Ornella Chiavola

By Giancarlo Chiatti, Ornella Chiavola and Erasmo Recco

The employment of biofuels in blends with diesel oil proved to attain a reduced environmental impact without compromising the engine performance. Among biofuels, waste cooking oil offers the advantages of its reduced raw material cost in comparison with fresh vegetable oil cost; it also eliminates the environmental impacts caused by its disposal. Although a great number of researches has been devoted to biodiesel combustion in engines and pollutant emissions, few studies can be found on light duty diesel engine equipped with up-to-date technologies. This work aims at investigating the impact of waste cooking oil percentage in blends with diesel oil on the performance and emission characteristics of an up-to-date light and compact common rail diesel engine whose main application is in microcars and in urban vehicles. A comprehensive experimental activity was performed in the engine complete operative field. The comparison of the results with those obtained with standard ultralow-sulfur diesel highlighted that the engine performance was quite similar for B20 and diesel oil. B40 suffered for the lower caloric value in regard to diesel. A reduction in CO and HC was obtained with biodiesel blends, along with an increase in NOx. Particulate emissions were also reduced for biodiesel blends; the mean size of particles was smaller as regards diesel oil.

Part of the book: Improvement Trends for Internal Combustion Engines

By Ornella Chiavola, Erasmo Recco and Giancarlo Chiatti

An efficient control of the combustion process is required in order to comply with regulations on pollutant emissions from internal combustion engines. Literature presents investigations devoted to explore the potentiality of externally mounted sensor (speed sensor, microphone, and accelerometer) for combustion diagnosis. A relationship exists between the combustion event measured via an in‐cylinder pressure transducer and engine block vibration measured via an accelerometer. Time and frequency domain processing of acquired signals highlighted the correlation between parameters able to characterize the combustion development and features derived from the engine block vibration data. A methodology was developed by the authors that demonstrated to be suitable for real‐time estimation of combustion progress based on engine vibration. A two‐cylinder common rail diesel engine of small displacement was tested; two configurations were investigated, naturally aspirated, and turbocharged. The in‐cylinder pressure and block vibration signals were acquired and processed in time and frequency domains. The vibrational components mainly related to the combustion process were extracted, and indicators of the combustion positioning were computed. The angular positions of start of combustion (SOC) and MFB50 computed via the heat release curve by means of the in‐cylinder pressure measurements were compared to those obtained by means of the accelerometer signal. High correlation coefficients were obtained for the data acquired during the testing of both naturally aspirated and turbocharged configurations in the complete engine operative field.

Part of the book: Improvement Trends for Internal Combustion Engines