• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.193-200
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• 2007

Natural gas is one of the most promising alternatives to gasoline and diesel fuels because of its lower harmful emissions, including $CO_2$, and high thermal efficiency. In particular, natural gas is seen as an alternative fuel for heavy-duty Diesel Engines because of the lower resulting emissions of PM, $CO_2$ and $NO_x$. Almost all CNG vehicles use the PFI-type Engine. However, PFI-type CNG Engines have a lower brake horse power, because of reduced volumetric efficiency and lower burning speed. This is a result of gaseous charge and the time losses increase as compared with the DI-type. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of injection conditions (early injection mode, late injection mode) on the combustion phenomena and performances in the or CNG Engine. A DI Diesel Engine with the same specifications used in a previous study was modified to a DI CNG Engine, and injection pressure was constantly kept at 60bar by a two-stage pressure-reducing type regulator. In this study, excess air ratios were varied from 1.0 to the lean limit, at the load conditions 50% throttle open rate and 1700rpm. The combustion characteristics of the or CNG Engine - such as in-cylinder pressure, indicated thermal efficiency, cycle-by-cycle variation, combustion duration and emissions - were investigated. Through this method, it was possible to verify that the combustion duration, the lean limit and the emissions were improved by control of injection timing and the stratified mixture conditions. And combustion duration is affected by not only excess air ratio, injection timing and position of piston but gas flow condition.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.332-340
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• 2015

Acoustic emission (AE) is an effective nondestructive test that uses transient elastic wave generated by the rapid release of energy within a material to detect any further growth or expansion of existing defects. Over the past decades, because of environmental issues, the use of compressed natural gas (CNG) as an alternative fuel for vehicles is increasing because of environmental issues. For this reason, the importance and necessity of detecting defects on a CNG fuel tank has also come to the fore. The conventional AE method used for source location is highly affected by the wave speed on the structure, and this creates problems in inspecting a composite CNG fuel tank. Because the speed and dispersion characteristics of the wave are different according to direction of structure and laminated layers. In this study, both the conventional AE method and the energy based contour map method were used for source location. This new method based on pre-acquired D/B was used for overcoming the limitation of damage localization in a composite CNG fuel tank specimen which consists of a steel liner cylinder overwrapped by GFRP. From the experimental results, it is observed that the damage localization is determined with a small error at all tested points by using the energy based contour map method, while there were a number of mis-locations or large errors at many tested points by using the conventional AE method. Therefore, the energy based contour map method used in this work is more suitable technology for inspecting composite structures.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.557-562
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• 1999

The reaction properties of Pd. Pd-Ce and Pd-La catalysts supported on ${\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ were investigated in the oxidation reaction of methane($CH_4$) exhausted from the compressed natural gas vehicle in a U-tube flow reactor with gas hourly space velocity of $72,000h^{-1}$. The catalysts were characterized by X-ray diffraction(XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS), BET surface area and hydrogen chemisorption. Pd catalyst prepared by $Pd(NO_3)_2$ as a palladium precursor and calcined at $600^{\circ}C$ showed the highest activity for a methane oxidation. Catalytic activity of calcined $Pd/{\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ in which most of palladium was converted into palladium oxide species was higher than that of reduced $Pd/{\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ in which most of palladium existed in palladium metal by XRD. As increasing the number of reaction cycles in the wide range of redox, the catalytic activity of $Pd/{\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ was decreased and the highly active window became narrower. Lanthanum oxide promoted Pd catalyst, $Pd/La/{\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ showed enhanced thermal stability compared with $Pd/{\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ even after aging at $1000^{\circ}C$, which was ascribed to the role of La as a promoter to suppress the sintering of palladium metal and ${\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ support. Almost all of methane was removed by the reaction with NO at the redox ratio of 1.2 in case of oxygen excluded steam, but that activity was significantly decreased in the steam containing oxygen.