The Green Optimistic

A California-based company called Transonic Combustion has recently developed a very efficient fuel-injection system that can put on hold the production of expensive gas-electric hybrids. With a cruising speed of 50 miles per hour, the test car was able to get 98 miles per gallon.

Engineers from the Technische Universitaet Munchen (TUM) have shown an engine prototype whose emissions are very close to the Euro 6 standard, even though the Euro 5 norm has just been put into force three months ago for all new car models.

The auto industry is pursuing various ways to implement more effective fuel saving strategies. Some of them are based on the development of new technology, electric motors, batteries, etc and others are just improving classic petrol-fueled engines to run better. Following the second trend, engineers from The University of Liverpool, UK, in collaboration with Ford and UK-based GSI Group developed a prototype engine ignition based on lasers rather than on spark plugs.

Israeli start-up ETV Motors, located in Tel Aviv has invested about $12 million in this technology that combines a car, electricity and a jet engine. The prototype of a modified Prius will be ready next year for testing.

Steam power is being revived as Robotic Technology Inc. develops the “EATR” as in Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot – basically a robot that can have a meal of gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, etc and biomass, thus never having to be recharged as long as it has some wood sticks around.

If you ever had a diesel car, you know that it’s more fuel efficient than the gasoline counterpart. That’s because diesel engines use compression to ignite the fuel, and gasoline engines use a spark to do that. Practically, diesel engines could work without any electricity – at all.

It’s a known fact that diesel engines are more efficient than the gasoline ones, and that is because they work a little differently on the ignition side. Diesel engines compress the fuel to a point where it heats and explodes, a process known as self-ignition. On the other hand, diesel engines are still polluting the atmosphere.

German vehicle constructor BMW is trying to show us that it can produce not only fast, luxury and fuel-greedy vehicles, but also very fuel-efficient cars.

BMW’s 1 series is offering the greenest diesel experience from BMW. The 2 liters four-cylinder diesel…

NASA and GE Aviation are testing a new “open rotor” jet engine with with a different design that puts the fan blades on the outside of the engine. The jet fuel consumption will be reduced by more than 30 percent.

There was a sports car built in 1984 by Craig Henderson and Bill Green from Bellingham, Washington, and at that time it was able to set a record of 103.7 mpg for Guinness Book(in European terms, that’s 2.27 liters/100km). Now they’re reviving it with the help of the X-Prize Competition.

Since the idea of economy started in humanity’s mind, everybody wants to reduce the expenses, mostly on energy dependence. Nowadays, when hybrid cars and, generally, electric vehicles are starting to play a huge role in car industry, and electric technology is starting to get cheaper yearly, there still are scientists that get inspired by the old explosion engine principles, albeit they are being used for more than a hundred years and their power source is mainly based on fossil fuel.

Professor Rongija Tao, from Temple University, invented a device that, applied to the vehicle’s fuel line, near the injectors, creates an electric field that reduces the fuel’s viscosity, so that smaller droplets are injected into the engine, leading to better combustion and increased fuel efficiency as much as 20%.

The most known German car maker Volkswagen, and the most popular car in Europe, VW Golf, hits again these days as Volkswagen unveils their latest BlueMotion car. They already have unveiled other BlueMotion machines, but this time it is Golf’s time to be in the spotlight.

Have your every drove your car on “fumes”? They’re gas vapors that form when it evaporates. One man, John Weston, from Charlottle County, FL, has found these fumes useful and made a fueling system out of them so his car gets an incredible mileage: 463 miles per gallon! In European measurements (if I’m correct) this is 0.8L/100km!!! Wow! Not even VW’s latest gadget car can’t get this mileage!

A better combustion engine is the one recently patented by Revetec, a small company from Australia. Their engine has been tested by independent parties. It has the same power as an ordinary engine, but it consumes half the fuel and it weights 50% less. It’s also smaller than the average car engine.

One of the biggest names in aviation, Pratt & Whitney, spent almost twenty years developing the geared turbofan engine that burns 12 to 15% less fuel than other jet engines. The new turbofan engine also cuts carbon dioxide emissions by 1,500 tons/plane yearly.

Mazda is in the process of testing a car that runs on both hydrogen and gasoline (it’s a dual fuel system). They’re allowed to test the car on the public roads from Japan.

The following is an excerpt from tt engines, a company who made a truck engine that does not have any pistons, valves, or any other elements from the conventional Otto engine. It works with 30% more efficiency, and exhausts less dangerous elements for our health and the environment. It can burn anything, from gasoline to [...]

A simple redesign of the petrol engine could greatly increase its efficiency when idling or driving at low speeds, as well as reduce the harmful emissions it produces. UK researchers say the new design could even make petrol engines as efficient as diesel ones.
In most petrol engines, fuel is ignited by spark plugs inside cylinders [...]

Bruce Crower’s engine is an innovation derived from a standard 4-stroke engine. It uses 6 strokes – the 4 normal ones, and at the end of the 4th it introduces the 5th and the 6th:
- it squirts water on the 1500 °F hot cylinder, creating a steam volume 1600 times greater than the volume of [...]