Cosmoz - Natural gas (CNG) driven engines

The increasingly strict requirements on reducing emissions and fuel consumption are motivating the automotive industry to develop new types of powertrains.

COZMOZ Project: 01/11/2012 – 30/04/2017

BTD is a member of the MecaTech Cluster (Pôle Mecatech), a Belgian competence centre consisting of several companies, universities and research institutes. The partners in the COSMOZ Project are BTD, GD-TECH, SKYNAM, DSI, the University of Liège and the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL).

The project was supported by the Walloon Government.

The objectives of the project are:

  • to gain new knowledge in the conversion of petrol (gasoline) engines to natural gas (CNG) and therefore to advance the development, production and testing of direct-injection systems;
  • to further develop and improve diesel and dual-fuel engines (diesel and CNG) with fuel injection.

In this research project, BTD was entrusted with designing and building the engine prototypes and with testing various fuel injection systems on the engine test bench. 

  1. On the basis of the Peugeot 1.6 L THP EP6CDT 115 kW petrol engine (Euro 5), running 100 % on CNG, we tested both direct and indirect fuel injection systems:
    1. PFI-CNG Mode (PORT FUEL INJECTION): Test runs with conventional injection nozzles, during which the natural gas was injected indirectly upstream of the intake valves at a low pressure of 5 to 8 bar.

      Natural gas direct injection

    2. DI-CNG Mode (DIRECT INJECTION): Test runs with injection nozzles developed by the project partner GD-TECH. In this case, the natural gas was injected directly into the combustion chamber downstream of the intake valves at a pressure of 20 to 60 bar.

    Throughout the entire project, we tested different generations of DI-CNG injection nozzles.

    DI-CNG injection nozzles

  2. In order to gain new experience in the field of dual-fuel engines and their different fuel injection systems, we built a dual-fuel engine (on the basis of a VW 2.0 TDI 4-cyl. diesel engine) in PFI-CNG mode and tested it with indirect injection of natural gas.

    direct injection system for cng engines

Direct injection for CNG-vehicles

For the COSMOZ Project, a new engine management module (ECU) was developed and installed in a demonstrator vehicle (Peugeot 508). This vehicle is equipped with a prototype direct-injection CNG engine.

During the development phase and test runs, BTD was able to reveal the mechanical weaknesses and installation problems of the new injection nozzles as well as their functional faults. This contributed towards a continuous improvement in the development of the injection nozzles.

BTD has significantly expanded its expertise in the field CNG engines and has been able to recognise the problems of direct fuel injection in their entirety on the basis of specific tests.

direct injection for natural gas engines

This project has enabled BTD to intensify its knowledge of European legislation in the field of emissions standards, both for the automotive industry and for industrial engines.

Based on our experience with the COSMOZ Project, BTD has continuously been awarded new contracts by the automotive industry since 2012 for the further development of CNG engines.

Direct injection for cng engines