These are extraordinary claims, yet the method is obvious. Why has it not been adopted in the past? What did they do with World War II fighter engines that compares to this?
Most likely the control was impossible or the erosion far too quick. It still makes a great story that is likely to fade as the financial reality of this type of work buries the effort.
I have been around my share of engine development efforts and am certainly sympathetic. I am just not optimistic because the road is well trodden. I wish them the best and hope theirs or some of the other projects out there find a way to actually enter the market.
I observe that construction compressors still weigh a thousand pounds or so and must be hauled behind a truck. This has not changed in fifty years. Thank you Cummins. Thirty years ago I financed a compressor able to do the same job that came in under a hundred pounds. Our few devices saw action with the British navy during the Falkland war.
That is the real lesson of hardware development. It takes a man’s lifetime. That is a high price to pay.
Ultra-Efficient Gas Engine Passes Test
A novel fuel-injection system achieves 64 miles per gallon.
By Kevin Bullis
MONDAY, MARCH 08, 2010
Transonic Combustion, a startup based in Camarillo , CA
The key is heating and pressurizing gasoline before injecting it into the combustion chamber, says Mike Rocke, Transonic's vice president of business development. This puts it into a supercritical state that allows for very fast and clean combustion, which in turn decreases the amount of fuel needed to propel a vehicle. The company also treats the gasoline with a catalyst that "activates" it, partially oxidizing it to enhance combustion.
The technology is one of many being developed to squeeze more efficiency out of existing engines to meet new fuel economy standards and other regulations--without making vehicles more expensive. "It's a time of renaissance for internal combustion engines," says William Green, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT. Improvements include smaller engines boosted with turbocharging, improved valve timing, and direct injection, in which fuel is injected directly into the combustion chamber rather than into an adjacent port. He says Transonic's approach "may be a promising way to improve on conventional direct injection."
If it works as promised, the new technology would improve fuel economy by far more than these other options, some of which can improve efficiency on the order of 20 percent. It is expected to cost about as much as high-end fuel injection systems currently on the market, Rocke says.
Transonic's injection system varies from direct injection in two ways: it uses supercritical fluids and doesn't require a spark to ignite the fuel. The supercritical fluid mixes quickly with air when it's injected into the cylinder.
Once the fuel is injected into the piston, the heat and pressure are enough to cause the fuel to combust without a spark (similar to what happens in diesel engines), which also helps provide fast, uniform combustion. Ignition can be timed to happen just when the piston is reaching the optimal point, so it can convert as much of the energy in the gasoline into mechanical movement as possible, without wasting energy by heating up the combustion chamber walls, as happens in conventional technologies. The company has developed proprietary software that lets the system adjust the injection precisely depending on the load put on the engine.
The system can also reduce something called "throttling losses." Ordinarily, the air intake to an engine is partially closed during cruising, and this makes the engine work harder. Transonic's system can operate with the air intake open, creating a lean mixture in the combustion chamber (with a lot of air, but just a little gasoline). Rocke says that at a steady cruising speed of 50 miles per hour, the test car gets 98 miles per gallon.
The company has demonstrated the technology in its own test engine, and says it is currently testing it with three automakers. One key question is the impact the high pressures and temperatures will have on how long the engine lasts, Rocke says. The company, which is supported by venture-capital investments from Venrock and Khosla Ventures, plans to manufacture its system itself, rather than licensing the technology. It plans to build its first factory in 2013, and to introduce the technology into production cars by 2014.
