Abstract
LPG is one of the most promising fuels as an alternative to gasoline. Many advantages are related to its use in SI IC engines, mainly regarding its lower environmental impact with respect to gasoline.
The liquid-phase injection is the only technology able to guarantee the maintenance (and even an increase) of the more traditional engine performances (power, acceleration, driveability, etc) and to match the narrow specifications on air to fuel ratio (A/F) of the 3-way catalytic converter. Even though the components of an LPG injection system are basically the same of a gasoline one, its behavior is much more complex due to the variability of injection pressure and to the low margin to vaporization of the LPG inside the fuel lines.
In this paper the transient phenomena occurring in an LPG liquid-phase injection system have been studied, focusing the attention on their effect on the efficiency of the system in A/F control.