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AssigneeMassachusetts Institute of Technology
InventorsDaniel R. Cohn, Leslie Bromberg, John B. Heywood
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Fuel management system for efficient operation of a spark ignition gasoline engine. Injectors inject an anti-knock agent such as ethanol directly into a cylinder of the engine. A fuel management microprocessor system controls injection of the anti-knock agent so as to control knock and minimize that amount of the anti-knock agent that is used in a drive cycle. It is preferred that the anti-knock agent is ethanol. The use of ethanol can be further minimized by injection in a non-uniform manner within a cylinder. The ethanol injection suppresses knock so that higher compression ratio and/or engine downsizing from increased turbocharging or supercharging can be used to increase the efficiency of the engine.
A spark ignition engine which is fueled with gasoline and ethanol where ethanol is introduced into at least one engine cylinder in such a way that the vaporization of ethanol provides an octane enhancement at a rate of at least 20 octane numbers for an increase in the ethanol energy fraction from 0 to 100%.
A spark ignition engine which is fueled with gasoline and ethanol where ethanol is introduced into at least one engine cylinder in such a way that the evaporation of the ethanol provides at least a 2 octane number increase for an increase in 10% fuel energy that is provided by ethanol.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.