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Power Transportation Technology

Swapping Spark Plugs For Nanopulses Could Boost Engine Efficiency By 20 Percent (arstechnica.com) 151

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Transient Plasma Systems has its roots in pulsed power technology developed for the Department of Defense at the University of Southern California, specifically nanosecond-duration pulses of power. Since 2009, it has been working on commercializing the technology for the civilian market in a number of applications, but obviously it's the automotive one that interests me. In a conventional four-stroke internal combustion gasoline engine, which works on the principle of suck-squeeze-bang-blow, the bang is created by a spark plug igniting the fuel-air mixture in the cylinder. That spark typically lasts several milliseconds, and although the control of that spark is now controlled electronically rather than mechanically, the principle is the same today as it was in 1910 when Cadillac added it to its engines.

TPS's system does away with the conventional coil-on-plug approach. Instead, much shorter pulses of plasma -- several nanoseconds -- are used to ignite the fuel-air mix inside the cylinder. These have a much higher peak power than a conventional spark; thanks to their much shorter duration, however, the ignition is actually still rather low-energy (and therefore lower temperature). Consequently, it's possible to achieve better combustion at high compression ratios, more stable lean burning, and lower combustion temperatures within the cylinder. And that means a more efficient engine and one that produces less nitrogen oxide. TPS says that using its system, it can increase the thermal efficiency of an already very efficient internal combustion engine like the one Toyota uses in the current Prius (which is ~41 percent) up to 45 percent -- similar to the turbulent jet ignition systems that have recently seen Formula 1 gasoline engines reach that level.
TPS has designed the system to replace existing spark plugs, so companies don't have to redesign their engines to use it, the report says. With that said, you can forget about fitting it to your own car as "TPS's going-to-market strategy is to work with an established tier-one supplier to leverage existing relationships with OEMs as well as existing manufacturing capacity."
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Swapping Spark Plugs For Nanopulses Could Boost Engine Efficiency By 20 Percent

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    I don't know how much it would cost and I remain skeptical until we see real world results, but 20% seems like it would be worth retrofitting existing vehicles.

    • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2019 @08:26PM (#58832056) Homepage Journal

      People have been working on variations of this idea [justia.com] since the 1970s. A friend of mine worked at a place for several years in the 1980s building prototypes.

      Plasma ignition one of those ideas that is a perennial SBIR grant magnet, but after decades of promising demonstrations nobody's found the secret sauce that will make it practical in an engine that's expected to run for over a hundred thousand miles without a major overhaul. That's the really hard part of engineering, the gulf between "possible" and "practical".

      Still it wouldn't surprise me if one day some clever person cracked that particular chestnut. It might even be these guys. On the other hand it wouldn't surprise me if they're just another group that's managed to turn the idea into a promising demonstration.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Still it wouldn't surprise me if one day some clever person cracked that particular chestnut.

        It wouldn't surprise me if the IC engine goes the way of the horse & buggy by the time they perfect this.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          I'd venture to say IC engines will be around in one form or another for a long time yet. Alternative energy sources are still a very long way off from being able to compete with hydrocarbons in any meaningful way, especially when it comes to heavy machinery and shipping / long-haul transportation.

          • by Anonymous Coward

            Note that your examples almost exclusively use diesel engines, which don't have spark plugs.

          • by jrumney ( 197329 )
            Heavy machinery and shipping / long haul transportation do not use gasoline engines with spark plugs. Nanopulses have no relevance to them.
            • by necro81 ( 917438 )

              Heavy machinery and shipping / long haul transportation do not use gasoline engines with spark plugs. Nanopulses have no relevance to them.

              By this I assume you are referring to diesel engines. While they rely on auto-ignition, a lot of them supplement that with glow plugs, for which this technology could have some application. Furthermore, this technology could be added to the design of new diesel engines as a way to accelerate or otherwise better control the combustion, with the goal of reducing emissi

              • By this I assume you are referring to diesel engines. While they rely on auto-ignition, a lot of them supplement that with glow plugs, for which this technology could have some application.

