Abstract Bengt Johansson

The internal combustion engine has been used for more than 100 years and is the
dominating choice for transport applications. The efficiency of the engine is dictated by the
thermodynamical processes that is used to convert the heat produced by combustion to
mechanical work on the piston. On top of that we have losses during the gas exchange
process and mechanical friction to consider. This presentation will start with showing that
the engine efficiency could reach 80% if we can get a best possible thermodynamic cycle in
place. The practical limits will then be discussed and the trade-off between thermodynamic
and mechanical efficiency highlighted. The temperature of the charge before combustion
will be shown to be important with high efficiency thermodynamics and the implications on
the possible combustion modes will discussed. A concept showing a great potential, called
Double Compression Expansion Engine, DCEE,, is shown.
Then combustion of hydrogen is discussed. The very high temperature before combustion in
the DCEE enables compression ignition of hydrogen, something that is not possible with
normal compression ratios. The resulting diffusion combustion is shown to be quite different
to conventional diesel combustion, CDC, and thus also should be optimized in a totally
different way. Evolution of combustion and gas exchange optimization of the H2 DCEE shows
a gradual improvement of brake thermal efficiency from 51 all the way to 60.3%

Bio Prof. Johansson

Prof. Johansson served as chair of the SAE Powertrain fuel and lubricants activity 2018-2022 and
before that he was chair of the engine combustion committee. He also been main or lead organizer
for numerous sessions with Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition, Partially Premixed
Combustion, High Efficiency Engines and others. He been organizer for more than ten SAE symposia
on High Efficiency Engines and HCCI. He is also told by SAE staff that he hold the record in number of
SAE papers published but that remains to be verified. Outside SAE he was a professor in Combustion
Engines at Lund University, Sweden, 2001-2015. He then moved to KAUST in Saudi Arabia for five
years but is back in Sweden at Chalmers University since 2021 heading the Combustion Engine
Research Center, CERC.