Internal combustion engines pollute the air . interior combustion engine rob the satellite of precious and non - renewable resources . home combustion engines take fossil fuel that tie the United States economically to countries that we ’d rather not be doing business with .
And interior burning engine are n’t expire away anytime soon .
Oh , sure , you ’ve get word about all the young technologies that should be replacing the national combustion railway locomotive any Clarence Day now , engineering likeelectric motors , intercrossed top executive trains , hydrogenfuel cellsand even automobile that run on flat melodic phrase , but none of these engineering is ready to save the motorcar industry from the internal burning locomotive quite yet . galvanic motors are probably our best bet for the immediate future and there are even some cars on the grocery store now that use them as a power author , but they take prison term to recharge , have a limited driving compass , and they ca n’t simply be fueled up in five minutes at the local overhaul station . Besides , do you really want to get stuck in the centre of East Nowhere , Middle America , with a deadlithium - ion batteryarray and nobody around who has the foggiest opinion how to recharge it ? Hybrid power trains are already quite viable , as the huge success of the Toyota Prius demonstrates , but they still contain internal combustion engines , so they do n’t really solve the trouble . They just postpone the day when we ’ll finally involve to get free of this archaic technology . Hydrogen fuel cell car will be really awe-inspiring when they ’re available in vehicles that can be bought and driven by the modal consumer . This should be , oh , about 20 to 30 years from now , around the time you ’ll invest in your first set of false tooth . And compress air railroad car ? Nobody really knows when those will be quick to hit the road , but it ’ll probably be a good while yet before you could refuel your gondola using a bicycle ticker .
These technologies are important . Think tanks and motorcar manufacturers are research them right now . The transportation your children ’s nipper use will bet on them . Someday one or all of these engineering science will unblock the earthly concern from its out - of - controladdictionto fossil fuels . But in the meantime what we really involve is something that can realistically be ready for hard-nosed use within the next few years : a sound home combustion engine .
Here ’s the respectable intelligence : Better internal combustion engines are on the way . And when we say substantially we think of lighter , more fuel effective and less polluting . If we ca n’t put internal burning engines out to graze quite yet , we can at least make them carry a lilliputian more courteously while they ’re still galloping around on the public streets .
One of the most exciting new case of home combustion engines is the opposed - piston opposed - piston chamber engine , and if you ca n’t remember all those tongue - twisting syllable you could just call it an OPOC railway locomotive . ( Do n’t feel bad . Everybody else calls it that too . ) OPOC engine are n’t really new – the idea ’s been around for a while – but a fellowship called Ecomotor is finally getting serious about building OPOCs that will be ready for consumer vehicle long before hydrogen fuel cellular phone are the rage of the nation . And as proof that Ecomotors is offering serious applied science that really could revolutionize the way we use gasoline in the near future , a fellow named Bill Gates has already invested in the party . Yes , that Bill Gates , and nobody can say that the co - beginner of Microsoft does n’t hump a thing or two about the practical aspect of cut - border technology .
But what exactly is an OPOC engine and how does it take issue from the national combustion engines that all of us bang and detest ? To answer that question , we ’ll first give you a refresher course in received car engines , and then we ’ll show you how OPOCs do pretty much the same thing but just a slight differently – and a little good .
Two Cylinders for the Price of One
Chances are that yourcar ’s enginehas either four or six cylinders in it . ( If you have more than six cylinders then you ’re driving a substantial musculus car and probably are n’t browse around quite yet for something that will make the internal burning railway locomotive obsolete . ) An engine cylinder is just what it fathom like – a cylindrical hole in the engine into which you’re able to point a moveable pipe , called a piston . And it ’s that piston , when combined withgasoline , atmosphere and aspark plugthat provides the motor major power that makes your railcar go zoom down the route . That ’s the quick - and - unsporting version of the story , anyway .
