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2009-01-0944

Partially Premixed Combustion at High Load using Gasoline

and Ethanol, a Comparison with Diesel

Vittorio Manente, Bengt Johansson and Per Tunestal

Lund University

This is a work of the Swedish Government.

ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION

This paper is the follow up of a previous work and its
target is to demonstrate that the best fuel for a
Compression Ignition engine has to be with high Octane
Number.
An advanced injection strategy was designed in order to
run Gasoline in a CI engine. At high load it consisted in
injecting 54 % of the fuel very early in the pilot and the
remaining around TDC; the second injection is used as
ignition trigger and an appropriate amount of cool EGR
has to be used in order to avoid pre-ignition of the pilot.
Substantially lower NOx, soot and specific fuel
consumption were achieved at 16.56 bar gross IMEP as
compared to Diesel. The pressure rise rate did not
constitute any problem thanks to the stratification
created by the main injection and a partial overlap
between start of the combustion and main injection.
Ethanol gave excellent results too; with this fuel the
maximum load was limited at 14.80 bar gross IMEP
because of hardware issues.
Applying the commonly used PPC injection strategies to
Gasoline resulted in higher pressure oscillations after
combustion and the heat transfer was enhanced. It was
shown that this problem can be somehow solved by
employing a late pilot injection, unfortunately the
combustion is diffusion controlled and there is an
increase in fuel consumption as compared to the
strategy previously described.
The viability of having low fuel consumption, NOx, soot
and pressure rise rate using high ON fuels in a CI
engine was demonstrated using a Scania single cylinder
truck engine with 2 liters displacement volume running at
1100 rpm.
Classical Diesel combustion has always offered the
advantage of high brake efficiency with the main
drawback in substantial emissions of soot and NOx.
Tighter emission regulation are pushing researchers and
vehicle manufactures in developing cleaner engines and
at the same time keeping low fuel consumption which is
the main requirement from a customer point of view. In
the last two decades efforts have been put in realizing a
combustion process as efficient as the classical
compression ignition one (CI) with low output emissions.
A milestone in the history of CI engine was put by Onishi
in ’79 [1]. Using a two stroke engine he developed the
concept of “Active Thermo-Atmosphere Combustion”, a
fairly homogeneous mixture is compressed until
autoignition which takes place simultaneously all over
the combustion volume. Because of the homogeneity
and relatively fast combustion, the process was highly
efficient with low NOx and soot production. In ’83 Najt
and Foster tried this concept on a 4-stroke engine
achieving low emissions and fuel consumption as in the
previous case [2]; the process was named
Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition, HCCI.
From that moment on many studies were performed on
this novel combustion process. All of them led to the
conclusion that HCCI is suitable at low – medium loads
and control issues seem to have a not negligible impact.
Because the combustion starts simultaneously in the
combustion chamber and the mixture is homogeneously
distributed (at high loads) the pressure rise rate is high
and this puts a threshold on the maximum load at which
HCCI can operate. The second issue is the combustion

