Ugh...two-stroke. Two-stroke conjures up memories of struggling to start a snowmobile in the middle of the frigid winter by pulling on a stupid cable and spraying the hell out of the carburetor with a can of carb spray....feeling lifeless & exhausted after not getting it started. I also think of weedeaters & mopeds that were stubborn and resistant to starting. Let's get rid of the two-stroke please.

ejj:

This is not your snowmobile's 2-stroke--see original article linked. With proper engineering 2-stroke designs can be effective. Huge ship diesels are often 2-stroke designs, for instance.

Dirt cheap gasoline 2-stroke engines are irrelevant.

More relevant is the the successful pre-WW2 2-stroke Diesel Jumo-Junkers aircraft engines.

This technology is ideally suited to be a very lightweight, efficient electric generator for electric vehicles. 300-500 lbs of weight savings is possible.

Why carry

DIRTY!!! There is no way to have efficient clean combustion with a 2 stroke engine of any fuel type. This is a dead end idea with the tightening of emissions regulations.

The OPOC engine is one of the lightest weight engines available for its output. It has already been tested in a series hybrid. The parts count is very low and it has no standard valves. The scavenging compressor is built in but will allow supercharging, and novel electro-turbo-super-charging has been tested.

The engine is a much modified modern miniature version of some very large piston engines built close to a hundred years ago.

OPOC Diesel two stroke engines are not even in the same emissions or operation category as gasoline two stroke engines because the fuel is injected after compression of clean scavenging air. They are more related to the Scuderi or other separate piston designs because of the extra scavenging air pistons.

Old steam locomotives are very interesting to watch in operation, and modern designers of modern steam locomotives (yes they exist) insist upon the use of pistons eventhough one or more steam turbine designs were very successful and reliable and would even be more reliable and efficient with modern alloys.

This is the same reason why plug-in-electric trucks and SUVs would not sell well with two or three OPOC engine generators built in to supply quite adequate power for full operation. Big pistons, in big cylinders, have a not too unexplainable attraction.

With only its one moving part, a Capstone turbine powered hybrid pickup truck would not sell well even if it did burn diesel. No big truck owner would want to show off the modified and only slightly enlarged OPOC model-air-plane type engines under the hood even if he got 35 miles to the gallon.

At 70 MPH, 35 MPG means an average horsepower of about twenty at the wheels with an assumed fuel to wheel efficiency of 20% which efficiency is high for most engines and vehicles. The 13 horse power of the tested small OPOC does not meet this requirement, but with slightly improved materials and a slightly faster speed that is allowed if only battery charging is required, a single OPOC could power a large hybrid electric vehicle at high speeds. For reliability and bursts of high power, more than one could be used.

OPOC engines are almost perfectly balanced with oposing motions of the pistons. Air cooling is much more possible in series hybrids because an engine can be shut down without stopping the vehicle. Electric fans can even make shutdowns seldom necessary and allow for cooling a shut down engine.

OPOC engines run on diesel, so they are an ideal auxiliary engine for Semi-tractors whilst stopped, and they can provide air-conditioning and heating with the main engine stopped whilst the driver is sleeping. All the auxiliary loads of a large truck could be supplied by an OPOC that charged relatively small batteries that operated electric air conditioning, power brake pumps, power steering pumps, engine coolant pumps, radiator fans, lights et cetera. The batteries can even allow the OPOC to stop for brief periods and restart quickly. Wheel driven alternators can replace the power from the OPOC on downgrades. A main engine alternator is unnecessary and all belts can be removed from the engine to much increase the efficiency.

The air-conditioning system is electric powered and frame mounted and can have all welded or brazed connections with no hoses, and most units will need no maintenance for the life of the vehicle because of the hermetically sealed compressor. LG already makes highly efficient sealed, free-piston compressors for large refrigerators; low voltage versions can be made with slightly different windings and transistors. Two or three such units could be used together for more cooling so that entirely new units need not be designed and also for reliability and ease and efficiency of coolant control.

There might even be enough power from the OPOC to cool or air condition the trailer. When stopped in traffic the main engine could be stopped and cooled. The wheel driven alternators can be fed power to act as motors to creep in traffic without the use of the main engine, or a starter like motor could be fitted to the transmission for the same purpose.

Low pressure natural gas or propane or butane can be injected into an OPOC cylinder just after the flow of scavenging air stops, and the exhaust ports close, and the ordinary compression will not ignite the charge, but the injection of a small amount of diesel will cause ignition, or spark plugs can ignite the charge instead. This allows the use of propane, butane or compressed natural gas to substitute for some or all of the fuel in an OPOC. Much the same could be done with ethanol or methanol.

Because it can run on diesel or jet fuel, the OPOC engines should first be produced as generators for the military, but they would be best optimized to run at very high speeds for high power when necessary with an inverter system. Its makers could contact me for known ways to enhance such a system at low cost.

The high power and low weight could make them attractive for combined heat and power units for businesses or large homes that have natural gas supplies.

