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U.S. Department of Energy Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

FY 2007 Progress Report for Advanced Combustion Engine Technologies

The mission of the Vehicle Technologies Office is to develop more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly highway transportation technologies that enable the United States to use less petroleum. The Advanced Combustion Engine R&D Sub-Program supports this mission and the President's initiatives by removing the critical technical barriers to commercialization of advanced internal combustion engines for light-, medium-, and heavy-duty highway vehicles that meet future Federal emissions regulations. The primary goal of the Advanced Combustion Engine R&D Sub-Program is to improve the brake thermal efficiency of internal combustion engines:

  • for passenger vehicles, from 30% (2002 baseline) to 45% by 2010, and
  • for commercial vehicles, from 40% (2002 baseline) to 55% by 2013,

while meeting cost, durability, and emissions constraints. R&D activities include work on combustion technologies that increase efficiency and minimize in-cylinder formation of emissions, aftertreatment technologies that further reduce exhaust emissions, as well as the impacts of these new technologies on human health. Research is also being conducted on approaches to produce useful work from waste engine heat through the development and application of thermoelectrics, electricity generation from exhaust-driven turbines, and incorporation of energy-extracting bottoming cycles.

The document is very large; it has been divided into sections for easier use.