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control; because HCCI relies on the spontaneous
autoignition all the variables that surround the
combustion process affect the phasing of the
combustion.
In order to control the combustion and keep the pressure
rise rate below a certain threshold many solutions were
proposed. Nissan developed the MK concept [3, 4];
Diesel fuel is injected relatively early and by substantial
increase swirl and cooled EGR, the combustion starts
when the injection is over. Toyota proposed the UNIBUS
concept [5], a pilot injection is used to create a
homogeneous mixture and with the main injection the
combustion is triggered; unfortunately this solution can
not be used in the whole operating range of the engine
since at high load the pilot injection might autoignite
before the main. Different injection and EGR strategies
were studied in order to keep low emissions and fuel
consumption [6, 7, 8, 9].
The main target of all these concepts was to separate
the end of injection, EOI, from the start of combustion,
SOC, mainly using cold EGR and lowering the
compression ratio. With Diesel type of fuel this is
something viable at lower loads but at e.g. 15 bar IMEP
Andersson showed that up to 80% of cold EGR are
needed for separating the two events [10]. In 2008
Toyota developed a concept in order to minimize the fuel
consumption and NOx [11]. Boosting the engine 3 bar
abs with 51% of EGR at 17 bar IMEP Yoshihiro got 161
g/kWh like gross indicated fuel consumption and 16 ppm
of NOx, the SOC was not separated from the EOI and
this resulted in a smoke number of 5 FSN.
In ’06 and ’07 a pioneer work was done by Kalghatgi in
history of the CI engines [12, 13], he stated that the best
fuel for Partially Premixed Combustion, PPC, is a high
Octane Number, ON, fuel. The statement was based on
the following arguments; because high Octane Number
fuels have higher resistance to autoignition they need
less EGR in order to separate the EOI from the SOC as
compared to Diesel counterpart. With only 20% of EGR
at 13 bar IMEP he was able to get 0.4 g/kWh of NOx
and AVL smoke opacity of 0.9% and indicated gross
specific fuel consumption of 174 g/kWh.
This paper is dealing with PPC combustion using high
ON fuels. A previous study performed by the authors
showed that Gasoline type of fuels need less EGR in
order to accomplish low NOx and Soot [14], this can be
seen in Figure 1. Unfortunately a full separation between
the EOI and SOC, as in Diesel PPC, resulted in high
pressure oscillations after combustion which enhanced
the heat transfer and led to higher specific fuel
consumption for a given load.
9
Diesel
8 lambda: 1.84 [-] Gasoline
Specific NOx Emissions [g/kWh]
7
6
5
4
3
2 EGR: 25.89 [%]
EGR: 43.81 [%]
1
0
0 2 4 6 8 10
Soot [FSN]
Figure 1: NOx-Soot tradeoff for Diesel and Gasoline at
11.87 bar IMEP [14].
The present paper is divided in three sections:
1. Start of Pilot Injection Sweep using Gasoline.
The target was to understand where to place the
pilot in order to decrease the pressure
oscillations after the start of combustion thus
lowering the heat transfer rate and improving the
fuel consumption.
2. Using the previous result, Gasoline and Ethanol
where compared to Diesel at 14.82 bar gross
IMEP.
3. An advanced injection strategy was developed
for Gasoline running in PPC mode; this was
compared with classical Diesel combustion with
pilot injection.
EXPERIMENTAL APPARATUS
The engine used during the experiments is a single
cylinder CI Scania D12 with flat cylinder head and the
production shallow bowl piston see Figure 2 and Figure
3. The compression ratio was 17:1 and the engine
specifications can be found in Table 1. The engine was
boosted by supplying compressed air with an external
compressor. Figure 4 shows a schematic of the EGR
system. In order to use high EGR rates the back
pressure had to be raised 0.2 bars higher than the intake
pressure by throttling the exhaust, thus forcing exhaust
gases into the intake manifold if the EGR valve is
opened. The EGR rate was calculated as the ratio of
CO2 in the intake and exhaust. The inlet temperature
was measured 30 cm from the intake port with a K type
thermocouple; a PID regulator was used to keep the
temperature within r2.5 K from the desired value.
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Pressure Compressed Air

Regulator

Heater

EGR
cooler
Brake Engine

Backpressure EGR valve

Valve

Figure 2: Scania D12 single cylinder. Figure 4: Exhaust Gas Recirculation System.

The airflow into the engine was computed by measuring

the relative air fuel ratio, O, and the fuel flow which was
obtained using a gravity scale with a precision of r0.02
g. In order to have accurate measurements of the fuel
flow, each operative point was sampled for 6 minutes.
The fuel was injected by using a first generation
prototype Bosch common rail system. The injector had 8
holes with a diameter of 0.18 mm, 120 degrees umbrella
angle. The rail pressure was kept constant at 1500 bar
for the first two experiments while in the third one
because of pump issues the pressure was 1000 bar.
The current control system allowed a maximum of two
injections per cycle.
The exhaust gasses were measured with the following
Figure 3: Shallow bowl piston used during the devices: CO, CO2, HC, O2 with a Cusson Technology
experiments. AB equipment, NOx with a ECO Physics CLD 700 EL
unit and the smoke with an AVL opacimeter.
Table 1: Geometric properties of the Scania D12 engine. The cylinder pressure was measured with a Kistler 7061
Displaced volume 1966 cc B pressure transducer and data were acquired every 0.2
CAD, 300 pressure traces were acquired for each
Stroke 154 mm operative point. The pressure traces were pegged and
the gross heat release was obtained as described in [20,
Bore 127.5 mm 21].
Connecting Rod 255 mm
FUELS
Compression ratio 17:1
This advanced combustion concept was tested both with
Number of Valves 4 commercial fuels as well as with Ethanol (99.5% by
Exhaust Valve Open 34° BBDC @ 0.15 mm lift volume). The commercial fuels were low-sulphur
Gasoline (Swedish 98 Octane) and Diesel (Swedish
Exhaust Valve Close 6° BTDC @ 0.15 mm lift MK1). The fuel properties can be found in Table 2.

