Concept and models for evaluation of black and white smoke components in diesel engine exhaust

A method for measuring exhaust smoke opacity has been developed, which allows estimating the differentiated components forming black exhaust and those forming white smoke. The method is based on video recording and special software for processing the video recording data. The flow of the diesel exhaust gas is visualised using the digital camera, against the background of the screen, on a cut of an exhaust pipe, and with sufficient illumination of the area. The screen represents standards of whiteness and blackness. The content of the black components (soot) is determined by the degree of blackening of the white standard in the frames of the video, and the content of whitish components (unburned fuel and oil, etc.) is determined by the degree of whitening of black standard on the frames of the video. The paper describes the principle and the results of testing the proposed method of measuring exhaust smoke opacity. We present an algorithm for the frame-by-frame analysis of the video sequence, and static and dynamic mathematical models of exhaust opacity, measured under free-acceleration of a diesel engine.