The Challenge: Current Internal Combustion Engine Inefficiency

he fundamental problem is that on average about 15% of the energy from the gasoline you put into your tank gets used to move your car down the road (U.S. Department of Transportation: Transportation Research Board). The rest of the energy is lost to engine and driveline inefficiencies and idling. The engine is where most thermal efficiency loss takes place. Combustion irreversibility results in large amounts of waste heat escaping through the cylinder walls and unrecoverable exhaust energy. Normal engines run with rich air-to-fuel ratios, which also result in fuel being trapped in the crevice as well as partially combusting near the cylinder walls. These energy losses are at the core of the internal combustion engine inefficiencies.

While we explore solutions for a car industry that accounts for half of the transportation sector’s fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, many short-term and long-term alternatives are being considered. Each option has deep implications in terms of sourcing raw materials, changing automotive powertrain architectures, revamping energy infrastructures, and many unknown technological and environmental consequences. The considerable economic costs to consumers and society must be carefully considered to pursue the most viable, sustainable solutions. Industry and academia experts agree that the technologies required to improve the efficiency of new cars and trucks mainly involve incremental change to conventional internal combustion engines. According to a recent study, efficiency improvements of internal combustion engines can reach 30% by 2020 and up to 50% by 2030 (FIA Foundation: “50 by 50: Global Fuel Economy Initiative”). The potential benefits are large and greatly exceed the expected costs of improved fuel economy. Cutting global average automotive fuel consumption by 50% would reduce emissions of CO2 by over 1 gigaton a year by 2025 and over 2 gigatons by 2050, resulting in annual savings of imported oil worth over $300 billion in 2025 and $600 billion in 2050 (oil = $100/barrel). For consumers, the cost of improved technology for more fuel efficient cars could be recovered by fuel savings in the first few years of use of a new car. But volatile oil prices create conditions that influence new car buyers purchase consideration of higher-efficiency, higher-priced vehicles that in turn influence product offerings from global car manufacturers.

Another study found that fuel efficiency improvements enabled by advanced combustion technologies of 50% or more for automotive engines (relative to spark-ignition engines dominating the road today in the U.S.) and 25% or more for heavy-duty truck engines (relative to today’s diesel truck engines) are possible in the next 10 to 15 years (U.S. Department of Energy: “Basic Research Needs for Clean and Efficient Combustion of 21st Century Transportation Fuels”). The most promising directions for novel combustion strategies for high-efficiency, clean internal combustion engine technology involve combustion of lean or dilute fuel-air mixtures beyond limits that have been reached to date. Local mixture composition is the driving parameter for ignition, combustion rate and pollutant formation. Therefore it is crucial to understand and control how fuel, air, and potentially recirculated exhaust gas are mixed. The potential to improve fuel efficiency with advanced internal combustion engine technologies is enormous. Transonic’s breakthrough high energy efficiency, low carbon footprint solution disrupts the stagnant efficiency trajectory of the internal combustion engine over the past 100 years. Our lean combustion process utilizes lean air-to-fuel ratios that minimize many of thermal efficiency losses from today’s engine technology. Transonic’s precision controlled fuel injection systems address these issues to dramatically improve the efficiency and halve the emissions of modern internal combustion engines.