Inlet Valve Open 2° BTDC @ 0.15 mm lift Table 2: Fuels Properties.

Inlet Valve Close 29° ABDC @ 0.15 mm lift CN [-] RON [-] LHV [MJ/kg]
Gasoline - 98.00 43.20
Swirl Ratio 1.7 (2.9 if modified) Swedish MK1 54.00 - 43.80
Ethanol - 107.00 29.00
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EXPERIMENTS
260 Gross Specific Fuel Consumption [g/kWh]
Three experiments were performed. Max Pressure Rise Rate 10*[bar/CAD]
240

1. Start of pilot injection sweep with Gasoline at 220

14.82 bar gross IMEP, EGR: 0 %. 200

180
2. Ethanol and Gasoline compared with Diesel at
160
14.80 bar gross IMEP, EGR: 25 %.
140
3. Advanced injection strategy testing for Gasoline. 120
A comparison was done with classical Diesel at 100
35.22 bar fuel MEP1, EGR: 37 %.
80
-80 -60 -40 -20
The three experiments were run at 308 K as inlet SOI Pilot [TDC]
temperature, 2.43 bar absolute inlet pressure. The
combustion phasing was adjusted by selecting the Figure 5: Maximum pressure rise rate and gross
appropriate start of main injection. indicated specific fuel consumption as a function of the
start of pilot injection.
More details can be found throughout the text in the
paragraph Results.
140
RESULTS

Single Cycle Cylinder Pressure [bar]

135
START OF THE PILOT INJECTION SWEEP
130
A sweep in start of the pilot injection is presented. The
fuel used was Gasoline, the engine was running at 1100 125
SOIp: -80 [TDC]
rpm, the load was 14.82 bar IMEP, the combustion SOIp: -20 [TDC]
120
phasing was set at 10.66 TDC (r0.26 CAD) and the
EGR rate was 0 %. A previous study showed that 115
injecting high ON fuels in a CI engine using a single
injection results in high pressure oscillations immediately 110
succeeding the combustion event [14]. It was shown that
those oscillations are able to enhance the heat transfer 0 5 10 15 20
CAD
resulting in higher specific fuel consumption and in
second instance high acoustic noise. By changing the Figure 6: Single cycle pressure trace with start of
level of fuel stratification (through the start of the pilot injection of the pilot at -80 and -20 TDC.
injection) the target was to reduce the high pressure
oscillation. The sweep was performed from -80 to -20
TDC, the amount of fuel injected with pilot was 20%. To prove that the fuel consumption is reduced because
Figure 5 shows the trends of pressure rise rate and fuel of less heat loss rather than lower exhaust and/or lower
consumption as a function of the start of the pilot emission losses (CO, HC and H2), an energy analysis
injection. By increasing the level of stratification the was done as a function of the start of the pilot injection.
maximum pressure rise rate drops from 25.06 to 9.93 The energy balance can be written as2:
bar/CAD (-60 %) while the gross specific fuel
consumption improves from 188.57 to 180.28 g/kWh (- IMEPgross FUEL _ MEP  Emission _ MEP 
(1)
4.4 %). In Figure 6 the variation of the maximum  Heat _ Transfer _ MEP  Exhaust _ MEP
amplitude of the pressure oscillation with the position of
the pilot can be seen.

