Posted on 02/20/2015 6:59:17 AM PST by ckilmer
PEW pew! For a week last November an internal combustion engine hummed away in a lab near Chicago. Why the excitement? This particular engine sets fire to fuel with lasers instead of spark plugs, burning fuel more efficiently than normal. Laser-fired engines could lead to cleaner, greener cars.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
I`m gonna put a couple of lasers in my tailpipe so I can have an afterburner for climbin` them steep mountain roads.
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sounds cool but I’m not entirely certain that’ll work.
If you compress gasoline enough, you would liquify it again.
As for offsetting the heat absorption from changing to a gas state, internal combustion engines are limited by heat removal from the block. Too little heat is not the problem.
I knew some serious street racers.They would run their fuel line into coiled line in a 4 pound coffee can and pack it with ice then run it to the carburetor.
Obviously no benefit in a diesel,,, the compression stroke and the associated heat buildup occurs first and then fuel is introduced ... power is controlled in a diesel by changing the amount of air (with super/turbo charging) and changing the amount of fuel injected... of course the quality of the fuel charge (finely atomized is better) counts also...
The shipping companies with their giant diesel engines have nothing to gain ,,, those engines turn SLOWLY and are very efficient at burning their fuel charge completely...
The gains are on the dozens of smaller engines throughout a ship , generators , pumps and such...
And I’ve often wondered about injecting gasoline VAPOR into the combustion chamber instead of particulate (atomized) gasoline. Liquid gasoline doesn’t burn; it only ignites at the liquid-gas boundary of the atomized droplets. Wouldn’t a proper air/gas mixture of vapor be much more explosive and avoid the loss of energy required for the state change from liquid to gas?
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Smokey Yunick had a test car running back in the late 1970’s or early 80’s , a fox chassis Mustang or Capri with an industrial diesel engine converted to run at (this is from memory) 500-700f and injesting vaporized fuel/air mix. I think this diesel was running on a high cetane fuel... If I remember right he was getting between 60 and 70mpg from a car that would normally get low 20’s in normal driving with acceptable performance and drivability.
OOPS! LOW Cetane fuel ,, got octane and cetane mixed up ,, low volatility , slow flame front diesel is lower cetane...
Ah HA! I wonder what stopped it from being production-capable? Or maybe it WAS ...
Ah HA! I wonder what stopped it from being production-capable? Or maybe it WAS ...
Update: I just looked up “Smokey Yunick Adiabatic Engine,” and I found that he had indeed developed an engine that ran at high temperatures and used a pre-heated (although I’m not sure fully vaporized) fuel-air mix. Being Smokey Yunick, he made some extraordinary claims about its efficiency and mileage, most of which are ... debatable. But he did prove that such a fuel system was possible.
The tricky part is going to be getting the plug gap set just right ;)~
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