Types of Diesel Engines in Cars

Diesel engines are the favourite of Indian car manufacturers on cars ranging from small cars to ultra luxury cars. Off late diesel engine has shed the ‘dirty’ term attracted. It is now one of the cleanest fuel technologies which offer great care to engines while delivering high fuel efficiency.

Thanks to some pioneering work by German car manufacturer like Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen  in bring in cleaner diesel technologies. But diesel, the cheaper sibling of petrol, has been available since the early 19th century. Diesel as a fuel was invested by Rudolf Diesel in 1893.

For the first time he demonstrated that diesel engines uses internal combustion through compression. Ignition is developed under high pressure and high temperature environment. It was widely used in larger vehicles like the trucks, and trains for a long time. Comparatively, the petrol engine creates fuel combustion by igniting the fuel through sparks.

In the past decade diesel engines have undergone a dramatic change. Numerous technological advancements have helped improve its performance, quietness, acceleration and emission.  Other modern equipments like turbochargers, electronic fuel injection, multi-point fuel injection and other technological advancements.

Some of the different types of diesel engines are

Common Rail Direct Injection

The Common Rail Direct injection or CRDI is a modern invention of the direct injection system in engine. It is mostly used in Diesel engines though it can be used for petrol engines too. CRDI improves performance, increases mileage and helps keep the engine intact. This performance oriented diesel engine type is found in Hyundai Accent, Mahindra vehicles as CRDe, BMWs and Ford Motors.

Though this was initially developed by inventor Robert Huber of Switzerland it was made applicable for wide use in automobiles by Fiat Group which ultimately sold it to German company Robert Bosch. Common rails were first utilized by Denso In 1997 it was used in passenger cars and since then has been wide used in engines developed by Bosch. The advantages of CRDI made its very popular among urban car buyers in early part of this decade.

Multijet Fuel Injection

This types of diesel engine system was also developed by Fiat. It improved performance of CRDI engines vastly. It is widely used in Indian car such as Maruti Suzuki Swift Diesel, Swift Dzire, Fiat Palio and others. Engines use injectors to receive inputs of fuel to the combustion chamber. Injectors are precise spring-loaded valves that open and close at a specific fuel pressure to produce energy. Rather than a central point of injection of fuel, multiple points are synchronized are release predetermined amount of  fuel to the combustion chamber.

Di Turbocharged

The mirrors image of Multijet is the direct injection turbocharged engine. Since Direct Injection(DI) emitted high amounts of emission, a turbocharger was fitted to it. The turbo charged engine helped increased performance and reduced emission drastically. The direct injection works on low compression rate which was considered a drawback by many. The DI turbocharged engines are used in Skoda Octavia.

Naturally Aspirated

It is an indirect injection engine without a turbocharger. Cars using these engines draw air through air filters and pass it through a meter. This meter monitors and regulates the passage of air to the engine combustion chamber. Naturally aspirated engines produce less power. However, they are popular because they are cheaper than turbocharged engines.