                The job of the plasma ignition system is to keep cylinder temperatures low. The job of the glow plug is to create a hot spot in the cylinder so that autoignition can take place. They are diametrically opposed technologies. You NEED the temperature to come up in a diesel for efficiency.

      • by Grog6 ( 85859 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @02:22AM (#58833024)
        The exact time a spark plug fires is dependent on the timing of a virtual particle kicking off the ionization. Kicking off a plasma from scratch is dependent on the same thing. A hotter spark might burn non-ideal mixtures "better", whatever that is, but it's not magically going to be more efficient. There was actually technology to make the timing more predictable; the used polonium-210 in the alloy for the spark plug, and from what I hear they were great. Spreading radioactive polonium all over the place was not so great. It has a short half-life, but still; damn. :) You can look these up; there are old ones for sale on ebay, even. They're safe to own, because the Po-210 is no longer radioactive. [img]https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/consumer%20products/sparkplugs2.jpg[/img]
      • We've had "twin spark" systems for a very long time now. They don't give +20 (or even +5) efficiency. They do reduce emissions a bit. If your engine is so equipped that would be why. I mean...unless it's an airplane, then it's for redundancy.
      • by sglines ( 543315 )

        Yeah, I'll get excited if I can buy these as replacement spark plugs at my corner auto store. Until then meah!

    • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2019 @09:04PM (#58832210)

      but 20% seems like it would be worth retrofitting existing vehicles

      Just a quick read of TFS makes it seem that this won't work. The TPS system will enable combustion in regions of mixture and compression that don't work well with conventional sparks. But once an engine has been engineered compatible with the limitations of spark ignition, just screwing in TPS plugs won't change anything else.

      • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        That doesn't mean they can't sell retrofit kits and that people won't buy them. Armchair engineers buy superior parts to install in all sorts of things that give no advantage or even reduce performance due to other bottlenecks. Just ask all the people who paid more to get network disk with 6gbps SATA III vs 3gbps SATA II and then attach to the network with a 1gbps interface.

      • But once an engine has been engineered compatible with the limitations of spark ignition, just screwing in TPS plugs won't change anything else.

        That's my assessment as well. This ignition system enables other technologies that get the 20%. I didn't RTFA, but I'm guessing it has to do with the heterogeneous air fuel mixtures in today's "direct injection" spark ignition engines.

      • The kind of people who modify their cars won't balk at having to recode the PCM. Some of them will even be willing to replace it.

    • by lobiusmoop ( 305328 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @02:32AM (#58833040) Homepage

      Looking forward to getting 12mpg instead of 10mpg on my Hummer H2.

    • I'm certainly not an expert but, if I'm understanding this correctly, the efficiency I believe principally derives from the ability to utilize higher compression ratios and the associated leaner fuel mixes. That effectively rules out nearly all "retrofit" ideas absent a an engine rebuild. Only Infiniti's variable compression engine would seem to be able to take advantage albeit with a EPU update.
  • Okay but... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 26, 2019 @07:58PM (#58831936)

    You can already build specialized engines with higher efficiency. Heck their is a tech called freevalve from Koenigsegg that does absolutely optimized valve timing cause they control each one with a pneumatic actuator. link [youtube.com]. Efficiency wise you have skyactive which basically figures out how to use gas in a compression engine, though there are a lot of details. There is another where you can switch between gas and diesel or similar to up the efficiency.

    I'm just not convinced that just changing the ignition source is going to get you 20% in practice. The freevalve tech seems better to me, or possibly all of the above, but then you have to make an engine you can sell. Having pistons inline with two crankshafts so that pistons meet in the middle and the reaction force always hits something you want to move is another interesting idea.

