The global community is concerned by the climate change. A need to dramatically improve vehicle energy efficiency became a major engineering and scientific challenge. Total dependence on the crude oil and oil refinery products together with the latest rise in oil prices adversely affect security of energy supply in both global and local Israeli scales. This calls for placing intensive research efforts on development and implementation of alternative fuels, especially renewable automotive fuels together with novel propulsion systems. Recent global developments undoubtedly show the growing importance of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for both civil and military applications. The first and foremost task in this mission is creation of reliable and energy saving propulsion systems, which are almost totally based on light piston or rotary engines.
TICEL research is sponsored by the transport, petroleum and UAV industries, by the government, and by various foundations. Examples of the Laboratory research interests include thermo chemical recuperation of engine exhaust heat, controllability of HCCI combustion process, heavy fuels atomization and combustion in SI engines, development and analysis of emission factors for vehicles fed by alternative fuels, analysis of energy & environmental impacts of various transportation modes.
TICEL has three engine test cells with modern facilities for engine performance and emissions research. It is equipped with the experimental rigs for fundamental research of flame velocity & fuel atomization; various diagnostics, data acquisition and computer systems.
TICEL research team includes six faculty and research staff members, seven graduate students and several undergraduates performing their final projects in the field of internal combustion engines.
