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Abstract
Rapidly increasing fossil fuel demand and deteriorating air quality have resulted in enormous pressure on automotive researchers and OEMs to develop more efficient and clean internal combustion (IC) engines. Low temperature combustion (LTC) strategies have shown significant potential of reducing oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and particulate matter (PM) emissions simultaneously without any performance sacrifice. In last few decades, researchers have resolved many issues of LTC however it’s full-load application, even in light-duty engines, has not been experimentally demonstrated until now due to lack of control over ignition timing and heat release rate (HRR). This limits the commercial application of various LTC technologies in production-grade engines. To tackle this problem, an intermediate solution namely ‘mode switching technique’ has been demonstrated. In mode switching technique, engine operates in LTC mode up to medium loads and then switches to conventional compression ignition (CI) combustion mode to cater to higher engine loads. This dual mode combustion seems to be an effective solution for commercializing the LTC technology. This article discusses different strategies of mode switching in gasoline and diesel engines and exhibits its potential in IC engines. Use of reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI) combustion as LTC derivative in mode switching technique may be a future research area for development of next generation road transport vehicles.
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