SAE Update - November 2021 - 29

SAE Fellows share powertrain thoughts
FOCUS: POWERTRAIN
AND PROPULSION
FOCUS:POWERTRAIN
AND PROPULSION
a primary fuel for the onboard reforming and
hydrogen production. The first ever working
prototype of the direct-injection ICE with HP-TCR was
built in the Technion and demonstrated energy
efficiency improvement by 20%-30% (relative)) and
gaseous pollutant emissions reduction by up to 97%,
91% and 96% for NOx, CO and HC emissions,
respectively, compared with gasoline in a wide power
range without any need for exhaust gas
aftertreatment.
The HP-TCR method easily can be integrated with a
novel low-temperature combustion approach
developed in the University of Wisconsin and named
Reactivity-Controlled Compression Ignition (RCCI),
thus resulting in the Reforming-Controlled
Compression Ignition. The latter enables further
improvement in energy efficiency due to waste heat
recovery and use of a single primary fuel together
with a flexible combustion control.
The developments outlined above are only few
small examples of a great variety of novel
technologies under development nowadays in the ICE
field. To summarize, last years of tough competition
with electric propulsion technologies demonstrated
without any doubts a great potential of internal
combustion engines in energy efficiency
improvement and emissions mitigation. Considering
this fact - and the fact that battery electric vehicles
are not really the zero-emission option, with
considerable levels of non-exhaust particle emissions
and significant ecologic burdens of the battery
materials production processes (e.g. soil acidification,
water eutrophication, among others) - I believe that
there is no silver bullet solution and that the
automotive market in future decades will be featured
by co-existence of various propulsion technologies.n
UPDATE
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Future FOCUS Index
January 2022
Advanced materials
February 2022
Electrification
March 2022
Automated vehicles
April 2022
Engineering tools
May 2022
Cybersecurity
May 2022
Testing
November 2021
29
SAE Update - November 2021

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