Ford has developed a new ignition system

[battyr]

I know what a maser is. And the idea most certainly applies.

 

An unfocused, incoherent microwave source isn't going to do much to ignite a fuel air mixture---heck, you might as well use a tungsten lamp and a magnifying glass.

 

I have seen great sparks in my microwave oven. Does it have a maser? You focus the micowaves the old fashion way. With antennae.

[twintornados]

I noticed in the article the claim of better "cold start" and "damp start" ability....I am thinking E85 and E100 pure ethanol which is a bitch to start in cold climates...

[battyr]

link

 

Borg Warner recently purchased a company that is developing its own replacement for the spark plug. A high-energy electrostatic field inside the combustion chamber ignites the mixture.

 

Here is a technical paper on the system.

 

http://www.etatech.us/ECCOS-Advanced-Ignit...ic-Ignition.pdf

 

I thought it used microwaves, but it actually uses much lower frequency. But still use radiowaves.

 

Dana Corp is working on microwaves.

[Mark B. Morrow]

Took me a while to figure that one out.... Too long, perhaps.

 

Anyway, score another one for Ford's 'blue-sky' research units...

 

 

Well now they can get back to work on the Alan Parsons Project.

[RichardJensen]

I have seen great sparks in my microwave oven. Does it have a maser? You focus the micowaves the old fashion way. With antennae.

1) antennae don't focus anything.

 

2) As mentioned before a -collector dish- is not an antenna. You can focus a beam with a collector dish which functions as, essentially, a mirror for its intended wavelength

 

3) The sparks you see in your microwave are entirely unrelated to the principle of laser/maser ignition. You get sparks in the microwave precisely because the microwave beam is not narrowly focused--of course, if it were, you'd torch a small part of your food and the rest of it would remain cold/frozen/unpopped/etc.

[Sixt9coug]

you'd torch a small part of your food and the rest of it would remain cold/frozen/unpopped/etc.

 

 

Hoooooot Poooocket......

 

:happy feet:

[old_fairmont_wagon]

This reminds me a whole lot of the "we've got this super cool solenoid activated valvetrain idea that will completely negate the need for a camshaft and allow complete control of valve lift, duration and timing in a dynamic fashion over the entire RPM range without the drag and heavy gear associated with current vvt technologies." That was what, in the mid 90s? Still haven't seen a volume production engine that employs that tech yet, and the benifits of that tech are quite desirable. I understand it had problems with getting solenoids that were reliable enough, fast enough, cheap enough, and could also tolerate the conditions associated with being attached to a reciprocating internal combustion engine. So, with all of that said, we'll see this laser setup in a production engine in what, 15, 20 years? By then, we'll supposedly have completely abandoned them according to all those forward looking techno thinkers out there.

 

What the internal combustion engine needs its more fundamental. It needs a way to better recover waste heat from the combustion of fossil fuels into usable work. Yes, gas expansion is already recovering part of it, but there is still a significant amount of heat that is being radiated into the atmosphere. If there were a better way to put that heat to good use, we'd see the overall efficiency of internal combustions go up. I don't know if you'd want to run the engine at a higher temperature and boil the cooling water into steam, then use that to drive a turbine, and return it to the engine in a closed loop, but you'd loose energy to having to pump the water around in higher quantities and you'd still have to radiate out heat to recondense the steam. BiMetal thermocouples in the radiator to convert some of the heat to electricity? Can they produce enough current to make a significant contribution to motive force?

[lfeg]

And then, in a couple hundred years....... phasers.....

Don't some engines already use cam phasers?

[lfeg]

This reminds me a whole lot of the "we've got this super cool solenoid activated valvetrain idea that will completely negate the need for a camshaft and allow complete control of valve lift, duration and timing in a dynamic fashion over the entire RPM range without the drag and heavy gear associated with current vvt technologies." That was what, in the mid 90s? Still haven't seen a volume production engine that employs that tech yet, and the benifits of that tech are quite desirable. I understand it had problems with getting solenoids that were reliable enough, fast enough, cheap enough, and could also tolerate the conditions associated with being attached to a reciprocating internal combustion engine. So, with all of that said, we'll see this laser setup in a production engine in what, 15, 20 years? By then, we'll supposedly have completely abandoned them according to all those forward looking techno thinkers out there.

 

What the internal combustion engine needs its more fundamental. It needs a way to better recover waste heat from the combustion of fossil fuels into usable work. Yes, gas expansion is already recovering part of it, but there is still a significant amount of heat that is being radiated into the atmosphere. If there were a better way to put that heat to good use, we'd see the overall efficiency of internal combustions go up. I don't know if you'd want to run the engine at a higher temperature and boil the cooling water into steam, then use that to drive a turbine, and return it to the engine in a closed loop, but you'd loose energy to having to pump the water around in higher quantities and you'd still have to radiate out heat to recondense the steam. BiMetal thermocouples in the radiator to convert some of the heat to electricity? Can they produce enough current to make a significant contribution to motive force?

