Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) Engines

Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) Engines

ABSTRACT

In recent year’s diesel or compression ignition (CI) engines have become popular across Europe and American car market industry due to its enormous advantages over the spark ignited (SI) engines. This was possible only after development of the after-treatment devices for diesel engines which have been able to reduce the engine out emissions to acceptable level for current emission standards. The Diesel engine has also benefited from tremendous improvements in all the areas where it was traditionally at a disadvantage when compared with the petrol engine, such as noise, and power output, while the key benefit of the engine, the high efficiency, has been further improved.
Even after the development of the after-treatment devices and engine characteristics improvements, future stringent emission control levels set by the government make it mandatory for further improvement in the engine combustion to reduce the pollutants from the source itself.  The main disadvantage of the diesel engine is that it emits NOx and soot emissions beyond permit-able level. A possible solution for these emission reductions however, could be HCCI. The HCCI combustion process considerably reduces the levels of NOx and Soot particles emissions from the while still providing diesel-like high efficiencies. This makes it a very prospective research topic and hence of research is being carried out to implement it into the future auto engines. This paper provides some insight into the HCCI Combustion along with its advantages and disadvantages.