PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Transportation is currently responsible for around 23% of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions, and the number of vehicles on the roads is steadily increasing. At the same time, strict environmental regulations are being introduced to limit emissions. In 2011, European fleet emissions averaged 136.6 g CO2/km compared to 186 g CO2/km in 1995, which is a 26.6% decrease over the period. This is the result of long-term effortson the part of industry. An additional European CO2 target of 130 g/km (EURO6) were established for the period 2015-2019, and attained already in 2013. As from 2020, the new target established by the EURO7 regulation is 95 g CO2/km. At the same time, Europe is looking at alternative fuel sources, such as Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), to reduce oil dependency. This requires innovation and efficient and economic solutions.
OBJECTIVES
The LIFE DI-CNG project aimed to make a contribution towards clean road vehicles by developing and demonstrating a new injection technology that will allow Direct Injection of Compressed Natural Gas (DI-CNG) into car engines. The use of such an innovative technology would bring enormous emission reductions compared to gasoline or diesel engines. DI-CNG would have performance characteristics (e.g. power, torque) that are compatible with diesel and gasoline engines, which is unique for alternative fuels. This performance can also be reached without compromising injector durability and reliability or engine safety. The injector would be made fully compliant with original equipment manufacturers specifications and regulations. Moreover, DI-CNG does not require any exhaust after-treatment like for diesel engines, thus adding to the simplicity of the system. The project planned to demonstrate the feasibility of manufacturing injectors at equal or lower environmental impact than current gasoline injectors, and thus much lower than diesel injectors. In other words, the strongly reduced environmental impact over the entire product life-cycle will not be offset by an environmentally taxing production cycle.
RESULTS
The LIFE DI-CNG project designed the DI-CNG injector prototype that can be scaled up for mass production and installed an assembly line that allows the prototype to be manufactured in batches. The technical performance of DI-CNG engines in terms of engine power and torque was shown to be compatible with gasoline and diesel engines (GDI) engines.
The following environmental benefits were demonstrated:
The project strongly emphasised the need to revise the Directive on the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure (AFI) (2014/94/EU) in order to promote the deployment of the CNG fueling infrastructure. Besides, the beneficiary advocates that CO2 emissions regulation should be based on well-to-wheel emissions rather than tank-to-wheel, so that the benefit of bio-methane as a fuel is fully considered.
The market uptake of DI-CNG technology is dependent on fueling infrastructure and the wider acceptance and growth of bio-methane as an automotive fuel. Besides, the banning of diesel vehicle access to urban areas is expected to benefit natural gas vehicles (NGVs) in general. DI-CNG vehicles are expected to be introduced to the European market around 2021-2022 with a sales price equivalent to a diesel vehicle and very close to current NGVs.
The beneficiary planned to continue to run the pilot line after the end of the project while continuing to develop the pintle-to-seat interface to ensure a consistent quality and low tip leakage. The pilot line will be used to produce DI-CNG injector engineering samples for potential customer programs. Transferability to other means of transport is possible but will need additional R&D initiatives.
Further information on the project can be found in the project's layman report and After-LIFE Communication Plan (see "Read more" section).
