The control of vehicular non-methane organic compounds emission (NMOG) has gained global importance due to its role in the formation of troposphere ozone and its contribution to “photochemical smog”. Some European countries and the USA already control NMOG emission, which are made of non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC), aldehydes, ketones, and non-burned ethanol. In Brazil, the L6 stage of PROCONVE, in force since 2013, limits the NMHC to 0.05 g/km for passenger cars and allows the deduction of the non-regulated unburned ethanol fraction. In order to fulfil future Legislations, the present work studied the influence of fuel heating with FlexStartTM for NMHC emission reduction.
Aiming at that target, the FlexStartTM system of a standard vehicle fuelled with ethanol was programmed to be active also at the temperature of the emission tests. This study focused on Phase 1 of the FTP75 cycle, since almost 100% of the NMHC are emitted in this part of the test. Optimization of the ECU (Electronic Control Unit) calibration parameters had to be done because of the improvements on combustion quality.
This paper confirmed that fuel heating associated with optimization of the electronic control unit calibration is an efficient way to achieve the PROCONVE L6 limits of NMHC (0.05 g/km) without depending on the discount of the non-burned ethanol fraction.