Optimization of piston bowl and valve system in compression ignition engine fueled with gasoline/diesel/polyoxymethylene dimethyl ethers for high efficiency

Polyoxymethylene dimethyl ethers, with excellent volatility and oxygen content of up to 49%, have great potential to improve engine performance and emission characteristics. In this study, experiments were carried out in a single-cylinder engine fueled with gasoline/diesel/polyoxymethylene dimethyl ethers blend fuel using multiple premixed compression ignition combustion mode along with engine optimization to exploit the high-efficiency potential. The thermal efficiency was increased by 9.4 percentage points after transforming the combustion mode from conventional diesel mode to gasoline/diesel/polyoxymethylene dimethyl ethers multiple premixed compression ignition mode. A fully variable valve system and a redesigned low-heat-transfer piston were used to further improve the thermal efficiency. The low-heat-transfer piston had a 15% lower area–volume ratio compared with the original ω-type piston. By replacing the original ω-type piston with the low-heat-transfer piston, the heat transfer loss was reduced by 2.29 percentage points and thus indicated thermal efficiency could be increased by 2.37 percentage points, which was up to 50.03%. On the basis of the low-heat-transfer piston, indicated thermal efficiency could be further increased to 51.09% with the application of fully variable valve system due to the longer ignition delay and more premixed combustion. At the same time, NO_X emissions could be controlled below 0.4 g/kW·h using high exhaust gas recirculation ratio, which equaled the NO_X emission limit of Euro VI standard. Although soot emissions could be increased due to weak turbulence and insufficient intake charge using the low-heat-transfer piston and fully variable valve system, it was still lower than those of the original diesel engines.