Effects of methanol direct injection and high compression ratio on improving the performances of a spark-ignition passenger car engine

•Maximum BTE of 44.9% was achieved in a small bore spark-ignition passenger car engine.•Methanol direct injection extends lean burn flammability by only about 0.1.•Methanol direct injection and high CR increase CO and HC emissions at high dilution rate.•The main barrier to greater BTE for spark ignition MDI engine with high CR are extended combustion duration and increased incomplete combustion. The high octane number and high latent heat of vaporization of methanol are beneficial to suppress knock and consequently increase compression ratio (CR) of spark ignition engines, and thus improve the thermal efficiency. Few preious research on methanol engine combuston and performances have been conducted based on spark-ignition passenger car engines with a CR greater than 14. In this study, a 1.5-liter spark ignition passenger car engine with miller cycle was used to explore the potentials of high CR and methanol direct injection (MDI) on improving engine performances. First, the engine was tested under stoichiometric combustion using methanol and gasoline at BMEPs of 1.1 MPa and 1.5 MPa with CR11.5, CR13.8, and CR15.3. Then, the performances of the CR11.5 case with gasoline and the CR15.3 case with methanol were compared under lean burn combustion. The results show that for gasoline, increasing CR from 11.5 to 15.3 results in decreased fuel economy under stoichiometric combustion, whereas the exact opposite tendency is shown for methanol. Integrating a high CR of 15.3 and MDI improves brake thermal efficiency (BTE) to 43.3 % at an excess air/fuel ratio (λ) of 1.0, when compared with 37.4 % of gasoline at CR11.5. Applying lean burn can further improve the BTE of methanol at CR15.3 to 44.9 %. The main causes of the improvement of BTE by high CR and MDI are the reduced exhaust heat loss resulted from earlier combustion phasing. However, high CR and MDI also extend combustion durations at all specified λs, and emit more THC and CO emissions than low CR with gasoline at high λs because of higher surface/volume ratio and flame quenching. The extended combustion duration and the incomplete combustion are the main barriers to greater BTE for MDI sprak ignition engine with high CR.