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High Altitude Fuel Injection
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Phone: (617) 252-0600
Email: brett@mide.com
Mide Technology Corporation proposes to develop a fuel injection system for automotive combustion control. The design is composed of a fast-acting piezoelectric actuator to operate a fuel injection valve and emission sensors located in the exhaust, both used in concert with a rapid-learning control algorithm to reduce engine NOx, hydrocarbon (HC), and particulate emissions without sacrificing fuel efficiency. In this Phase I project, an X-Frame piezoelectric actuator will be designed to meet the requirements set by automobile engine manufacturers. In addition, simplified combustion system modeling will be performed and compared against experimental data to capture the effect of arbitrary shape control of the valve operation on automobile emissions. This process will lead to a basic first-order mapping that will be used to develop a control framework to optimize valve shape trajectory to minimize emissions while maximizing engine performance. This program can be immediately beneficial to the automotive market by providing the means to achieve efficient and/or high-power density engine operation that meets stringent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requirements. Furthermore, development of breakthrough actuation and control technologies, such as that proposed here, can be used to help realize innovative combustion control concepts such as the Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition technology. This application constitutes a large market, and other applications can, at the same time, benefit from the technology. Other applications include advanced gas turbine combustion control, power generation, commercial aircraft, and medicine. In the power generation sector, controlled injection will reduce emissions. In commercial aircraft, a high-speed fuel modulating valve will enable control of combustion instabilities and noise. In medicine, recent trends towards atomized inhalation of typical intravenous drugs can benefit greatly from the small droplet size and precise metering resulting from a precise electronically controlled valve. This can have profound implications for patients who constantly require drug treatment via injection.
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