considering existing fuel variability faced in Europe or America.

In this context, an innovative Fuel Quality Sensor technology [1] [2] has been developed: it provides detailed information about the molecular structure of the diesel fuel flowing to the engine as well as its biodiesel content.

In the context of the presented study, a matrix of 10 diesel fuels representative of real world fuel variability and including future trends in biodiesel introduction has been prepared, and systematically tested on a modern single cylinder engine, with a fully flexible engine parameters management.

First step was to test all fuels with basic Engine Control Unit (ECU) settings optimized for EN590 fuel, showing the impact of fuel variability on engine emissions and specific fuel consumption.

Second step was to investigate influence of several engine parameter (pilot and main injection, EGR rate, …) in order to understand the ways to optimise ECU settings for each fuel blend.

The final step will be a compensating algorithm, enabling the engine to run different fuel qualities with optimized emissions, fuel consumption and running behavior, using information from the Fuel Quality Sensor.

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Onboard Optimisation of Engine Emissions and Consumption According to Diesel Fuel Quality 2012-01-1694

SAE MOBILUS