Search results for "Spark"
showing 10 items of 124 documents
Determining the explosion risk level and the explosion hazard area for a group of natural gas wells
2016
Starting from the fact that the natural gas engineering profession is generally associated with a high occupational risk, the current paper aims to help increase the safety of natural gas wells and reduce the risk of work-related accidents, as well as the occurrence of professional illnesses, by applying an assessment method that has proven its efficiency in other industrial areas in combination with a computer-aided design software. More specifically, the paper focuses on two main research directions: assessing the explosion risk for employees working at natural gas wells and indicating areas with a higher explosion hazard by using a modern software that allows their presentation in 3D. Th…
Octane Rating of Natural Gas-Gasoline Mixtures on CFR Engine
2014
In the last years new and stricter pollutant emission regulations together with raised cost of conventional fuels resulted in an increased use of gaseous fuels, such as Natural Gas (NG) or Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), for passenger vehicles. Bi-fuel engines represent a transition phase product, allowing to run either with gasoline or with gas, and for this reason are equipped with two separate injection systems. When operating at high loads with gasoline, however, these engines require rich mixtures and retarded combustions in order to prevent from dangerous knocking phenomena: this causes high hydrocarbon (HC) and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions together with high fuel consumption. With t…
Supercharging the Double-Fueled Spark Ignition Engine: Performance and Efficiency
2017
Internal combustion engine development focuses mainly on two aspects: fuel economy improvement and pollutant emissions reduction. As a consequence, light duty spark ignition (SI) engines have become smaller, supercharged, and equipped with direct injection and advanced valve train control systems. The use of alternative fuels, such as natural gas (NG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), thanks to their lower cost and environmental impact, widely spread in the automotive market, above all in bifuel vehicles, whose spark ignited engines may run either with gasoline or with gaseous fuel. The authors in previous works experimentally tested the strong engine efficiency increment and pollutant emi…
An analytical approach for the evaluation of the optimal combustion phase in spark ignition engines
2009
It is well known that the spark advance is one of the most important parameters influencing the efficiency of a spark ignition engine. A change in this parameter causes a shift in the combustion phase, whose optimal position, with respect to the piston motion, implies the maximum brake mean effective pressure for given operative conditions. The best spark timing is usually estimated by means of experimental trials on the engine test bed or by means of thermodynamic simulations of the engine cycle. In this work, instead, the authors developed, under some simplifying hypothesis, an original theoretical formulation for the estimation of the optimal combustion phase. The most significant parame…
A Refined Model for Knock Onset Prediction in Spark Ignition Engines Fueled With Mixtures of Gasoline and Propane
2015
In the last decade, gaseous fuels, such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and natural gas (NG), widely spread in many countries, thanks to their prerogative of low cost and reduced environmental impact. Hence, bi-fuel engines, which allow to run either with gasoline or with gas (LPG or NG), became very popular. Moreover, as experimentally demonstrated by the authors in the previous works, these engines may also be fueled by a mixture of gasoline and gas, which, due to the high knock resistance of gas, allow to use stoichiometric mixtures also at full load, thus drastically improving engine efficiency and pollutant emissions with respect to pure gasoline operation without noticeable power los…
Software startup education: gamifying growth hacking
2021
Startups seek to create highly scalable business models. For startups, growth is thus vital. Growth hacking is a marketing strategy advocated by various startup practitioner experts. It focuses on using low cost practices while utilizing existing platforms in creative ways to gain more users for the service. Though topics related to growth hacking such as marketing on a general level have been extensively studied in the past, growth hacking as a practitioner-born topic has not seen much interest among the academia. To both spark interest in growth hacking, and to facilitate teaching growth hacking in the academia, we present two board games intended to serve as an engaging introduction to g…
Alignment-free Genomic Analysis via a Big Data Spark Platform
2021
Abstract Motivation Alignment-free distance and similarity functions (AF functions, for short) are a well-established alternative to pairwise and multiple sequence alignments for many genomic, metagenomic and epigenomic tasks. Due to data-intensive applications, the computation of AF functions is a Big Data problem, with the recent literature indicating that the development of fast and scalable algorithms computing AF functions is a high-priority task. Somewhat surprisingly, despite the increasing popularity of Big Data technologies in computational biology, the development of a Big Data platform for those tasks has not been pursued, possibly due to its complexity. Results We fill this impo…
Yeast autolysis in sparkling wine – a review
2006
Sparkling wine produced by the traditional methode champenoise requires a second in-bottle alcoholic fermentation of a base wine, leading to the sparkling wine. This second fermentation is followed by prolonged ageing in contact with yeast cells (lees). The autolysis of yeast occurs during the ageing of sparkling wines. During this process, the yeast releases different compounds that modify the organoleptic properties of the wine. The ageing period is required to give these wines their roundness and characteristic aroma and flavour. Autolysis products also influence the foaming properties of sparkling wine. Yeast autolysis is characterised by the hydrolysis of intracellular biopolymers by y…
The Potential of a Separated Electric Compound Spark-Ignition Engine for Hybrid Vehicle Application
2022
Abstract In-cylinder expansion of internal combustion engines based on Diesel or Otto cycles cannot be completely brought down to ambient pressure, causing a 20% theoretical energy loss. Several systems have been implemented to recover and use this energy such as turbocharging, turbomechanical and turbo-electrical compounding, or the implementation of Miller cycles. In all these cases however, the amount of energy recovered is limited allowing the engine to reach an overall efficiency incremental improvement between 4% and 9%. Implementing an adequately designed expander–generator unit could efficiently recover the unexpanded exhaust gas energy and improve efficiency. In this work, the appl…
Steady State Performance of Spark Ignition Engine with Exhaust Energy Recovery
2020
As is known, internal combustion engines based on Otto or Diesel cycles cannot complete the expansion process of the gas inside the cylinder, thus losing a relevant energy content, in the order of 30% of total. The residual energy of the unexpanded gas has been partially exploited through the use of an exhaust gas turbine for turbocharging the internal combustion engine; further attempts have been made with several compound solutions, with an electric generator connected to the turbocharger allowing to convert into electrical energy the quota power produced by the turbine which is not used by the compressor, or with a second turbine downstream the first to increase the exhaust gas energy re…