The stringent emission regulations have motivated the development of cleaner fuels as diesel surrogates. However, their different physical-chemical properties make the study of their behavior in compression ignition engines essential. In this sense, optical techniques are a very effective tool for determining the spray evolution and combustion characteristics occurring in the combustion chamber. In this work, quantitative parameters describing the evolution of diesel-like sprays such as liquid length, spray penetration, ignition delay, lift-off length and flame penetration as well as the soot formation were tested in a constant high pressure and high temperature installation using schlieren, OH∗ chemiluminescence and diffused back-illumination extinction imaging techniques. Boundary conditions such as rail pressure, chamber density and temperature were defined using guidelines from the Engine Combustion Network (ECN). Two paraffinic fuels (dodecane and a renewable hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO)) and two oxygenated fuels (methylal identified as OME₁ and a blend of oxymethylene ethers, identified as OME_x) were tested and compared to a conventional diesel fuel used as reference. Results showed that paraffinic fuels and OME_x sprays have similar behavior in terms of global combustion metrics. In the case of OME₁, a shorter liquid length, but longer ignition delay time and flame lift-off length were observed. However, in terms of soot formation, a big difference between paraffinic and oxygenated fuels could be appreciated. While paraffinic fuels did not show any significant decrease of soot formation when compared to diesel fuel, soot formed by OME₁ and OME_x was below the detection threshold in all tested conditions.

Around a third of the energy input in an automotive engine is wasted through the exhaust system. Since numerous technologies to harvest energy from exhaust gases are accessible, it is of great interest to find time- and cost-efficient methods to evaluate available thermal energy under different engine conditions. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is becoming a very valuable tool for numerical predictions of exhaust flows. In this work, a methodology to build a simple three-dimensional (3D) model of the exhaust system of automotive internal combustion engines (ICE) was developed. Experimental data of exhaust gas in the most used part of the engine map in passenger diesel vehicles were employed as input for calculations. Sensitivity analyses of different numeric schemes have been conducted in order to attain accurate results. The model built allows for obtaining details on temperature and pressure fields along the exhaust system, and for complementing the experimental results for a better understanding of the flow phenomena and heat transfer through the system for further energy recovery devices.