Text / Modern Logistics News All-Media Reporter Ren Hong Zhu Ruiying
On April 20, the 2024 World Conference on Internal Combustion Engines opened in Tianjin. At the meeting, the world's first diesel engine with a thermal efficiency of 53.09% developed by Weichai Power was officially released, marking that China's internal combustion engine has once again reached the peak of the world in the key economic index of diesel engine thermal efficiency. The world record for thermal efficiency of diesel engines was once again set new by Weichai Power.
Since 2020, Weichai Power has continuously broken through the 50%, 51% and 52% thermal efficiency of diesel engines until it exceeded 53% this year, breaking through the technical boundary for four consecutive years and leading the development of the internal combustion engine industry.
Strive to be the first to lead the industry wave
The thermal efficiency level of the internal combustion engine is the key index to evaluate the comprehensive strength of the internal combustion engine technology, and improving the thermal efficiency is the common pursuit of the global internal combustion engine enterprises, and the thermal efficiency directly reflects the economic performance and environmental performance of the engine. At present, compared with the mainstream thermal efficiency level of 45%~46% in the market, the thermal efficiency of the diesel engine released by Weichai Power is about 7% higher than that of the mainstream efficiency in the market.
Since 2015, Weichai Power has laid out and conquered high-thermal efficiency diesel engine technology. In the past ten years, Weichai Power has established a high-thermal efficiency engine scientific research team composed of hundreds of young doctors and 1,000 engineers, relying on the National Key Laboratory of Internal Combustion Engine and Power System, with the support of the National Key R&D Program, and linking the strongest brains and industry-university-research partners at home and abroad to carry out technical research around efficient combustion, low resistance and low loss, and realize the continuous improvement of the thermal efficiency of the diesel engine body without any waste heat recovery device.
The continuous improvement of the thermal efficiency of diesel engines is an extremely complex system engineering, and every 1% progress is commendable. Based on the forward R&D process of the B701, Weichai Power has carried out a full range of technological innovations from the underlying architecture of the internal combustion engine to the detailed components to the core system. On the basis of 52% thermal efficiency diesel engine, focusing on the four major systems of combustion, air, fuel oil and friction, a major breakthrough in basic research and original development has been achieved, and four key core technologies have been innovatively developed: high expansion combustion technology, which increases combustion efficiency by 3.5% and thermal efficiency by 0.3 percentage points, mixed-flow supercharging technology, which has a pressure efficiency of 86.7%, vortex efficiency of 83%, and thermal efficiency by 0.25 percentage points. The leakage-free injector and low-power fuel pump increase the thermal efficiency by 0.2 percentage points, and the low-resistance friction reduction technology, using low-flow crankshaft and other key components, increases the thermal efficiency by 0.15 percentage points, and once again increases the thermal efficiency of the diesel engine body by 1 percentage point, breaking the 53% mark for the first time in the world, which once again shocks the global industry.
The advancement of these key core technologies has promoted Weichai Power to improve the thermal efficiency of the diesel engine body to the world's leading level and achieved breakthrough achievements. Weichai Power has accumulated a large number of intellectual property rights in the process of research and development, and has obtained a total of 176 authorized invention patents and 68 utility model patents, which fully proves its leading position and fruitful achievements in the field of technological innovation.
Proven and effective to help achieve "double carbon".
With the proposal of the "double carbon" goal, traditional energy is facing huge pressure of carbon reduction transformation, especially the diesel engine, which is widely used in automobiles, ships, construction machinery, agricultural machinery and national defense construction, is the leading power unit of the national economy and national defense construction, and plays an important role, and improving the thermal efficiency of diesel engine is the inevitable choice for low-carbon and green development of diesel engine.
"The internal combustion engine industry should adhere to technological innovation as the key focus, strengthen the confidence of high-quality development, establish the level of technological leapfrogging and industry leadership, firmly grasp the general trend of electrification, intelligence and collectivization, and deal with the internal relationship between energy power transformation and internal combustion engine technology innovation. Wan Gang, chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology, said at the meeting.
According to the current calculation of China's diesel engine ownership, compared with the 45% ~ 46% thermal efficiency level, the economy of 53% thermal efficiency diesel engine is increased by about 14%, which can save about 31 million tons of fuel every year, reduce carbon emissions by about 97 million tons, greatly reduce energy consumption, and significantly suppress carbon dioxide emissions.
Weichai Power has broken the world record for diesel engine thermal efficiency for four consecutive times, which is the best portrayal of the application of scientific and technological innovation, the core element of new quality productivity, to practice. In the past ten years, Weichai Power's scientific research team has boldly challenged the limits, devoted itself to tackling key problems and innovations, and has achieved four major leaps in diesel engine thermal efficiency in four years with a cumulative difficulty of 0.1% each, setting a new benchmark for global diesel engine thermal efficiency.
Tan Xuguang said that Weichai Power has broken the world record of diesel engine thermal efficiency for four consecutive times, thanks to the wisdom of Weichai engineers for nearly 4,000 days and nights, thanks to the open cooperation with the world's top universities and research institutes, and thanks to the collaborative innovation with the global industrial chain and supply chain. This achievement belongs to Weichai, but also to the global industry!