2 The terms in Equation 1 are expressed in bar since the energy has
1 The fuel MEP is defined as: the total fuel energy per cycle divided by
been divided with the displacement volume. This can allow an easier
the displacement volume.
comparison among engines of different sizes.
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The losses of Equation 1 are shown in Figure 7. A fairly

1.4
flat behavior of the exhaust and emission losses can be
seen on the other hand a decrement in heat transfer is 1.2
observed when the level of stratification is increased.
The diagram shows very low levels of emission losses 1
as a result of the combustion efficiency higher than 98
%. 0.8

0.6
12 Soot/2 [FSN]
NOx [g/kWh]
0.4
10
0.2

8
0
Losses [bar]

-80 -60 -40 -20

SOI Pilot [TDC]
6
Figure 8: NOx and soot as a function of the start of the
4 Emission
pilot injection.
Exhaust
2 Heat Transfer

800
0 SOIp: -80 [TDC]
-80 -70 -60 -50 -40 -30 -20 700 SOIp: -60 [TDC]
Start of Pilot Injection [TDC] SOIp: -40 [TDC]
600 SOIp: -20 [TDC]
Figure 7: Emission, heat transfer and exhaust losses as
a function of the start of the pilot injection. RoHR [J/CAD]
500

400

300

To place the pilot injection at -20 TDC resulted in lower 200

maximum pressure rise rate and fuel consumption
100
because of an increase in fuel stratification level which
led to less severe pressure oscillations. The level of 0
stratification affects the emissions which will be now -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20
CAD [TDC]
examined. Figure 8 shows the NOx and soot trend as a
function of the position of the pilot injection, the usual Figure 9: Variation of the shape of the rate of heat
trade-off between these two pollutants is observed. By release with different start of pilot injection timings.
advancing the SOIp NOx increases as a results of higher
combustion temperatures and relatively low O, 1.95. The
increase in temperature level with advanced combustion Figure 10 shows CO and HC trends. By retarding the
can be seen in Figure 9. By advancing the SOI the pilot injection HC decreases up to 36% because of less
maximum rate of heat release is increasing, assuming wall and piston wetting. On the other hand CO at the
that combustion rate and temperature are linked trough beginning decreases because of less over-mixing
an exponential Arrhenius expression, between air and fuel (low temperature), and later it
increases again because of the under-mixing (lack of
>products @ >reactants @a ˜ const _ 1˜ exp§¨ T ·¸ , this O2).
t ¨ const _ 2 ¸
© ¹
proves the hypothesis of higher local combustion
temperature. In the case of soot advanced SOI results in
higher homogeneity of the mixture thus less particulate,
on the other hand retarded injection is responsible of
higher stratification hence an increase in soot level.
 Downloaded from SAE International by American Univ of Beirut, Monday, July 30, 2018

result of over-mixing between air and fuel in the

9
peripheral regions of the combustion chamber while the
CO
8 10*HC second is the product of wall and piston wetting. Ethanol
7
produces much more CO and HC as compared to
Specific Emissions [g/kWh]

Gasoline as a result of the injection duration of the pilot,

6 1 and 0.45 ms respectively.
5

4 4
Ethanol
3 3.5 Gasoline
Diesel
2
3
1
2.5

Emissions
0
-80 -60 -40 -20 2
SOI Pilot [TDC]
1.5
Figure 10: CO and HC as a function of the start of the
pilot injection. 1