An alternator equipped OPOC could be mounted in a PRIUS and directly connected through rectifiers to the standard battery. The fuel flow would control the charge rate and the OPOC would be stoppped and started from the main battery with appropriate circuits connected to the alternator windings. This would allow the Prius to operate on any combination of fuels including diesel, compressed natural gas, methanol, ethanol, propane or butane in full electric mode, or use some gasoline in partial electric mode.

It would be nice to have a TH!NK car equipped with cheap lead batteries for a twenty mile range and an OPOC for longer distances. Bio-diesel could be required. There have been rumours of a Hydrogen Hybrid TH!NK. ..HG..

If this was such great, revolutionary technology, why haven't the Germans (VW, Diamler) been all over this already? This sounds like a junk, pump and dump stock - use smoke and mirrors and a bunch of exaggerations to get money from investors, divert it to secret locations, then pull up stakes and leave town as quickly as possible & declare bankruptcy.

Great technology does not sell itself neither does bad technology. Pet rocks and Hula-Hoops may not even be exceptions. Pet rocks were great technology.

IBM decided to sell the 8088 processor and IBM-DOS (MSDOS) to the world so that Apple II computers would not show up on their employees desks at work or at home.

IBM's highly financed entry into the market killed off all competing processors eventually and left the world with one of the worst processors and operating systems. There were better processors and operating systems in 1960.

The perfection of manufacturing processes in China and the failure to control intelectual property developed at IBM's expense by Microsoft now leaves IBM out of this market. IBM never had the best computers or programs, but they had and still have a great sales organization. Their researchers have discovered ways to make very compact disc-drives and many other useful discoveries.

Ford developed the solid sodium-ion electrolyte and did not sell a penny's worth of product, but Mes-Dea and NGK are have sold much product, but not enough with these solid electrolytes.

It takes laws and goverment support to sell some products like seat belts and catalytic converters and solar cells and wind turbines.

The product that will save much CO2 release at a profit to its users, the home and business cogeneration unit, will not sell without laws to allow them to be connected to the grid and without laws that require the energy and CO2 efficiency that they provide. First cost is always more important to contractors and building buyers. LEED is not enough.

Small engines are better technology than large ones for efficiency, but car buyers seldom buy a car that cannot accelerate to 60 mph while crossing an intersection from a stop even though they are too busy on the cell phone to actually do that.

APT may own the rights to the OPOC name. It is not clear if there is any relationship between HTL and APT.

The chance of a radical engine development appearing in a production car is low.

Good technology would have all car makers build cars that can run on pure ethanol or Methanol. This can be done for less than $200 per car and probably a lot less in mass production. Some race cars have run on Methanol for years and now run on ethanol so it is known how to do it, and it has been done. The same injectors might be used for either by controlling the fuel pump pressure.

Except in energy content, methanol is a superiour fuel and can be made now from the cheapest coal at a far lower cost per mile than gasoline. There are many people in the US who would rather have us buy crude oil from foreign countries at twice the price per mile traveled than to allow the use of coal to make methanol.

Good technology would also have all cars run on compressed natural gas for at least a short distance.

Excellent technology was used in the TATA nano which will never be sold in the US. ..HG..

Could you expand on that a bit Henry?

Henry

Could you please try to concentrate a bit what you want to communicate, the few informations that you have to report are so diluted in the blabla that we miss it. On top of this given the length of your messages I don't think anybody bother to read them, and last but not least your are not the only one to write on this site so please for the sake of conviviality keep it short and simple.

Thanks

It should be noted that some of the advantages of a two stroke engine are lost in this design. A traditional two stroke uses one piston per cylinder (just as a traditional four stroke does) and in doing so reduces frictional losses. This will not be the case in the OPOC engine. Pumping losses, however, will be greatly reduced and specific power should increase. NVH shouldn't be an issue as this engine inherently has excellent balance.

If NG were used in conjunction with a three way cat, I don't see why emissions would be an issue. If used as a range extender in a PHEV running in a narrow RPM range, emissions control should be even easier.

The beauty of OPOC is that combustion-chamber heat loss can be reduced to 1/2 since there is no cylinder head, and engine weight and size can be reduced also, given the lack of cylinder head, gasket, and head bolts, and head valves, camshafts, etc.. Furthermore, for a 2-cylinder alternate-firing 2-stroker, OPOC offers an unique natural mass balancing not available with any other 2-cylinder engines. An opposed-firing 2-cylinder horizontally opposed twin can also achieve natural mass balancing, but will have the large torque pulse of that of a single cylinder. The alternate-firing OPOC will have the torque pulsing frequency of that of in-line 4-stroke-4-cylinder engine with even better natural mass balancing than an in-line 4.

OPOC is an elegantly simple yet very efficient engine design, but only for use with diesel fuel or oily fuel having good lubricity. It would not last as long when gasoline engine is used, since the lubricating oil tend to get blown out of the exhaust port cut-out on the cylinder. For that reason, 2-stroke gasoline use a total-loss lubrication system in which the oil is mixed with the gasoline, or metered out from an oil reservoir at regular interval. A DPF (Particulate Filter) can be used to overcome the particulate problem associated with 2-strokers and diesel engines. I wish them all the luck.