 

This was already done back in the 40s and 50s by some of the aero engine builders (I think Napier was one). Start with a pretty efficient otto or diesel cycle engine. Alter the cycle for a longer/more effective expansion stroke, use a turbosupercharger to compress the inlet air, use several stages of turbocompounding (with fuel injected into the exhaust to use up the last bit of oxygen and squeeze a bit more energy) to fully expand the exhaust gasses and recover heat energy. It got to the point that so much of the energy of the fuel was recovered after exiting the engine cylinder that the basic engine was just a gas generator that could be replaced with a simple (not really simple though) combustor. Hence the gas turbine engine.

[battyr]

1) antennae don't focus anything.

 

2) As mentioned before a -collector dish- is not an antenna. You can focus a beam with a collector dish which functions as, essentially, a mirror for its intended wavelength

 

3) The sparks you see in your microwave are entirely unrelated to the principle of laser/maser ignition. You get sparks in the microwave precisely because the microwave beam is not narrowly focused--of course, if it were, you'd torch a small part of your food and the rest of it would remain cold/frozen/unpopped/etc.

 

1. They do when they are an odd shape or you have more than one.

 

2. They do work with antenna. Used with microwave transmitters.

 

3. Metal in microwave absorb microwaves, creating hot spots, It can also reflect and distort radio waves. I have never seen a microwave without hot spots. That is why they usually have turntables. You don't need maser ignition, that would just burn a hole through your piston.

 

The piston, cylinder and head will act like dish that completely surrounds the antennae. The microwaves would react with the hydrogen within the fuel. Everything would happen within a few inches of the antenna.

[RichardJensen]

1. They do when they are an odd shape or you have more than one.

 

2. They do work with antenna. Used with microwave transmitters.

 

3. Metal in microwave absorb microwaves, creating hot spots, It can also reflect and distort radio waves. I have never seen a microwave without hot spots. That is why they usually have turntables. You don't need maser ignition, that would just burn a hole through your piston.

 

The piston, cylinder and head will act like dish that completely surrounds the antennae. The microwaves would react with the hydrogen within the fuel. Everything would happen within a few inches of the antenna.

I don't even know where to begin with this.

 

1) antennas DO NOT FOCUS WAVES. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about this. They do NOT focus waves.

 

You ever see a guy use an antenna to take a digital photograph? You ever see a special 'light sensitive' antenna inside a camera?

 

Antennas do NOT focus waves. They BROADCAST waves, which is about as far from 'focus' as you can get, and while they are also capable of RECEIVING waves, they do not provide ANY information about where the wave is coming from (and before you say 'GPS' remember that GPS uses mathematical equations and signal delay to triangulate--because all the antenna reports is x number of signals from x number of satellites)

 

2) Microwaves do NOT use antennas to focus or direct the beam. They use a waveguide.

 

3) Maser ignition would no more burn a hole in your piston than conventional combustion would burn a hole in it.

 

Using the piston top as a collector dish to focus an incoherent microwave beam on a certain spot would require applying a microwave reflective coating to the dish that would stand up to years of abuse with NO service--understanding that the moment it failed the car would be a brick--as well as shaping the piston head not for efficient combustion chamber swirl, but for reflective properties.

 

You know battyr, you're not an idiot, but you have got to recognize that there are people out there who know more than you.

Edited July 15, 2009 by RichardJensen

[RichardJensen]

This is a satellite dish:

 

 

This is a diagram of reflecting telescope types:

 

 

The similarity between the satellite dish above and the "Prime" type of reflecting telescope should be beyond obvious.

 

A satellite dish is NOT an ANTENNA.

[battyr]

I don't even know where to begin with this.

 

1) antennas DO NOT FOCUS WAVES. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about this. They do NOT focus waves.

 

You ever see a guy use an antenna to take a digital photograph? You ever see a special 'light sensitive' antenna inside a camera?

 

Antennas do NOT focus waves. They BROADCAST waves, which is about as far from 'focus' as you can get, and while they are also capable of RECEIVING waves, they do not provide ANY information about where the wave is coming from (and before you say 'GPS' remember that GPS uses mathematical equations and signal delay to triangulate--because all the antenna reports is x number of signals from x number of satellites)

 

2) Microwaves do NOT use antennas to focus or direct the beam. They use a waveguide.

 

3) Maser ignition would no more burn a hole in your piston than conventional combustion would burn a hole in it.

 

Using the piston top as a collector dish to focus an incoherent microwave beam on a certain spot would require applying a microwave reflective coating to the dish that would stand up to years of abuse with NO service--understanding that the moment it failed the car would be a brick--as well as shaping the piston head not for efficient combustion chamber swirl, but for reflective properties.

 

You know battyr, you're not an idiot, but you have got to recognize that there are people out there who know more than you.

 

Did you read what Borg Warner is doing? I don't pretend to know more than they do. I am not a scientist, but I do know what is being done today. The whole arguement is a matter of semantics. You are right that you can not create a sharp lazer like beam with out a mazer. But you don't need to.