0.5
HIGH LOAD: GASOLINE AND ETHANOL, A
0
COMPARISON WITH DIESEL CO/4 [g/kWh] HC [g/kWh] NOx [g/kWh] Soot [FSN]

The behavior of Gasoline and Diesel was characterized Figure 11: Specific emissions for Ethanol, Gasoline and
at 14.80 bar gross IMEP and was compared with Diesel. Diesel.
The engine was running at 1100 rpm, combustion
phasing set at 10.31 TDC (r0.40 CAD) and EGR rate 25
% which corresponds to O 1.56. The load could not be The normalized gross specific fuel consumption is
increased further because of hardware constraints; the shown in Figure 12. As compared to Figure 5, in Figure
first was related to the dyno which could not absorb 12, Gasoline has a gross specific fuel consumption of
more than 15 bar BMEP while the second issue was 178.46 instead of 180.28 g/kWh, ~ -1 %. This is thought
common rail related. The common rail was from Bosch to be the result of lower heat rejection since the EGR is
and it was first prototype generation, because of its able to lower the peak combustion temperature thus less
relatively low injection pressure, 1500 bar, the main heat flux to the combustion chamber surface. When
injection could not be longer than 1.8 ms otherwise the Gasoline is compared with Diesel, the lower fuel
interaction between injection and combustion would consumption of about 3.33 % is thought to be the
have led to an excess of smoke. Knowing the limitations consequence of shorter combustion duration, CA90-10,
coming from the common rail and dyno, with Gasoline 20.39 instead of 23.33 CAD. The most amazing result of
and Diesel the injection strategy was implemented as Figure 12 is the very low normalized gross specific fuel
follow: 1.8 ms in the main injection and 0.45 in the pilot consumption of Ethanol: 165.30 g/kWh. Figure 13 clearly
which was placed at -20 TDC. In the case of Ethanol, indicates that this is due to higher thermal efficiency,
which has a lower heating value, the duration of the pilot 47.63 %, as compared to Diesel and Gasoline. In order
was 1 ms at -20 TDC while the main as in the previous to clarify this major achievement the rate of heat release
case. is analyzed, see Figure 14. Figure 14 shows that both
Gasoline and Diesel are burning in diffusion controlled
Figure 11 shows the specific emissions for Ethanol, mode while with Ethanol a major kinetically controlled
Gasoline and Diesel. Ethanol and Gasoline have an combustion is followed by a diffusion combustion tail. As
ignition delay of 10.15 and 6.60 CAD (CA1 - SOIm) shown in many HCCI papers, e.g. [16], kinetically
respectively while Diesel starts to burn 7.80 CAD after controlled combustion has the main advantage of fairly
the pilot injection. For the high Octane Number fuels high thermal efficiency which leads to high indicated
such long ignition delay resulted in lower NOx and soot efficiency (low fuel consumption) as compared to the
production as compared to Diesel because of the higher classical combustion processes. The question that now
homogeneity of the mixture during combustion. The needs to be answered is why with Gasoline it was not
advantage of the molecular structure of Ethanol can be possible to achieve the same result when for instance in
seen in Figure 11 when soot emissions are considered. the “Start of Pilot Injection Sweep” section the pilot was
Because of its high hydrogen to carbon ratio, H/C, and set at -80 or in [14] when the start of the combustion was
very short carbon chain (only 2 carbons), Ethanol fully separated from the end of injection. Because optical
produces less soot as compared to more complex measurements were not performed the authors have to
hydrocarbons which have at least 17 carbon atoms and give a plausible guess based on the available data.
a H/C ratio of 1.7 - 1.8 [15]. As it can be seen in Figure When the pilot is placed at -80, the rate of heat release
11 the long ignition delay has the main drawback of trace in Figure 9 suggests that in the combustion
higher CO and HC production; the first specie is the chamber there are many zones with a near to

