Impact of variable valve timing on power,emissions and backfire of a bi-fuel hydrogen/gasoline engine

Hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines are a possible solution to make transportation more ecological. Apart from difficulties in production and storage of hydrogen, there are three major bottlenecks in the operation of hydrogen-powered engines: reaching a high power output, reducing NO_x emissions at high loads and avoiding backfire. This paper presents an experimental study of the influence of continuously variable valve timing of the intake valves on these bottlenecks. Measurements were performed on a four-cylinder engine that can run on gasoline as well as on hydrogen. The measurements on hydrogen are compared to those on gasoline. For hydrogen, the effects of the cam phasing were investigated at wide open throttle, where load is controlled by the quality of the mixture (equivalence ratio) as well as in throttled mode, where load is defined by the quantity of mixture.