The cylinder in an car ’s internal combustion engine are cap so that the gases retain in the country between the top of the piston and the top of the cylinder ca n’t escape . However , there are also two valve at or near the top of each cylinder that can be open and close automatically . These are designed , respectively , to allow gentle wind and gasoline into the piston chamber ( the inlet valve ) and to release exhaust from the piston chamber ( the exhaust valve ) after the engine ’s burning process is complete . These valve open and close in a way cautiously timed with the plunger ’s move so that the exhaust is released before a new supply of fresh air flows in .
It ’s the motion of the Walter Piston that drives the car . Pistons slide neatly up and down in the cylinder because that ’s what they ’re designed to do . Most cars employ a four - stroke ( or Otto cycles/second ) engine , in which there are four stages to the Walter Piston ’s question . In the first , called the intake stroke , the intake valve open and the piston make a motion downward . The vacuum created by the downward moving Walter Piston absorb air along with a pocket-sized amount of gas into the upper part of the cylinder . Once the salmagundi has fill the useable place leave by the descending plunger , the intake valve close and the piston rises again in the compression accident , force the air - fuel mixture into a tight mass packed with so much potential energy that it qualify as an explosive . ( Fortunately there ’s very little gas in the admixture , so we ’re not talkingthermonuclear - weaponquality explosive but something more like a cherry tree bomb calorimeter . ) Then do the part of the cognitive process that really gives the locomotive engine its kick : the burning chance event , where the flicker spark plug flashes and conflagrate that potential energy like afirecrackerin a tin can , push the piston back down again . Finally , in the exhaust stroke , the exhaust fumes valve open , and the piston rises back to the top of the cylinder , pushing out the useless , gassy remainder of the explosion of combustible materials . As before long as the exhaust valve closes , the procedure begin all over again .
While the piston rise and falls , it turn the crankshaft , a longsighted , rotate rod that converts the up and down motion of the Piston into the round movement that makes the car ’s gears and wheels tailspin . In most standard engine arrangements ( there are quite a few ) , cylinders follow in pairs , so that the downward motion of one Walter Piston during one stroke creates the up stroke of the other , a cycle that could theoretically go on forever … or at least until the gasolene run out . This is n’t exactly everlasting motion , but if you imagine about it you might ask how the move of the pistons got start in the first place . The answer is that the four - stroke cycle unremarkably begins with a short burst of rotational Department of Energy to the crankshaft from an electric starter motor , but early automobile got up and running because some lucky driver had to turn a hand - operated crank to rotate , yes , the crankshaft . ( Now you love why they call it that . ) Are n’t you beaming you were n’t drive cars back then ?
This four - stroke rhythm was invented in the 19th century – in fact , variations on it go back to the steam engine – and there are lots of variations on it . allow ’s see if we can come up with one that uses half as many cylinders yet gets just as much king .
When Two Pistons Face Off, They Both Win
In theinternal burning engineswe’ve talked around so far , the pistons mesh in parallel of latitude , with each piston chamber ordinate to the next and a freestanding piston in each one . But what if we could stick two pistons in one cylinder and align their actions so that they face one another – hence the term " opposed piston chamber " – but do not clash ? Each of these piston chamber would only take up half the length of the piston chamber , so that it would only have to move half the length of a cylinder in a standard railway locomotive , thus saving fuel yet still providing the same rotating burden on the crankshaft . And the crankshaft could pass through the center of the cylinder , perpendicular to the piston chamber ’s prospicient bloc , so that both pistons could rotate the crankshaft as they moved in opposite direction . And they could pool their exhaust wastes in the centre of the cylinder , so that the ends of the cylinder would n’t have to be capped off to keep the noxious fumes exhaust fumes from escaping before they involve to .
Would n’t that be coolheaded ? You depend it would !