stoichiometric air/fuel ratio which resulted in a violent
release of heat as it can be seen from the initial slope
and oscillations after the peak. As shown by Tsurushima
[17] pressure oscillations are able to break the thermal
boundary layer thus enhancing the heat flux which
results in higher fuel consumption when the load is kept
constant; this can also be seen in Figure 7: lower
pressure rise rate leads to less heat loss. The pretty
poor efficiency of Gasoline in [14] is the result of knock
in a fairly HCCI combustion mode as explained using the
results found by Tsurushima [17]. In the case of Ethanol
35 % of the fuel was injected in the pilot; considering its
long ignition delay it is possible to assume that at the
moment of the ignition there were not many rich zones
and this resulted in a smooth and kinetically controlled
heat release rate as it can be seen in Figure 14. LIF
measurements and/or chemiluminescence images are
needed for validating this hypothesis.
Normalized Gross Specific Fuel Consumption [g/kWh]
185
180
175
170
165
160
Ethanol
Figure 12: Normalized gross specific fuel consumption
for Ethanol, Gasoline and Diesel.
50
49
48
47
Efficiency [%]
46
45
44
43
42
41
40
Ethanol
Figure 13: Net Indicated, Thermal and Combustion
efficiencies for Ethanol, Gasoline and Diesel.
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1000
900 Ethanol
Gasoline
800
Diesel
700
RoHR [J/CAD]
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
-20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20
CAD [TDC]
Figure 14: Rate of heat release traces for Ethanol,
Gasoline and Diesel.
DEVELOPING AN ADVANCED COMBUSTION
CONCEPT
Based on the results found for Ethanol in the previous
paragraph, the authors developed an advanced
combustion process for high Octane Number fuels that
have to run in compression ignition engines. Like with
UNIBUS [5] there are two injections, the first is very
early in the compression stroke and it is needed in order
to create a homogeneous mixture, the second one is
around TDC and it is necessary in order to create a
certain level of stratification for achieving autoignition.
The concept might be seen as a hybrid between
Gasoline Diesel UNIBUS and fumigation combustions, the difference
consists in the fact that at high load (16.56 bar gross
IMEP in this paper) up to 54.54 % of the fuel is injected
in the pilot then a certain amount of EGR is used in
order not to achieve autoignition of the pilot and finally
around TDC the remaining fuel is injected and
autoignition is achieved through charge stratification.
The concept was tested using Gasoline and it was
compared with Diesel. In order to have a fair comparison
the two fuels were tested with two injection strategies.
Diesel had a pilot injection at -15 TDC, the fuel amount
was 10 %, and the remaining at -10, while Gasoline had
54.54 % of fuel in the pilot at -60 TDC while the rest at -
5; with both the amount of EGR was set at 37 % which
corresponds to O 1.23. The running conditions were the
followings: engine speed 1100 rpm, combustion phasing
Indicated was 8.51 TDC and constant fuel flow for both fuels:
Combustion/2
Thermal 35.22 bar Fuel MEP.
Figure 15 and Figure 16 show the pressure trace, rate of
Gasoline Diesel
heat release and injection signal for Gasoline and Diesel
under the running conditions previously described. With
Diesel classical diffusion combustion is achieved and no
sign of a premixed spike is visible thanks to the use of
the pilot injection. In the case of Gasoline the
combustion is mainly kinetically controlled with a small
tail of diffusion combustion most probably due to the
overlap between the last moments of the injection and
combustion. Thanks to the overlap between combustion
 Downloaded from SAE International by American Univ of Beirut, Monday, July 30, 2018

and main injection (which resulted in a certain level of
stratification) it was possible to have low maximum
pressure rise rate 14.67 bar/CAD (the author did not
hear any annoying noise from the test cell as for
instance in [14]); this value is comparable to the limit
used by the heavy duty diesel engines manufactures, 15
bar/CAD. In terms of combustion stability this advanced
combustion concept seemed to show the same features
of HCCI combustion, the coefficient of variation of IMEP
and standard deviation of CA50 were 1.57 % and 0.19
CAD respectively, on the other hand in the case of
Diesel 3.18 % and 0.40 CAD.
200
Diesel respectively. Once again because of the lower
heterogeneity during combustion with Gasoline, soot are
21 % lower as compared to Diesel. The particulate
levels can be substantially reduced by using updated
injection hardware; it is important to remark that another
reason for such levels of soot has to be found in the
common rail pressure. In this experiment the pressure
was 1000 bar and not 1500 as in the previous paragraph
because of pump related issues during the experiments.
2.5
Gasoline
Diesel
2

180
RoHR/5 [J/CAD]
1.5

Emissions
160 Pressure [bar]
Needle Lift [a.u.]
140
1
120

100
0.5
80

60
0
40 CO/10 [g/kWh] HC [g/kWh] NOx [g/kWh] Soot/10 [FSN]

20
Figure 17: CO, HC, NOx and soot for Gasoline and
0
-60 -50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 Diesel.
CAD [TDC]

