Current Progress of Jatropha Curcas Commoditisation as Biodiesel Feedstock: A Comprehensive Review

This article looks at the national and global actors, social networks, and narratives that have influenced Jatropha’s worldwide acceptability as a biofuel crop. Jatropha Curcas is a genus of around 175 succulent shrubs and trees in the Euphorbiaceae family (some of which are deciduous, such as Jatropha Curcas L.). It’s a drought-tolerant perennial that thrives in poor or marginal soil and produces a large amount of oil per hectare. It is easy to grow, has a fast growth rate, and can generate seeds for up to 50 years. Jatropha Curcas has been developed as a unique and promising tropical plant for augmenting renewable energy sources due to its various benefits. It is deserving of being recognised as the only competitor in terms of concrete and intangible environmental advantages. Jatropha Curcas is a low-cost biodiesel feedstock with good fuel properties and more oil than other species. It is a non-edible oilseed feedstock. Thus it will have no impact on food prices or the food vs fuel debate. Jatropha Curcas emits fewer pollutants than diesel and may be used in diesel engines with equivalent performance. Jatropha Curcas also makes a substantial contribution to the betterment of rural life. The plant may also provide up to 40% oil yield per seed based on weight. This study looks at the features characteristics of Jatropha Curcas as biodiesel feedstock and performance, and emissions of internal combustion engine that operates on this biodiesel fuel.

System Optimization of Shared Mobility in Suburban Contexts

Shared mobility is a viable choice to improve the connectivity of lower-density neighbourhoods or suburbs that lack high-frequency public transportation services. In addition, its integration with new forms of powertrain and autonomous technologies can achieve more sustainable and efficient transportation. This study compares four shared-mobility technologies in suburban areas: the Internal Combustion Engine, Battery Electric, and two Autonomous Electric Vehicle scenarios, for various passenger capacities ranging from three to fifteen. The study aims to provide policymakers, transportation planners, and transit providers with insights into the potential costs and benefits as well as system configurations of shared mobility in a suburban context. A vehicle routing problem with time windows was applied using the J-Horizon software to optimize the costs of serving existing intra-community demand. The results indicate a similar fleet composition for Battery Electric and Autonomous Electric fleets. Furthermore, the resulting fleet for all four technologies is dominated by larger vehicle capacities. Due to the large share of driver cost in the total cost, the savings using a fleet of Autonomous Electric Vehicles are predicted to be 68% and 70%, respectively, compared to Internal Combustion and Battery Electric fleets.

The Effects of Backpressure on the Performance of Internal Combustion Engine and Automobile Exhaust Thermoelectric Generator

The maximum generated power of automobile exhaust thermoelectric generator (AETEG) can be enhanced by applying inserted fins to its heat exchanger, for the temperature difference of thermoelectric modules (TEMs) is increased. However, the heat exchanger will result in undesired backpressure, which may deteriorate the performance of the internal combustion engine (ICE). To evaluate the backpressure on the performance of both the ICE and the AETEG, the model of ICE integrated with AETEG was established with the GT-power software and validated with the AETEG test bench. The heat exchangers with chaos shape and fishbone shape were proposed, their pressure drop with different engine speeds was studied, and their effects on the performance of both the AETEG and the ICE were analyzed. The results showed that compared with the fishbone-shaped structure, the pressure drop of chaos-shaped heat exchanger is larger at the same engine speed, which contributes to the increased maximum power and hot side temperature of the AETEG. Moreover, compared with the ICE without heat exchanger, the brake torque, brake power, volumetric efficiency and pumping mean effective pressure of the ICE assembled with chaos-shape and fishbone-shape heat exchanger reduce, and the corresponding brake specific fuel consumption, CO emission and CO2 emission increase because of the raised backpressure caused by the heat exchanger.

GAS DISTRIBUTION PHASES HYDRAULIC CONTROLLED INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE VALVES

The efficiency of an agricultural car or tractor depends on the characteristics of the engine determined by the gas distribution mechanism (GRM). Traditional timing with fixed valve timing does not provide high-quality gas exchange at all engine operating modes. The aim of the work is to improve the characteristics of the engine by using the hydraulic drive of the timing valves. The drive allows you to turn off individual valves, set the moments of their opening and closing in an arbitrary way, provide several triggering of the internal combustion engine valves during the operating cycle. The drive is controlled by an electronic control unit (ECU). The advantage of the drive is its ease of integration into the internal combustion engine. The hydraulic drive ensures that the timing valves are lifted to a height of about 14 mm. The law of displacement of the valve, revealed experimentally, is close to trapezoidal. The use of a hydraulic valve drive has a positive effect on the "time-section" factor in the area of low and medium crankshaft rotational speeds. The increment of the factor "time-section" is due to the significant speeds of opening and closing the valves. Due to the peculiarities of the kinematic characteristics of the movement of the valves when using a hydraulic drive for their movement, the use of serial phases of gas distribution of the engine is impractical. Numerical modeling of the operation of the internal combustion engine determined the regularity of the change in valve timing from the high-speed operating mode of the engine. Optimization criterion is the achievement of maximum engine power. When choosing the valve timing, the possibility of meeting the intake and exhaust valves with the engine piston was excluded. The use of optimal phases leads to an increase in power up to 4.5% at a low crankshaft speed. With an increase in the speed mode, the increase in power decreases, and with a high frequency of rotation of the crankshaft, its slight decrease (1.4%) is observed. An increase in torque, up to a power utilization factor of 0.9, and its subsequent decrease, allow stabilizing the vehicle speed on a road with variable resistance. An increase in the working pressure in the hydraulic drive of the valves makes it possible to intensify gas exchange even at a high speed of rotation of the crankshaft