    One bonus of the freevalve tech is apparently making it possible to remove a precatalytic converter. They apparently also don't need direct injection, which saves money.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Brett Buck ( 811747 )

      Koenigsegg didn't invent this. Pneumatic valve actuation has been around for 30-ish years, it has been used in virtually all Formula 1 engines used since the 80s. Renault was the first one to implement a practical system.

      • Koenigsegg didn't invent this. Pneumatic valve actuation has been around for 30-ish years, it has been used in virtually all Formula 1 engines used since the 80s. Renault was the first one to implement a practical system.

        Yup. In my time in an F1 team, I worked on the timing circuits for this.

      • Practical for what purpose? Racing? Not interesting. Freevalve is supposedly cost-effective for roadgoing vehicles.

    • by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2019 @10:01PM (#58832408) Journal

      You can already build specialized engines with higher efficiency. Heck their is a tech called freevalve ...

      IMHO a far better improvement is the replacement of the crankshaft and connecting rods with a cam and cam followers.

      This lets the pistons' motion through the cycle be arbitrary, avoiding the losses near top-dead-center where you're compressing an already burning mixture or expanding it before combustion is complete. Instead you compress it, hold it at low volume while the combustion goes from start through completion, then fully expand it. You can also expand beyond the volume where you started compressing it, all the way back to atmospheric pressure.

      So you're not "cutting the corners off" the swept area (= output energy) of the pressure-temperature curve, and can approach the Carnot cycle ideal. Exhaust temperature can be quite low, too. You also get to pick the motion curve to reduce losses pumping gasses around or trade some of that for reducing (or eliminating!) torque variations vs. shaft angle.

      You can get very nice balance, despite the arbitrary motion curve, by using a radial design with an even number of pistons.

      • by Anne Thwacks ( 531696 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @12:57AM (#58832868)
        Cam and cam followers would not do this because there are situations where there is negative pressure above the piston - eg over-run.

        However, you could use two crankshafts with different strokes and vary the proportion dynamically - like on steam raillway locomotive valve gear. It might even be possible to do this with low losses (probably not with the geometry used for steam engines though).

        I suggest that it would be better to link the piston to a hydraulic circuit and achieve the same benefits that way rather than mechanically.

        I have a perfectly good rotary engine design with continuous combustion which is a far better solution, and relies on known and proven technology, but cannot find anyone interested in the necessary investment - both Ford and GM told me "we don't want any new technology - we have got stuff that works and don't want to mess with it" - ie the bean counters prefer short term profit to long term investment.

        • Cam and cam followers would not do this because there are situations where there is negative pressure above the piston - eg over-run.

          It works just fine if the "follower" is a bearing, on a pin on the (solidly fxed) rod sticking out of the bottom of the piston, running in a track between an upper and a lower cam race on the plate on the mainshaft.

          this isn't my invention. I saw an article on it, maybe a year ago, Included a video of the inventor running it, and flying an ultralight powered by it. it's fully

        • There are more automakers than Ford and GM. I know a couple that would love to hear about it. Contact me.
      • IMHO a far better improvement is the replacement of the crankshaft and connecting rods with a cam and cam followers.

        Cam and followers would likely be worse than a crank and connecting rod. Cams are great and compressing a piston, not great at extracting energy from it.

        However, I think what you are looking for is called a free-piston engine. [wikipedia.org] Those have been researched for decades.

  • MomPOV (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 )

    which works on the principle of suck-squeeze-bang-blow

    Uh-huh.

  • I look forward to this feature being delivered in terms of higher horse-power. (That's what Americans always choose).
    • I look forward to this feature being delivered in terms of higher horse-power.

      And lower NOx emissions.

      (That's what Americans always choose).

      Lower NOx emissions is nothing any American can protest.

      Sell this as a smaller, lighter, and just as powerful engine with less pollution produced. Put it in electric hybrids and you'll have a lot of happy customers.

  • "TPS's going-to-market strategy is to work with an established tier-one supplier to leverage existing relationships with OEMs as well as existing manufacturing capacity."

