Assessment of the influence of different cooling system configurations on engine warm-up, emissions and fuel consumption

One of the major goals of engine designers is the reduction of fuel consumption and pollutant emissions while keeping or even improving engine performance. In recent years, different technical issues have been investigated and incorporated into internal combustion engines in order to fulfill these requirements. Most are related to the combustion process since it is responsible for both fuel consumption and pollutant emissions. Additionally, the most critical operating points for an engine are both the starting and the warming up periods (the time the engine takes to reach its nominal temperature, generally between 80°C and 90°C), since at these points fuel consumption and pollutant emissions are larger than at any other points. Thus, reducing the warm-up period can be crucial to fulfill new demands and regulations. This period depends strongly on the engine cooling system and the different strategies used to control and regulate coolant flow and temperature. In the present work, the influences of different engine cooling system configurations on the warm-up period of a Diesel engine are studied. The first part of the work focuses on the modeling of a baseline engine cooling system and the tests performed to adjust and validate the model. Once the model was validated, different modifications of the engine coolant system were simulated. From the modelled results, the most favourable condition was selected in order to check on the test bench the reduction achieved in engine warm-up time and to quantify the benefits obtained in terms of engine fuel consumption and pollutant emissions under the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC). The results show that one of the selected configurations reduced the warm-up period by approximately 159 s when compared with the baseline configuration. As a consequence, important reductions in fuel consumption and pollutant emissions (HC and CO) were obtained. On doctoral leave from Universidad Technológica de Pereira (Colombia)