Ducted Wind Turbine in Generating Set Air Flow

The growing need to use renewable sources and the current difficulty in spreading the electricity grid in a widespread manner raise the question of how to respond to the need for more electricity immediately. The idea behind this study is to power a horizontal axis wind turbine with the air flow generated for cooling a stationary internal combustion engine. The power extracted from this solution is significantly lower than that of the internal combustion engine (about 0.3%) and could be advantageous only in limited contexts. Installation costs are limited because many elements deriving from wind variability can be removed or simplified.

Investigation of the Contribution of Deceleration Fuel Cut-off and Start/Stop Technologies to Fuel Economy by Considering New European Driving Cycle

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions released into the atmosphere cause climate change and air pollution. One of the main causes of GHG emissions is the transportation sector. The use of fossil fuels in internal combustion engine vehicles leads to the release of these harmful gases. For this reason, since 1992, several standards have been introduced to limit emissions from vehicles. Technologies such as reducing engine sizes, advanced compression-ignition or start/stop, and fuel cut-off have been developed to reduce fuel consumption and emissions. In this study, the contribution of deceleration fuel cut-off and start/stop technologies to fuel economy has been examined considering the New European Driving Cycle. Therefore, the fuel consumption values were calculated by creating a longitudinal vehicle model for a light commercial vehicle with a diesel engine. At the end of the study, by using the two strategies together, fuel economies of 17.5% in the urban driving cycle, 3.7% in the extra-urban cycle, and 10% in total were achieved. CO2 emissions decreased in parallel with fuel consumption, by 10.1% in total.

Automation of an automobile internal combustion engine bench calibration tests

Introduction (problem statement and relevance). The article presents the work on the automation of an internal combustion engine (ICE) calibration tests results on a motor stand. The relevance of the article is due to the high labor intensity of such tests, the complexity of documentation and decisionmaking based on the results of the work.Purpose of the study. This work is part of a comprehensive methodology, the purpose of which is to reduce the duration of tests and improve the calibration results quality of the vehicle’s power plant. The entire methodology description as a whole is also given in the publication.Methodology and research methods. The achievement of this goal is ensured with the help of special systems – INCA-FLOW (test automation) and ASCMO (processing results and optimization), produced by Bosch/ETAS. The approbation of the technique was carried out on a motor stand in the MADI training box in relation to the problem of forming an ignition timing map.Scientific novelty and results. As a result of the methodology application, a 4.8 times reduction in the motor tests duration takes place if 2 people work in manual mode at the test bench without interruption.At the same time, the variance of the adequacy of Sad of the torque empirical model Mk turned out to be, on average, 1.5 times less if the model was built according to the automated tests results. The obtained data indicated an improvement in the quality of measurements in the transition to automated test methods.From a scientific point of view, the most original part of the work is the application of the “Gaussian process” method to build empirical models. This method provides more accurate results than, for example, the traditional method of least squares.The practical significance of the work lies in the ability to considerably reduce routine actions on a motor stand, and the additional time spent on developing and testing a test scenario (program) is compensated for by the fact that scenario models can be used in the future for other similar tests. The proposed methodology makes it possible to cover a significant part of the internal combustion engine calibration tests. For example, you can apply it if you possess the preliminary information about the test object (basing on which you can draw up an experiment plan) and the engine is to be prepared either for a car road tests or tests under special conditions.

Modeling of Internal Combustion Engine Ignition Systems with a Circuit Containing Fractional-Order Elements

This paper discusses the research and analysis of the dynamics of high-voltage generating systems. The test subject is an ignition system modelled by a set of two induction coils with an open ferromagnetic core that constitutes an ignition coil. The essence of the tests involved the application of magnetic coupling of the fractional order that enabled taking into account the non-idealities of the coils and the connector that implements the ignition point. The paper contains the results of a theoretical analysis, supported by digital simulations. The conducted experiments confirm the purposefulness of the conducted analyses and the possibility of modeling real objects based on circuits with fractional-order elements.