    BINGO! I've got BINGO!

  • Is this gonna save me any money, or is it just transferring where some fraction of my auto expenses are going?

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Thursday June 27, 2019 @01:27AM (#58832922)

      Is this gonna save me any money, or is it just transferring where some fraction of my auto expenses are going?

      It's basically reinventing the spark plug. Instead of a spark igniting the fuel-air mixture that provides the power, it's a ball of plasma. This should allow the combustion process proceed further and more completely, thus being more efficient.

      Other techniques playing with how the mixture is combusted is Mazda's SkyActiv technology which uses charge compression, where similar to a diesel engine, the mixture is compressed until it gets hot enough to self-ignite. The only problem is you still need a spark plug because the range of use where CCI works is rather narrow. You can't, for example, idle with CCI as you can with a diesel engine.

      • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        While informative with regard to the tech I don't really see how that answers his question about cost and lifetime.

        • Haha, when I read the reply those were my exact thoughts as well!

        • The cost will be higher, because you need higher voltage.

          The lifespan will probably be similar, or just a bit better. If combustion temps are lower then spark plugs will last longer.

    • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

      "Is this gonna save me any money"

      Doubtful but it'll come with your new car or they'll otherwise market it in a way that makes it seem like it will until it is standard. The net result is almost certainly going to be paying more money, it always is.

  • What would lower CO2 emissions even more are synthetic fuels. E-Diesel is one example.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Nanopulses would be a great idea, but that's only a 20% solution. Synthetic fuels are a 100% solution.

    Note that I'm not advocating for bio-fuel. Using plant matter for fuel is a path to environmental destruction. Save the plants for food, clothing, and shelter. We can't synthesize good alternatives for corn, cotton, and wood just yet. We have known how to synthesize fuel for at least

    • We have known how to synthesize fuel for at least 100 years. All we need to do is make a few improvements and use a low CO2 energy source to drive the process.

      Or a zero CO2 energy source, like nuclear....

      • Nuclear is low-CO2 until all of the production infrastructure is electric.

        It may even be net-negative measuring all sources and sinks, but even trucking is still petrol today, much lees mining (though smart nuclear has already mined all the necessary fuel for the next few centuries).

        • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          Which is why I say keep installing the wind and solar landside and use nuclear off-shore in those seawater + co2 to methanol rigs they proposed going solar with. We have no other use for the nuclear fuel and we have shortages on the wind/solar. We need to remove a lot of CO2 fast and nuclear will do that and we've been successful using it at sea for quite some time. Eventually we can phase in current/wave based solutions to power it.

  • See here [onallcylinders.com]. They figured out a way to generate more plasma (aka spark) for a shorter time.
  • Here we go (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Wednesday June 26, 2019 @09:30PM (#58832298)
    It's the fluorescent bulb all over again. So much more efficient, great savings, lasts forever, etc. Except it costs $30 instead of $1, lasts 1/10th the time advertised, and somehow you never quite see the savings on your electric bill... On with the $500 spark plug!
    • Re:Here we go (Score:5, Interesting)

      by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @01:45AM (#58832952) Journal

      It's the fluorescent bulb all over again. So much more efficient, great savings, lasts forever, etc. Except it costs $30 instead of $1, lasts 1/10th the time advertised,

      That didn't happen. When they cost $30 instead of $1 they lasted forever. But no one wants to pay $30 so there was a race to the bottom and now they cost $4 and surprisingly don't last as long as the $30 ones. Businesses which are capable of doing the maths and realising that the $30 one does eventually save money in terms of electricity and a fair bit more instead of time all switched to fluorescent lamps including CFLs years and years ago. The only time you ever see incandescent bulbs is those artisanal ones in hipster cafes.

      This story however sounds like bullshit. A 20% increase in efficiency bump would put petrol engines to within a hair's breadth of the theoretical maximum efficiency as defined by the compression ratio. That makes it sound like it's magicing away all of the friction, exhaust valve effects and so on. I'm guessing it solves the heat injection part of the equation.

