Comparison between a Natural Gas and a Diesel engine for small industrial vehicles

The paper reviews the transformation of a 2.8 litre, 4 cylinder, turbocharged Diesel engine, produced by VM Motori (Cento, Italy), into a Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) naturally aspirated power unit. The main goal of the project is to keep an about constant top power value, minimizing engineering costs. The development of the new engine has been supported by experiments and 1D cycle simulations. A first prototype has been built and extensively tested at the dynamometer bench. These data helped the validation of the simulation model, which has been used as an optimisation tool, addressing the next steps of the development process.