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 ...
if.....
There are technologies that need to be proved before laser spark plugs can realistically be adopted, Woodruff said. “First, the diode laser pump must demonstrate that it can operate continuously for 10,000 hours,” he said. “Second, will the pressure barrier window/lens stay clean for 10,000 hours? The window is self-cleaning to some extent, in that each laser pulse cleans the window. If it holds up over the duration, it will then be competitive with electric spark for natural gas-fueled engines.”
LOL!!
Rotary engine’s biggest problem has always been reliability. That’s just an engineering problem at this point since we know the concept is sound.
Regarding using petrol vapor instead of atomized injected fuel it’s very true that combustion would be much more efficient- due to higher compression and less waste of fuel. However, I think the reason this hasn’t been done in a realistic production engine is that gasoline doubles as a cooling agent for the combustion chamber which helps control ignition timing and prevents the cylinder head from melting which could happen otherwise.
Optical fiber is pretty delicate stuff at least the communications stuff is. I can’t imagine using it in a combustion chamber with the shocking changes in temperature and pressure that happen there thousands of times per minute.
As you know, that’s called a carburetor, and it was replaced by electronically controlled fuel injection for a host of very good reasons.
SHAZAM!!!!!!!!
Another (probably) great idea for cleaner, greener automobiles that did not come from Washington D. C.
The Spark Plug has been around for well over a hundred years. Damn thing(s)are almost like alligators in their ability to survive change. Generators, gone. Ignition Points, gone. Carbide lights, gone. The spark plug is next to be gone. Well maybe.
I would like to see laser Plugs in operation on a race track. F1 or maybe MotoGP, since these are two series that experimentation is encouraged. If we see more power and longer engine life, I suspect that within 10 years, we will see laser plugs in production automobiles and motorcycles.
The fuel component for ships has changed as of January 1, 2015.
No more N6, (with certain exceptions) no more IFO 320/280 fuel...
I do not think so. The power of the internal combustion engine lies in the expansion inside the chamber. Injecting in the liquid phase adds to the expansion in the ignition. Inside the combustion chamber there is not a problem of too little heat for expansion; heat removal is part of the limits of efficiency.
“. “There is a lot of pressure on the shipping companies to reduce the pollution from their ships,” says Ghosh. “One shipping company we are talking to is interested in retrofitting their existing engines with laser ignition.””
I thought the shipping companies would be running diesels?
Heck, yeah. Pump that Hellcat up to 800 h.p.
That will make my commute so much faster!
Your point makes this sound like a false claim.
IIRC, one of the raps against the gas piston engine was that, in order to get the peak explosion to occur when the piston was at the top, some of the explosion had to occur on the way up, sapping power. Could a laser, causing multiple explosions at (nearly) the same time, address this problem as well?
$2 gas baby! Gotta love it.
Why is it unclear? Byproducts of inefficient combustion make up a large portion of the pollutants emitted from internal combustion engines. More complete combustion results in lower emissions, not higher.
If your car uses 20 gallons of fuel a week, it is both more efficient and cleaner than if it requires 25 gallons for the same amount of driving. And combustion efficiency aside, 5 gallons of gas NOT being burned is cleaner than 5 gallons of gas being burned.
“How does burning fuel more efficiently lead to anything greener or cleaner? Doesn’t this simply change the proportion of different waste products?”
You get fewer ‘dirty’ pollutants.
$2 gas.
It keeps inching up. I wonder how long it’s going to last?
Of course, more efficient combustion of fuel leads to less carbon buildup.
LOL.
Now that you mention it I recall an article I read years ago about the engine development lab at Ford using a quartz or sapphire window in an experimental engine so that they could film the combustion wave while the engine was running.
Of course the same question arises how long the crystal window will last. With an experimental engine the cost of replacing the window is unimportant. The cost of replacing one in your daily driver is a different matter.
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