Measurement of hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions during the starting of automotive DI Diesel engines

Abstract

Most of hydrocarbon (HC) and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions from automotive DI Diesel engines are produced during the engine warm-up period and are primarily caused by difficulties in obtaining stable and efficient combustion under these conditions. Furthermore, the contribution of engine starting to these emissions is not negligible; since this operating condition is highly unfavorable for the combustion progress. Additionally, the catalytic converter is ineffective due to the low engine temperature. In conjunction with adequate engine settings (fuel injection and fresh air control), either the glow plugs or the intake air heater are activated during a portion of the engine warm-up period, so that a nominal engine temperatures is reached faster, and the impact of these difficulties is minimized. Measurement of gaseous pollutants during engine warm-up is currently possible with detectors used in standard exhaust gas analyzers (EGA), which have response times well-suited for sampling at such transient conditions. However, these devices are not suitable for the measurement of exhaust emissions produced during extremely short time intervals, such as engine starting. Herein, we present a methodology for the measurement of the cumulative pollutant emissions during the starting phase of passenger car DI Diesel engines, with the goal of overcoming this limitation by taking advantage of standard detectors. In the proposed method, a warm canister is filled with an exhaust gas sample at constant volumetric flow, during a time period that depends on the engine starting time; the gas concentration in the canister is later evaluated with a standard EGA. When compared with direct pollutant measurements performed with a state-of-art EGA, the proposed procedure was found to be more sensitive to combustion changes and provided more reliable data.