Professors Sage Kokjohn and Dave Rothamer have been selected to receive a $2.4 million award from the US Department of Energy for their project “High-Efficiency Mixing Controlled Compression Ignition Combustion of Propane DME Blends”. This project will investigate the potential emissions and efficiency benefits of using propane and propane DME blends in a mixing controlled combustion mode. This project will provide insights into the cost, complexity, and efficiency tradeoffs for medium duty vehicles with lower CO2 and total cost of ownership.
In addition, Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI) along with Co-PI Professors Sage Kokjohn and Jaal Ghandhi have been selected to receive a$2.5 million award from this same DOE funding for “Development of a Flex-Fuel Mixing Controlled Combustion System for Gasoline/Ethanol Blends Enabled by Prechamber Ignition”. This system allows conventional mixing-controlled combustion (MCC) strategy without auxiliary heating, changes to the basic engine structure, or advanced engine controls. The proposed concept is expected to deliver a 10% to 50% reduction in life cycle CO2 emissions compared to diesel when operating on E15 and E100, respectively.