This is called an opposed piston , opposed cylinder ( OPOC ) locomotive engine . In the OPOC engine devised by Ecomotors for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( or DARPA , and yes this means that early practical program are likely to be military ) , the two piston in the individual piston chamber are effectively intertwine , with each one part into two part and go inside one another in opposite counselling creating the compression stroke , so that the opposing closing of one part of each Walter Piston are closing together and compressing the fuel air mixture between them while the opposing last of the other are locomote apart to admit air in the disruption to make the intake stroke . Since these two stroke are coinciding , the whole action of the plunger takes only two back and forth motions , thus making this atwo - stroke engineinstead of the more ceremonious four - stroke railway locomotive . And because these two pistons in one piston chamber perform the work of the two pistons in two ordinary cylinder , they do only the body of work that commonly goes on in one piston chamber but apply two cylinders worth of motion to the crankshaft . This gives the OPOC engine a high index density – that is , a high proportion of power to the mass of the railway locomotive itself .
And here ’s something that really pull in Ecomotor ’s OPOC locomotive engine stand out from the crew : It ’s modular . you’re able to habituate one , two or even three of them joined together with a gear wheel arrangement that ’s scalable , from a one - piston chamber locomotive ( which in normal engine terms is really a two cylinder engine ) up to a three cylinder ( tantamount to a six cerebrovascular accident railway locomotive ) and beyond . Just keep hooking the cylinders together to make your engine big and more powerful . And an OPOC locomotive engine is automatically much simpler than a received internal burning engine . In the received placement , a complex and precisely timed series of linkages is required to check that the intake and fumes valve are undecided when needed . That means the engine has an unbelievably small act of moving contribution . For instance , in a conventional internal combustion cylinder , a complicated mechanism is necessary to time the intake valve and exhaust system valve so that they are subject only when needed and are never open at the same time . But in the OPOC locomotive , these " valves " are simply holes in the side of the cylinder , which are cover and uncover by the sliding of the pistons themselves , thus removing the demand for a complicated mechanism to make them open and shut . Ecomotors guess that the routine of moving parts in its engine has been reduced from 385 to 62 , meaning that there is one heck of a caboodle fewer part that need servicing and can go bad .
The result is that OPOC engines are simpler and thus less probable to break down . They ’re also more efficient , misplace less get-up-and-go while operating , and – because they do the study of two pistons with only one – can produce much more power than a stock interior combustion locomotive for only a dower of the throttle . Is this the engine of the future ? Probably . At least until that nuclear fuel cell comes along .
Lots More Information
I ’m not one of those cat who grew up with my head under the tough of a railroad car take the engine apart and putting it back together again just to see if I could do it . More probably you ’d discover me at the keyboard of a computer , programming in languages like BASIC and C , or publish al-Qur’an about why keep in line optical fusion power was the energy source of the future tense . ( I ’m still waitress on that one . ) But when I started writing about cars , it was only natural for me to gravitate toward save about self-propelled technologies that were out on the bleeding edges , way of powering and using cars that were so advanced , you ’d think they might have drive straight out of a movie like Blade Runner or Minority Report . I do n’t know about you , but I get this tingly feeling up and down my spine when I determine about something that ’s new , exciting and does things in a way that people ( in this case auto applied scientist ) have never done them before .
Opposed plunger - defend cylinder ( OPOC ) engines may not vocalise as bleeding edge as , say , fly cars or 1981 DeLoreans with flux density condenser to help them travel through time , but by the time I finished research this article I realized that they were every turn as exciting . ( Okay , maybe not quite as exciting as that flux electrical condenser thing . ) OPOC engines are the intersection of a lot of ingenious thought process by bright engineers who were n’t willing to accept that the style interior burning engine have always been done is the only way that they can be done . Yes , OPOCs have been around for a retentive meter – the early prototypes of the OPOC engine go back to the nineteenth century – but automotive engineers , with a footling service from the military ’s cutting - bound inquiry wing DARPA ( the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency ) , are last getting their here and now in the sun and nobody could be more excited than I am .