      I don't believe 20%. Not even slightly.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        The only time you ever see incandescent bulbs is those artisanal ones in hipster cafes.

        They're probably LED filament bulbs actually, which are even more efficient than CFLs and last longer.

      • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        "The only time you ever see incandescent bulbs is those artisanal ones in hipster cafes."

        Nobody uses Fluorescents anymore, just led. After all Fluorescent has been shown to actually consume more power rather than less just not the kind of power being metered in residential power. But when you actually need a bright source with power behind it Incandescent works. I have a large room with an oddly sloped ceiling and still use a 150w incandescent in the upper corner to light the whole room.

        I've tried the large

        • You didn't try very hard if you can't find something brighter than a 150W incandescent bulb. I'm willing to bet you went to your local supermarket, tried both bulbs they sell and called it a day.

          Poor effort.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        I think it's 20% of it's EXISTING efficiency more efficient, not 20% overall efficiency boost.
        ie: a 40% efficient engine goes to 48%, not 60%.

  • Sounds like perfect match of technology for their electric cars.
  • Take one and break the porcelain and then throw a tiny piece at a car window. Amazing efficiency.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    The thermal efficiency of a four stroke engine is constrained by the highest and lowest temperature in the cycle. A 20% increase in efficiency implies a large change in temperature which would require a large change in compression ratio. Then you need higher octane fuel to prevent knock. These limitations exist regardless of the ignition system.

    Lower temperatures claimed in the summary do in fact reduce NOx... but lower temperatures reduce efficiency. So which is it? Furthermore, lower temperature reduce NO

  • But why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Reservoir Penguin ( 611789 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @01:20AM (#58832906)
    Most advanced European countries have already put plans in place to phase out new internal combustion engine vehicles by 2030-2040, no point investing into a dead end technology.
    • Those countries say that now, for social signaling, but nothing binds them to it and the math says without a substantial investment in safe atomic power they're not going to get it to work.

      There's a chance China might bail them out with fast breeder reactors or an AI-designed fusion reactor by 2040 but those are extraordinary hopes on a certain timescale.

      They would do better to embrace all forms of efficiency now to enable their best energy profile target for 2040 rather than an aspirational one they're goi

      • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        I don't know about those countries but Texas, despite massive oil industry, is on track to be 100% renewable next year. You have deregulated (you shop for electric reseller) power here and you used to be able to pick the dirty power for less but the pricing has met in the middle so why wouldn't you go renewable? There are Teslas everywhere.

    • And what impact does that have on all the cars being built in China and India right now? Or third world countries? Or even Russia?
    • Most advanced European countries have already put plans in place to phase out new internal combustion engine vehicles by 2030-2040, no point investing into a dead end technology.

      Development into that "dead" technology is still paying my bills, and a lot of other people's as well.

      10% of all cars sold in California were supposed to be electric by 2003. [wikipedia.org] That didn't happen. We'll see what happens in 2030.

  • Yaahh... (Score:5, Funny)

    by drewsup ( 990717 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @01:30AM (#58832930)

    If you could get those TPS plugs to us next year, that would be greaaaat.....

  • Engines? Spark plugs? Igniting fuel-air mix?

    None of my cars have any of that stuff. BEV is the future; stop making better buggy whips.

  • which works on the principle of suck-squeeze-bang-blow

    Should I be getting this turned on reading a /. summary?

  • Those will give you a 2% increase. 20% in real life? I Doubt it.

  • With that said, you can forget about fitting it to your own car as "TPS's going-to-market strategy is to work with an established tier-one supplier to leverage existing relationships with OEMs as well as existing manufacturing capacity."

    Super fucking lame... almost save the world a huge portion of carbon emissions, fail at last hurdle due to greed. Classic Humanoids.

  • The opening paragraph is a hateful paranoid rant. The author looks like Peewee Herman.

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