[RichardJensen]

Did you read what Borg Warner is doing? I don't pretend to know more than they do. I am not a scientist, but I do know what is being done today. The whole arguement is a matter of semantics. You are right that you can not create a sharp lazer like beam with out a mazer. But you don't need to.

1) Of course it's a matter of semantics. You are using a word (antenna) to describe two things (waveguides and collector dishes) which are not antennas.

 

2) A waveguide functions similarly to a laser/maser, without producing as coherent or focused a beam. If B-W is using a waveguide they'll need a pretty powerful microwave source to ignite the fuel air mixture as quickly as it is ignited by spark ignition. We're talking heating the chamber by hundreds of degrees in a fraction of a second.

[Hemiman]

This reminds me a whole lot of the "we've got this super cool solenoid activated valvetrain idea that will completely negate the need for a camshaft and allow complete control of valve lift, duration and timing in a dynamic fashion over the entire RPM range without the drag and heavy gear associated with current vvt technologies." That was what, in the mid 90s? Still haven't seen a volume production engine that employs that tech yet, and the benifits of that tech are quite desirable. I understand it had problems with getting solenoids that were reliable enough, fast enough, cheap enough, and could also tolerate the conditions associated with being attached to a reciprocating internal combustion engine. So, with all of that said, we'll see this laser setup in a production engine in what, 15, 20 years? By then, we'll supposedly have completely abandoned them according to all those forward looking techno thinkers out there.

 

What the internal combustion engine needs its more fundamental. It needs a way to better recover waste heat from the combustion of fossil fuels into usable work. Yes, gas expansion is already recovering part of it, but there is still a significant amount of heat that is being radiated into the atmosphere. If there were a better way to put that heat to good use, we'd see the overall efficiency of internal combustions go up. I don't know if you'd want to run the engine at a higher temperature and boil the cooling water into steam, then use that to drive a turbine, and return it to the engine in a closed loop, but you'd loose energy to having to pump the water around in higher quantities and you'd still have to radiate out heat to recondense the steam. BiMetal thermocouples in the radiator to convert some of the heat to electricity? Can they produce enough current to make a significant contribution to motive force?

 

Ha Ha!

 

I remember all the talk about this, and that cars would have 48V electrical systems to support it. I actually like the idea. Too bad it never happened. Heck, I'm still waiting to see a production engine featuring the Coates rotary valve.

 

Oh yeah, the advantage of a laser is that it can be easily directed with optical fiber.

[old_fairmont_wagon]

This was already done back in the 40s and 50s by some of the aero engine builders (I think Napier was one). Start with a pretty efficient otto or diesel cycle engine. Alter the cycle for a longer/more effective expansion stroke, use a turbosupercharger to compress the inlet air, use several stages of turbocompounding (with fuel injected into the exhaust to use up the last bit of oxygen and squeeze a bit more energy) to fully expand the exhaust gasses and recover heat energy. It got to the point that so much of the energy of the fuel was recovered after exiting the engine cylinder that the basic engine was just a gas generator that could be replaced with a simple (not really simple though) combustor. Hence the gas turbine engine.

 

 

Ahh yes, the old maintenance nightmares known as the "turbo compound" engines. The last hurrah to the old radials to make them efficient and powerful enough to continue forward into an age that was pushing onwards into the jet age. A great idea on paper, but not so good in real life.

[retro-man]

OK then if cars can be started by lasers, guess what? THEY ALSO CAN BE SHUT DOWN BY THEM TOO! (AND WHEN I SAY THAT, I MEAN A PERMANENT DISABILING OF THE VEHICLE.) Because the way every aspect of society today being controlled by computers for the most part. What makes you think that isn't possible?

You've been reading too many loony conspiracy theories (mostly here on BON). I believe any modern car or truck right now can be disabled with a taser to a metal body part. (Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.)

[twintornados]

Lasers and (in a hundred years) phasers ((lol)) are nothing new...I can't wait until someone develops warp drive ...and...when that happens, someone here will demand that they retrofit it to a large rear drive sedan with a body on frame that will still be in production since, "That is the only way to do it right."

:hysterical:

Edited July 16, 2009 by twintornados

[mettech]

Lasers and (in a hundred years) phasers ((lol)) are nothing new...I can't wait until someone develops warp drive ...and...when that happens, someone here will demand that they retrofit it to a large rear drive sedan with a body on frame that will still be in production since, "That is the only way to do it right."

:hysterical:

 

 

It may be closer than you think. :shades:

 

The vast majority of "Sci-fi" is here today.

[lfeg]

Ha Ha!

 

I remember all the talk about this, and that cars would have 48V electrical systems to support it. I actually like the idea. Too bad it never happened. Heck, I'm still waiting to see a production engine featuring the Coates rotary valve.

 

Oh yeah, the advantage of a laser is that it can be easily directed with optical fiber.

 

 

I am one who thinks that the next big advance in piston engines will be the application of the rotary valve. We finally have the materials technology to do it right. I am partial to the Aspin design, it is a nice layout.