Optimal Energy Control of a Dual Fuel Vehicle Fuelled by Natural Gas and E10

Abstract Due to the increasing availability of natural gas, there is growing interest in using this fuel for transportation. Utilizing natural gas along with gasoline can provide a way to leverage the high knock resistance of natural gas while avoiding some of the ignitability challenges of this fuel. This paper leverages experimental data for a single cylinder engine to model power production on a mid-size sedan. Using this model, an optimal energy management strategy is explored. Several weighting strategies are considered including techniques which consider fuel availability, fuel cost, and carbon emissions. The effectiveness of these methods are considered over the UDDS, HWY, and US06 cycles. While there is little benefit to such a fuel blending algorithm at low loads, at high loads (such as those encountered in the US06 cycle) blending can provide up to a 7% improvement in efficiency.