Potential of Electrification Applied to Non-Road Diesel Engines

The new Stage 5 European regulation for Non Road Mobile Machinery has lowered the limits on pollutant emissions for all the categories of internal combustion engines. An interesting alternative to the implementation of sophisticated after-treatment systems is to downsize the engine, and provide the extra power for peak demands with an electric motor, installed in place of the flywheel. The paper explores the potential of this concept, applied to an industrial engine, manufactured by Kohler, and delivering a maximum power of 56 kW@2600 rpm. The study is supported by a comprehensive experimental characterization of the internal combustion engine and of the electric components. A representative duty cycle is also defined, on the basis of a set of measures, taken in real operating conditions. The analysis of this reference cycle is performed by using a GT-Suite model, comparing different power split strategies. It is found that the ICE total displacement can be reduced from 2.5 to 1.9 L (from 4 to 3 cylinders), without any penalization on powertrain performance and weight. A relevant reduction of soot (22%) and NOx (16%) emissions is observed, along with a slight reduction of fuel consumption.