Figure 15: Ensemble averaged cylinder pressure, rate of

heat release and injection signal for Gasoline at high Figure 18 displays the gross specific fuel consumption
load. both for Gasoline and Diesel, the difference is relevant
174.03 and 185.69 g/kWh respectively. By analyzing
Figure 19 it is possible to understand that the reduction
of 6.28 % in fuel consumption has to be attributed to the
200
thermal efficiency: 47.79 and 43.25 % respectively for
180
RoHR/5 [J/CAD]
Gasoline and Diesel. This was possible because of the
160 Pressure [bar] faster combustion rate of Kinetic controlled combustion
140
Needle Lift [a.u.] as compared to the Diffusion counterpart; the
combustion duration (CA10-90) in the case of Gasoline
120
was 16.84 CAD while for Diesel 23.34.
100

80
190
60
Gross Specific Fuel Consumption [g/kWh]

188
40
186
20
184
0
-60 -50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 182
CAD [TDC]
180
Figure 16: Ensemble averaged cylinder pressure, rate of 178
heat release and injection signal for Diesel at high load.
176

174
In Figure 17 the emissions level are presented for 172
Gasoline and Diesel. In terms of HC and CO Gasoline is
170
showing higher levels as compared to Diesel mainly Gasoline Diesel
because of the high amount of fuel of the first injection.
In terms of NOx Gasoline is able to achieve 0.12 g/kWh Figure 18: Gross specific fuel consumption for Gasoline
while Diesel 0.17; the reduction of almost 30% has to be and Diesel.
attributed to the higher level of homogeneity during
combustion for Gasoline. In terms of soot the FSN levels
are high for both fuels: 5.85 and 7.40 for Gasoline and
 Downloaded from SAE International by American Univ of Beirut, Monday, July 30, 2018

drawback is a notable increase in fuel consumption [10,

50
18] which is a major issue from a customer point of view.
In 2008 Yoshihiro proved that it is possible to achieve
low NOx (16 ppm) and low gross fuel consumption (161
g/kWh) at 17 bar gross IMEP. This was accomplished by
45 using high boost (3 bar abs), high compression ratio
Efficiency [%]

(18:1), 51 % of EGR and 2000 bar common rail

40
Indicated
Combustion/2
Thermal
35
Gasoline
Figure 19: Net Indicated, Thermal and Combustion
efficiencies for Gasoline and Diesel.
The energy losses analysis is presented in Figure 20. As
explained in the case of Figure 17, the Emission loss is
higher for Gasoline because of the amount of fuel
injected in the pilot, the Exhaust losses are about the
same while a substantial difference is found in Heat
Transfer loss: 7.09 and 9.19 bar for Gasoline and Diesel
respectively (-22.85 %). This reduction was possible
thanks to three factors: fast combustion duration,
minimization of the pressure oscillations after the
combustion event (as previously mentioned they would
have led to higher heat transfer [17]) and reduction of
the radiative heat transfer (less soot for Gasoline see
Figure 17).
10
9
pressure. According to the opinion of the authors the
main drawbacks of this solution are the substantial
amount of EGR and the high common rail pressure
which is necessary in order to have short combustion
duration thus lower fuel consumption (in Diffusion
controlled combustion mode); despite the high common
rail pressure soot levels are still high because of the
Diesel EGR rate and diffusion combustion (~ 5 FSN). In this
work the authors proposed a viable alternative in order
to have low fuel consumption and emissions. The idea
consisted in using the long ignition delay of high ON
fuels in order to improve the homogeneity of the mixture
when the combustion starts thus resulting in lower NOx
and soot production, and low fuel consumption because
the combustion is kinetically controlled. This paper and a
previous one [14] have underlined the fact that when
Gasoline is used in a compression ignition engine, the
injection strategy has to be rethought and the rules used
in Diesel PPC are not any longer applicable (otherwise
as it has been shown in this paper and in [14] high heat
rejection can be experienced). In the last paragraph of
the section “Results” an advanced combustion concept
is shown, this is able to achieve a contemporary
reduction of emissions and fuel consumption. With 1000
bar less in the common rail as compared to Yoshihiro,
this combustion process was able to obtain almost the
same soot level; this means that with a better hardware
and higher swirl Gasoline PPC can offer also low soot
level as compared to the solution presented in [11].

