The development of any country depends upon three major factors: energy, agriculture, and technology. In the past few decades technology has played a major role in the optimization of the available energy and increasing agricultural productivity. Most countries around the world either import food or energy or technology or all three to meet the requirements of the country. The major contributor to pollution and depletion of natural resources is the production of useful energy. The transportation sector in countries like India heavily depends on oil imports from oil-producing countries. Transportation sectors consume a significant percentage of fossil fuel, leading to carbon dioxide production and significantly contributing to global warming. Today, scientists speak about carbon neutral and negative carbon technology to reduce the carbon footprint. To address these issues, the Combustion Institute – Indian Section and Vellore Institute of Technology conducted the 27th National Conference on Internal Combustion Engines and Combustion (NCICEC 2022) was conducted at Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India during November 4–7, 2022. The School of Mechanical Engineering along with the Automotive Research Center in association with the Combustion Institute - Indian Section hosted this event. This conference provided a platform for scientists, engineers, technologists, and other members of academia to come together under a single roof to interact, discuss, and defend their ideas on cutting-edge areas related to internal combustion engines and combustion. The NCICEC 2022 conference, which is the 27th in this series, also aims to discuss and disseminate knowledge in the field of energy, combustion, emission reduction, and new automotive technologies. Out of 157 articles received, 107 were selected for presentation at the conference.
Professor R. V. Ravikrishna, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore delivered a keynote lecture on Future of Mobility: Transition to Low Carbon Fuels and Technologies and leading industry expert Dr. N. Mahadevan, Reliance Industries Limited, delivered the keynote on Recent Trends in IC Engine Combustion. The panel discussion was carried out by experts from industry and academia on the future of internal combustion engines in the context of electric vehicle penetration.
This special issue is the compilation of selected papers that were presented at the NCICEC 2022 conference. 10 papers which are grouped into three major areas such as alternate fuels, combustion, and new vehicle technologies. Compared to fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel alternate which can be termed as biofuels, have the capability to reduce the carbon footprint in the transportation sector. Papers related to Jatropha, biodiesel and biodiesel derived from seed using pyrolysis speak about the production and application of biodiesel in diesel engines and their operating characteristics in diesel engines. The special issue also covers papers related to alternate fuels for spark ignition engines. Papers related to hydrogen, biogas, and methanol-fueled spark ignition engines are also included. These papers cover a comprehensive study on the spark ignition engine fueled with these fuels and their impact on performance characteristics. The performance of biodiesel or conventional fuel in diesel engines can be improved using certain methods.
There were three papers that were included in the area of combustion that covers aspects related to the improvement or optimization of combustion in both engines and combustors. One paper attempt to correlate the burning velocities of various gaseous fuel with various mixtures ratios, the second paper discusses about the addition of boron slurries in slinger combustion, and the third paper covers the aspects of using fractals as grain configuration for the performance of solid rocket motors. Due to ozone depletion potentials and global warning potentials, air conditioner manufacturers are slowly migrating into supercritical CO2 air conditioners. Two papers are included in this issue which covers both the theoretical and numerical studies on supercritical CO2 air conditioners.
For the special issue, the editorial team has selected papers to address wide coverage of topics presented at the conference. The editorial team would like to thank all the reviewers for their time and effort in reviewing the papers for this special issue. We are honored to work with Editor-in-Chief of Heat Transfer Engineering, Professor Afshin J. Ghajar. We are indebted to him for his careful editing of the final versions of the papers published in this special issue, for the opportunity to publish this special issue, and for his dedicated support for the entire process, without which this special issue would not exist.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Notes on contributors
Ekambaram Porpatham
Ekambaram Porpatham holds a PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, India. He has 5 years of full-time industrial and 15 years of full-time teaching experience. His specialty lies in developing technology for internal combustion engineering. He had developed a state-of-art numerical simulation program for biogas fueled spark ignition engines. He has made fundamental contributions to hybrid electric vehicle and rotary engine development projects. He has been invited to deliver keynote lectures at several conferences and universities. He is a reviewer for several international journals. He has completed seven projects sponsored by various government funding agencies. He has successfully developed a prototype gen-set engine using syngas as fuel for Tata Power Company Limited, Mumbai.
Parthasarathy Rajesh Kanna
Parthasarathy Rajesh Kanna is a Professor in the CO2 Research and Green Technologies Research center, Vellore Institute of Technology Vellore, India. He received his PhD from Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India in 2006 and a Doctor of Science from the Cracow University of Technology Poland. He worked at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology Taiwan as a Post-Doc fellow for 15 months. He has coauthored more than 90 international publications including refereed journals and conferences. His research interests include fluid dynamics, heat transfer, CO2 refrigeration, and green energy technologies.
Mohamed Ibrahim Mohamed Ilyas
Mohamed Ibrahim Mohamed Ilyas received his PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India. He is working as an Associate Professor in the Automotive Research Center at Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore. He has 14 years of research experience in the field of internal combustion engines. His research interests encompass low-temperature combustion strategies, development of hydrogen and ammonia powered engines, and hybrid electric vehicle systems. He has published several journals and papers, book chapters and patent. He also received a research grant entitled “Development of a novel injection strategy for hydrogen fueled homogeneous charge compression ignition engine” funded by the Science & Engineering Research Board, Department of Science & Technology, Government of India under the scheme Early Career Research Award.
Ramesh Kumar Chidambaram
Ramesh Kumar Chidambaram has around 22 years of combined industry and teaching experience. Presently he is working in the Automotive Research Center of the School of Mechanical Engineering, VIT, Vellore. His interests include thermal systems, electric vehicles and battery thermal management systems. He has published around seventy research papers in international journals, conference proceedings and book chapters. He has completed six consultancy projects from various Indian funding agencies and industries. He is a member of the Institute of Engineers, India, and SAE.
Arunachalam Rammohan
Arunachalam Rammohan is working as an Assistant Professor in the Automotive Research Center, Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore, India. He received his Ph.D. from VIT in the field of Automotive LED lighting and a master’s degree in Embedded Systems from SASTRA in collaboration with NTU, Singapore. Before VIT he worked as an R&D Engineer at NCR Corporation, Scotland. He has a decade of teaching and research experience in predictive algorithms, thermal imaging solutions, electronics cooling, and EV battery management systems in India and abroad. Recently his two patents have been granted by Indian Patent Office.