Compression Ignition Engines
Clean Diesel Technologies for Greener Performance

Mechanical engineer Alan Kastengren examines a diesel injection nozzle used in Argonne's X-ray spray research.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established vehicle emissions regulations that are very challenging for traditional diesel engines to meet. As a result, fuel efficiency and engine performance are sacrificed to meet these regulations.

However, newer diesel engines are 99 percent cleaner, emit about 90 percent less soot and produce about 70 percent lower NO_x (nitrogen oxides) emissions. These advanced diesel engines use technologies that provide the opportunity to recover efficiency and performance by using recent engine technology advances.

Argonne uses a variety of diesel engines to perform research into technologies that improve efficiency and reduce emissions. These diesel engines range in size from locomotive engines and truck engines, to automotive engines.

GM Diesel Project

Argonne’s GM Diesel project uses advanced fuel injection and emissions control technology to evaluate different fuels and operational strategies. This work is related to the Advanced Photon Source (APS) fuel spray studies which use X-rays to provide information regarding injector characteristics. Both projects use identical injection hardware. As a result, the fundamental data from the APS injector studies provide insight into combustion characteristics observed in the GM Diesel engine.

Light-duty Engines Project

A 2009 vintage GM 1.9L turbo diesel is being used in experiments on alternative fuels (such as biodiesel) and to develop combustion sensing technology to allow the engine to automatically adapt to the different fuel blends it may see based on combustion signature, enabling optimized fuel efficiency and emissions reductions.

Heavy-duty Engines Project

A single-cylinder Caterpillar engine is being used to study the influence of different injection characteristics on efficiency and emissions formation. Argonne is studying the relationship between the fuel injection characteristics that are measured with X-rays at APS and the exhaust particulate emissions; specifically, the relationship between fuel atomization (droplet size) and primary soot particle size.

Gas-Diesel Hybrid Engine

Steve Ciatti, a mechanical engineer at Argonne, is heading a team to explore the possibilities of a gasoline-diesel engine. The result, so far, is cleaner than a diesel engine and has up to a 50 percent improvement in efficiency compared to conventional gasoline engines. Read more about this project.

Funding

This work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Program under Gurpreet Singh.

More

• Five Myths About Diesel Engines
• Combining Gas and Diesel Engines
• Could a Diesel Engine Run on Gasoline?
• Particulate Studies - Revealing the True Nature of Diesel Particulates
• Locomotive Engines - This project is funded by a Work-for-Others program with now Electro-Motive Diesel, Inc.

June 2011