SMS 2017 Abstracts

Full Papers
Full Papers
Paper Nr: 1
Title:

Investigation of N-Butanol Blending with Gasoline using a 1-D Engine Model
Authors:

Simeon Iliev
Abstract: Increasing demand and limited reserves for fossil fuel together with carbon emissions regulations have led to producing sustainable fuels made from renewable materials. In recent years, the focus has been on using biofuels as alternate energy sources. Blending bio-fuels with gasoline is one of the methods to be considered under the search for a new source of energy. Alcohols are an important category of bio-fuels. Butanol can be an alternative fuel since it is a liquid and has several physical and chemical properties similar to those of gasoline fuels. Butanol don’t have many of the drawback associated with ethanol. Butanol has also a higher molecular weight than ethanol, and therefore, has reduced vapour pressure, lower water solubility, and higher energy density. That is why this study is aimed to develop the 1-D model of a PFI (Port Fuel Injection) engine for predicting the effect of various blends of butanol and gasoline on engine performances and fuel consumption. AVL Boost was used as a simulation tool to analyze the performance and emissions for different blends of n-butanol and gasoline by volume (n-B0, n-B5, n-B10, n-B20, n-B30, n-B50 and n-B85).
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Paper Nr: 2
Title:

Simulation of an Urban Bus Fuelled with Several Biodiesel Blends - Advantages and Disadvantages on the Efficiency and Emissions
Authors:

João P. Ribau and Carla M. Silva
Abstract: Nowadays, most anthropogenic emissions occur in urban regions, with significant local impacts on air quality and public health. Decision makers and governments have been introducing policies in the energy and transport sectors aiming to improve the efficiency of energy use, meeting climate change commitments, fostering fossil energy independency and promoting the use of biofuels in the transport sector. This study aims to investigate the main advantages and disadvantages of introducing biodiesel into the Portuguese passenger road transport system. Biodiesel-diesel blends with a minimum of 7.5% and a maximum of 100% of biodiesel content (B7.5-B100) will be studied. An urban passenger bus is modelled in the vehicle simulation software AVL CRUISE in different driving conditions. The use of biodiesel blends are compared with the use of pure diesel concerning the engine efficiency and emissions. The trend is that the use of biodiesel has some advantages, from which the most agreed are the reduction of the pollutant emissions of HC, CO, and PM; however, with the main disadvantage of increasing the fuel consumption and NOx emissions.
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Paper Nr: 3
Title:

New Opportunities and Perspectives for the Electric Vehicle Operation in Smart Grids and Smart Homes Scenarios
Authors:

Vítor Monteiro, João C. Ferreira, J. G. Pinto and João L. Afonso
Abstract: New perspectives for the electric vehicle (EV) operation in smart grids and smart homes context are presented. Nowadays, plugged-in EVs are equipped with on-board battery chargers just to perform the charging process from the electrical power grid (G2V – grid-to-vehicle mode). Although this is the main goal of such battery chargers, maintaining the main hardware structure and changing the digital control algorithm, the on-board battery chargers can also be used to perform additional operation modes. Such operation modes are related with returning energy from the batteries to the power grid (V2G- vehicle-to-grid mode), constraints of the electrical installation where the EV is plugged-in (iG2V – improved grid-to-vehicle mode), interface of renewables, and contributions to improve the power quality in the electrical installation. Besides the contributions of the EV to reduce oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions associated to the transportation sector, through these additional operation modes, the EV also represents an important contribution for the smart grids and smart homes paradigms. Experimental results introducing the EV through the aforementioned interfaces and operation modes are presented. An on-board EV battery charger prototype was used connected to the power grid for a maximum power of 3.6 kW.
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Paper Nr: 4
Title:

Radio Spectrum Support for Timely and Reliable Communication over Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (Vanets)
Authors:

Elias Eze C., Sijing Zhang, Enjie Liu and Joy Eze C.
Abstract: This paper studied the required amount of radio spectral resource enough to support timely and reliable vehicular communication via vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs). The study focussed on both DSRC/WAVE and the European standard ITS-G5 that are based on recently approved IEEE 802.11p specification, which uses a simplified version of CSMA/CA as MAC protocol, and an STDMA MAC recently proposed by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). The paper further carried out a feasibility analysis of radio spectrum requirement for timely and reliable vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. In the feasibility analysis, synchronized STDMA MAC is compared with the CSMA/CA MAC protocol, which 802.11p is based on. Message Reception Failure (MRF) probability is used as a performance metric to investigate and ascertain the minimum spectrum requirement for efficient, timely, and reliable V2V communication. Simulation results show that even at the same allocation of 10MHz channel bandwidth, STDMA MAC outperforms the CSMA/CA based MACs due to the fact that STDMA based MACs provide a structured shared medium access and prevent negative impact of unhealthy contention for shared channel access. The results further show that up to 40MHz channel bandwidth over 5.9GHz band would be required to guarantee optimal reliability of safety packets exchange in vehicular networks as opposed to 10MHz allocated in US.
Paper Nr: 6
Title:

Experimental Comparison of Single-Phase Active Rectifiers for EV Battery Chargers
Authors:

Vítor Monteiro, J. G. Pinto, J. C. Aparício Fernandes and João L. Afonso
Abstract: An experimental comparison of single-phase active rectifiers for electric vehicle (EV) battery chargers is presented and discussed. Active rectifiers are used in on-board EV battery chargers as front-end converters to interface the power grid aiming to preserve the power quality. In this paper, four topologies of active rectifiers are compared: traditional power-factor-correction; symmetrical bridgeless; asymmetrical bridgeless; and full-bridge full-controlled. Such comparison is established in terms of the requirements for the hardware structure, the complexity of the digital control system, and the power quality issues, mainly the grid current total harmonic distortion and the power factor. Along the paper these comparisons are presented and verified through experimental results. A reconfigurable laboratorial prototype of an on-board EV battery charger connected to the power grid was used to obtain the experimental results.
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