Flexible fuel vehicles have been a challenge for the automotive industry due to the chemical properties of ethanol combustion. Especially on days in which the ambient temperature is below 18 degree Celsius, flexible fuel starting is critical due to high ethanol flash point. To solve this problem, cold start systems have been implemented in flexible fuel vehicles.
Cold start systems that inject gasoline to assist in starting have been widely used. However, they dramatically increase the level of pollutant emissions during the cold start phase and they depend on the driver interactivity to refill the system with gasoline. Cold start systems using electric pre-heating have been recently launched into the automotive industry. However, these systems rely on a dedicated electronic monitoring unit for temperature corrections in real time and protection against overheating, increasing the hardware and vehicle calibration complexity and thus demanding high costs for implementing this technology.
This paper presents the concept of the new electronic cold start technology self-controlled by semiconductor, what allows the elimination of additional electronic controls. The technology operation principle and high performance in cold starting achieved are studied and presented through laboratory tests.