MUSIC system schematic. Click to enlarge. A one-day seminar, hosted by Coventry University (UK) on 17 December 2007, will present the results of an experimental project to develop the MUSIC (Merritt Unthrottled Spark Ignition Combustion) gasoline engine to an in-vehicle demonstration stage. The MUSIC gasoline engine promises to match or... Read more →
Initial simulation studies of a prototype heavy-duty air-hybrid engine being developed by engineers at Volvo Powertrain, UCLA and Sturman Industries show a 4-18% improvement in fuel economy over a wide range of driving cycles. The amount of improvement depends on the cycle. The addition of a low-temperature EGR circuit could... Read more →
The Liquid Piston engine. A) full housing. B) Transparent housing showing principle components. Click to enlarge. LiquidPiston, developers of a new engine architecture they claim will achieve 50% fuel efficiency (compared to the ~30% of existing engines) and drastically reduce pollutant emissions (earlier post), closed a $1.25 million seed investment... Read more →
The Bortone cycle. Click to enlarge. The NEVIS Engine Company Ltd. has successfully closed its first round of seed funding to help it further test and develop its current two-cylinder prototype engine as well as to develop awareness of the technology. The Italian company has been developing the prototype with... Read more →
Cutaway drawing of the Sanderson engine. Sanderson Engine Development Company (SED), which is developing a new engine that allows the conversion between reciprocating and rotational motion without the use of a conventional crankshaft, has been awarded three patents on critical elements of its technology. The patents cover a piston assembly,... Read more →
Cylinder pairs in the Scuderi Split Cycle. Scuderi divides the four strokes of the Otto cycle across two paired cylinders, a compression and a power cylinder. The Scuderi Group will exhibit further-developed designs of its Scuderi Air-Hybrid Engine next week at the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress in Detroit.... Read more →
HUMMER O2. GM Advanced Design has won the Los Angeles Auto Show’s Design Challenge for the second year in a row. This year’s winning entry is a two-dimensional rendering of a 2015 Blue Sky Concept that addresses environmental sustainability, called the HUMMER O2. (Earlier post.) The 2006 Design Challenge theme... Read more →
The body panels of the HUMMER O2 contain the algae. General Motors Advanced Design’s entry into the Los Angeles Design Challenge in conjunction with the upcoming Los Angeles Auto Show is the HUMMER O2: a fuel-cell powered vehicle with a phototropic body shell that produces oxygen (O2) even while parked.... Read more →
Phantom view of the Bonner engine. Click to enlarge. In a poster session at the upcoming 25th Army Science Conference, to be held 27-30 November 2006 in Orlando, the Army Research Laboratory’s Vehicle Technology Directorate is presenting an overview of three unconventional engine concepts being developed under its sponsorship. The... Read more →
Basic design of a free-piston engine as generator (not the engine modeled). Click to enlarge. Source: Prof. Valeri Golovitchev, Chalmers Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, are exploring the development of a two-stroke, free–piston compression-ignited engine employing uniflow scavenging as a genset in hybrid applications. Free-piston engines (engines without... Read more →
The cam-based transmission has six primary components. Click to enlarge. Engineers at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University have developed a continuously variable transmission based on a cam and a planetary gearset that might increase fuel efficiency 3-5%. Much work has gone into the field of continuously variable transmissions,... Read more →
A rendering of a 540hp prototype. A Florida company, Turbine Truck Engines (TTE), is developing an implementation of a multi-fuel turbine for heavy-duty vehicle applications, and has recently completed the design of a fifth, 540hp prototype. The Dentonation Cycle Gas Turbine (DCGT), originally developed by Alpha Engines beginning in 1984,... Read more →
A cutaway sketch of the RIDE engine in combustion mode. Note the offset of the crankshaft from central rotational axis. A Virginia inventor is devising a rotary engine with an integral flywheel effect to serve as a single-unit hybrid power plant. Gary Greenwell’s new RIDE (Rotational Inertial Dampening Engine) modifies... Read more →
A sketch of the LiquidPiston Engine. A father and son team—Dr. Nikolay Shkolnik, an entrepreneur and inventor, and his son Alexander, a PhD student at MIT—have developed an engine architecture they claim will achieve 50% fuel efficiency (compared to the ~30% of existing engines) and drastically reduce pollutant emissions. The... Read more →
