A New Method to Warm Up Lubricating Oil to Improve the Fuel Efficiency During Cold Start

Abstract

Cold start driving cycles exhibit an increase in friction losses due to the low temperatures of metal and media compared to normal operating engine conditions. These friction losses are responsible for up to 10% penalty in fuel economy over the official drive cycles like the New European Drive Cycle (NEDC), where the temperature of the oil even at the end of the 1180 s of the drive cycle is below the fully warmed up values of between 100 degrees C and 120 degrees C. At engine oil temperatures below 100 degrees C the water from the blow by condensates and dilutes the engine oil in the oil pan which negatively affects engine wear. Therefore engine oil temperatures above 100 degrees C are desirable to minimize engine wear through blow by condensate. The paper presents a new technique to warm up the engine oil that significantly reduces the friction losses and therefore also reduces the fuel economy penalty during a 22 degrees C cold start NEDC. Chassis dynamometer experiments demonstrated fuel economy improvements of over 7% as well as significant emission reductions by rapidly increasing the oil temperature. Oil temperatures were increased by up to 60 degrees C during certain parts of the NEDC. It is shown how a very simple sensitivity analysis can be used to assess the relative size or efficiency of different heat transfer passes and the resulting fuel economy improvement potential of different heat recovery systems system. Due to its simplicity the method is very fast to use and therefore also very cost effective. The method demonstrated a very good correlation for the fuel consumption within +/- 1% compared to measurements on a vehicle chassis roll.