Pressure-sensing
glowplugs from Beru and a joint venture between Siemens/VDO and Federal-Mogul are said to be on their way to the
diesel market by “mid-2007”. That’s good timing, considering the new Tier 2 Bin 5 emission standards slated
to go into effect for passenger-car diesel in the U.S. next year.
Exhaust gas oxygen sensors, as used in
gasoline engines, don’t work on diesel due to the fact that they typically run lean (meaning not much information can
be extracted from measuring residual oxygen), and of course particulates and other diesel byproducts do the delicate
sensors no favors. Indirect combustion-quality sensing methods, such as exhaust gas temperature, can be difficult to
correlate to actual combustion performance. (More after the jump…)
The direct sensing of cylinder pressure, however, is the Holy Grail for engine-management engineers. Being able
to measure the pressure vs. crank angle during the combustion process will theoretically allow for maximizing mean
cylinder pressure (that’s good for power) while minimizing peak cylinder pressure (that’s good for durability and NOx
emissions). It will also help to equalize cylinder-to-cylinder performance, which has traditionally been a problem
for diesels.
Now, if only we could get a similar system for spark-ignition engines. That’s probably not far
behind, and I’m thinking that this technology will prove to be very useful in HCCI engines as well.