A cutaway view of the toroidal engine showing the pistons. Click to enlarge. Rotoblock, a startup company, is developing a new toroidal internal combustion engine: the Oscillating Piston Engine (OPE). The company has also signed a letter of intent with Apollo Energy Systems, a manufacturer of lead cobalt batteries and... Read more →
The StarRotor compact Brayton cycle engine. A Texas A&M chemical engineering professor has developed a process to convert biomass to a mixed alcohol fuel that contains more energy than fuel ethanol. He has also developed a compact Brayton-cycle engine (the same thermodynamic cycle employed by jet engines) capable of being... Read more →
The Massive Yet Tiny (MYT) engine A California inventor is developing a new compact and highly efficient engine—the Massive Yet Tiny (MYT) engine—that promises high power output with a very high power to weight ratio (20:1). The inventor, Raphial Morgado, recently won first prize in the 2005 Emhart-NASA Tech Briefs... Read more →
An application of the Cyclone. Cyclone Technologies LLP, developer of the Cyclone external combustion engine, received an Automotive Engineering International (SAE’s publication) Tech Award at the SAE World Congress in Detroit. The Cyclone modifies the traditional Rankin cycle steam engine to deliver the use of super-critical pressure (3,200 psi) and... Read more →
Rendering of the Scuderi air-hybrid. Click to enlarge. The Scuderi Group will introduce the design of an air-hybrid implementation of its split-cycle engine (earlier post) at the SAE World Congress in Detroit next week. Scuderi claims that the air-hybrid system doubles the fuel efficiency of todays conventional engines and reduces... Read more →
A sketch of the overexpanded two-stroke engine concept. The compressor (see below) is element #25. Engines utilizing homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) combustion regimes offer the promise of being cleaner-burning and more fuel-efficient than current engines—and hence are attracting a great deal of research attention and funding, especially for engines... Read more →
AVT sub-module for inlet or exhaust valve. Click to enlarge. Lotus Engineering, in partnership with Eaton, is working on enabling advanced combustion control based on an electro-hydraulic valve system with full flexible control over valve timing, lift and velocity. The fully variable valve timing system, known as Active Valve Train... Read more →
Cross-section of Pivotal’s two-stroke engine. Click to enlarge. A New Zealand company has redesigned the two-stroke combustion engine with the intention not only of overcoming the shortcomings of the conventional sliding-piston two-stroke engines, but also to produce a combustion engine that can better exploit hydrogen as a fuel. The Pivotal... Read more →
Cylinder pairs in the Scuderi Split Cycle. Scuderi divides the four strokes of the Otto cycle across two paired cylinders, a compression and a power cylinder. The Scuderi Group, a company that designed and is developing a new internal combustion engine based on dividing the conventional four-stroke engine cycle across... Read more →
REGI U.S., owner of the US rights to the Rand Cam rotary engine (earlier post) and its development partner, Radian Milparts, have struck a deal over the rights to the preliminary patent application, trademark and associated materials for the RadMax, an application of the Rand Cam engine in an unmanned... Read more →
An HECE test engine Work being done by ArvinMeritor, IAV (Ingenieursgesellshaft für Auto und Verkehr) and MIT on enhancing gasoline combustion with a small hydrogen gas stream is pointing toward a potential estimated improvement in gasoline fuel economy of 20% to 30%, depending upon the baseline engine. Writing in the... Read more →
A cutaway illustration of a basic AVFIC engine cylinder unit Two California inventors have designed and patented the ultimate flex-fuel and flex-combustion engine: an engine that can adapt in real-time to a variety of petroleum-, bio- or gaseous-fuels using the appropriate combustion mode, including spark-ignition, compression-ignition or HCCI variants. One... Read more →
A sketch of the Engineuity process. An Israeli startup, Engineuity R&D Ltd, claims it has developed and demonstrated a technology for on-board hydrogen production for use with a modified internal combustion engine. The technology is based on a high-temperature process causing a light metal wire (e.g., aluminum or magnesium) to... Read more →
With this post, we’re formalizing a new category in GCC: Concept Engines. Even in the most optimistic scenarios about transitions to a hydrogen economy, combustion engines will be with us for decades to come. (The applications, however, will begin to differentiate—downsized engines in plug-in or conventional hybrids, for example, running... Read more →