RCCI hope for more efficient and lower cost truck engines

austingreen · Jun 26, 2015

The news of a possible mazda/toyota hybrid diesel small crossover vehicle made me remember an interesting technology from my undergrad's newsletter

Best-ever efficiency points to clean, green gas-diesel engine

Instead, the elaborate monitoring system shows that the engine can convert 59.5 percent of the chemical energy in its fuel into motion — significantly better than the 52 percent maximum in modern diesel truck engines.
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Pretty cool performance boost.

But the test engine is not strictly speaking a diesel engine. Instead, it burns diesel and gasoline in a ratio that is precisely controlled to exploit each fuel’s strong points. Sensors and a computer can vary the mixture with split-second timing, creating an engine that runs much cooler than conventional gas or diesel engines. That temperature reduction is key to efficiency, because less heat is lost to the engine block and the radiator, Reitz says.

He calls the system reactivity controlled compression ignition, or RCCI. A group of students in the Engine Research Center on campus have just installed an engine using these principles into an electric hybrid version of a 2009 Saturn, and have begun road tests.
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High efficiency is only one benefit of the RCCI system. To burn cleanly, conventional diesel engines pressurize the injected fuel up to 3,000 times atmospheric pressure. The RCCI system, working at 300 atmospheres, offers a major cost saving.

The high temperature operation of conventional gasoline and diesel engines forms nitrogen oxides — the key source of smog. “With the low-combustion temperature, we produce insignificant amounts of nitrogen oxides,” Reitz says. “And if you can run with the ideal mix between fuel and air, you don’t have regions in the combustion chamber that make soot. Soot and nitrogen oxides — the two biggest problems for diesel — are eliminated.”
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Pretty cool stuff. I also heard of a similar idea combining liquified natural gas and diesel. The trick is to move it out of the college lab and into a engine manufacturer.

Proving that a great idea works will not guarantee its adoption, Reitz realizes, and so he has made the results known to the 30 members of the Direct-Injection Engine Research Consortium. He says continued pressure to reduce fuel usage, greenhouse gases and other pollutants “could lead manufacturers to look at alternative combustion strategies. My approach is to make it as widely known as possible, and see where it goes.”
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RCCI hope for more efficient and lower cost truck engines

austingreen Senior Member

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RCCI hope for more efficient and lower cost truck engines

austingreen Senior Member