Grant: Automotive Partnership Canada Project

In-line with the growing interests in renewable fuels worldwide, this research team will, in close collaborationwith industrial and academic partners, utilize the established research capabilities of the Clean CombustionEngine Laboratory (CCEL), to make significant progresses and breakthroughs on the enabling of ultraclean andefficient combustion in the advanced diesel and gasoline engines, especially when using the bio-source derivedfuels. Extensive research has been performed at Windsor, to explore the compliance of the advanced hardwaredesign and the combustion control strategies to biofuels and the other fuel property departures. Comprehensiveair and fuel management strategies are developed to raise the fuel efficiency significantly and to cut the exhaustemissions drastically. However, the implementation concerns are yet to be fully addressed, and the controlhurdles overcome, by new research efforts from the collective expertise of the collaborative partners. Thetechnique of low temperature combustion, to which the Windsor group has a lead worldwide, are to be appliedto the bio-ethanol and blends in combustion, via an energy and volume controlled ignition strategy thatincludes igniting by the adaptive arcing, diesel pilot, and other innovative ignition techniques. A cluster ofunique corona discharge techniques have been explored at CCEL to present an ignition corona pulse-train ofvariable volume and duration that are suitable to ignite a lean and diluted cylinder charge, especially whenusing an alcohol fuel. Due to the polar structure of alcohol molecule, the application of corona ignition in abio-ethanol mixture could possess significant advantage over the conventional fossil fuels such as gasoline anddiesel. The advanced techniques of CCEL, i.e. the ignition control algorism of multi-fuel combustion and themulti-mode combustion controller including the corona system, will directly contribute the product innovationsof the industrial partners, and broadly benefit the other worldwide engine manufacturers. The project aims at afuel efficiency significantly exceeding that of the current gasoline engines, and an emission standard moststringent worldwide, in addition to directly benefit Canada and China.