8
The proposed combustion strategy is similar to UNIBUS
Gasoline [5] but the main advantage relay on the maximum load
7
Diesel achievable 16.52 bar IMEP in this work and 6-8 bar in
6 the case of the Toyota strategy (the numbers are
[bar]

5 estimated from [5]). This was possible thanks to the

4 higher resistance to autoignition of Gasoline as
3
compared to Diesel.
2
Kalghatgi showed some work on the effects of injecting
1 Gasoline in a compression ignition engine [12, 13]. His
0 idea was to fully separate the start of the combustion
Emission Exhaust Heat Transfer
Losses Source with the end of injection, to achieve the goal he used a
compression ratio of 14 boosting the engine 1 bar. At 16
Figure 20: Emission, heat transfer and exhaust losses bar IMEP he obtained 179 g/kWh as fuel consumption,
for Gasoline and Diesel. 0.06 FSN for smoke and 0.6 g/kWh for NOx with 35 % of
EGR. According to the authors this strategy might have
problems at idle since this compression ratio might not
DISCUSSION
be enough to ignite Gasoline without using high inlet
temperature. A preliminary work on idle (performed by
Very stringent emissions regulations are pushing
the authors and not reported in the paper) has shown
engineers to develop advanced combustion processes
that combining together the compression ratio of 17 with
and more efficient aftertreatment systems. From a
the appropriate mixture stratification is able to ignite
compression ignition engine standpoint, so far it has
Gasoline at 1.5 bar IMEP without a need of outrageous
been proved that working on the combustion process
inlet temperatures.
emissions can be substantially reduced but the main
 Downloaded from SAE International by American Univ of Beirut, Monday, July 30, 2018
CONCLUSIONS
The current work has underlined two main points: a
Compression Ignition engine can properly run with high
Octane Number fuels and the way of injecting fuels has
to be rethought.
The conclusions that can be withdrawn from this paper
are:
x Pressure oscillations after the combustion event
are able to enhance the heat transfer thus
resulting in higher fuel consumption. The
problem can be solved by appropriately
selecting the amount and the position of the pilot
injection.
x Gasoline, Ethanol and Diesel were compared at
14.80 bar gross IMEP with 25 % of EGR. Due to
the longer ignition delay, high ON fuels have
lower NOx and soot production, as compared to
Diesel, because of the lower heterogeneity at
the moment of the ignition. Because of the long
ignition delay HC and CO were higher in the
case of Gasoline and Ethanol.
x Because of the higher thermal efficiency
Gasoline and Ethanol have a gross specific fuel
consumption of 178 and 165 g/kWh
respectively, while Diesel 184.
x The very low fuel consumption of Ethanol is the
result of an almost totally kinetically controlled
combustion rather than diffusion controlled as in
the case of Gasoline and Diesel. Pressure
oscillations after combustion were avoided
because of the appropriate fuel stratification.
x Based on the previous found an advanced
injection strategy was developed for Gasoline at
high load. It consisted in injecting 54.54 % of the
fuel in the pilot at -60 TDC and the remaining
around TDC. The stratification created by the
main was used to ignite the fuel. An appropriate
amount of EGR had to be selected in order to
avoid pre-ignition of the pilot.
x The advanced injection strategy was compared
with the classical Diesel combustion with pilot;
EGR rate, fuel flow and combustion phasing
were kept constant. The result was a gross fuel
consumption of 174 g/kWh, NOx 0.12 g/kWh,
Soot 5.85 FSN for Gasoline while for Diesel:
186, 0.17 and 7.40. Soot levels can sound high
but as described in the paper there were
limitations due to the hardware that can be
solved with an update injection system.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to acknowledge the Competence
Center Combustion Processes, KCFP, for the financial
support.
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CONTACT IMEP Indicated Mean Effective Pressure
Vittorio Manente LHV Lower Heating Value
Lund University LIF Laser Induced Fluorescence
Department of Energy Sciences NOx Nitrogen dioxide and monoxide
e-mail: vittorio.manente@energy.lth.se O2 Oxygen molecule
ON Octane Number
PPC Partailly Premixed Combustion
RoHR Rate of Heat Release
SOC Start Of Combustion
SOIp Start Of Injection, pilot
T Temperature
TDC Top Dead Center
O Relative air fuel ratio