Considering the way things around us are today, green technology has been exuberantly guiding all through the quandary. Steve Ciatti, a mechanical engineer at Argonne, explored the possibility of combining petrol and diesel to make an engine twice as efficient and cleaner as a gasoline powered engine.
Diesel run vehicles require high maintenance and emit toxic gases like nitrogen dioxide but provide up to 40 percent efficiency. Petrol run vehicles are only 20 percent efficient, wherein the remaining is lost to friction or exhausted in heat but are cleaner comparatively. At Argonne’s R&D center, Ciatti started with a dynamo-meter in order to clean the dirty exhaust and improve the mileage. He combined it with an engine used for testing performance, thereby having an engine test cell to control the tiniest variables and see if the engines performance could be improved. By installing a test cell with a diesel engine, Ciatti and his team checked the possibilities of the engines performance in different types of cars – hybrid, electric, gas powered.
Ciatti, while trying to enhance the efficiency of both diesel and petrol engines, wishes to omit the spark plugs and inject gasoline in diesel engine several times. Since gasoline will not burn immediately, all of the fuel will mix with the air reducing NOX and soot. As a result, the efficiency is close to that of diesel, but then, in terms of power, the engine won’t be at par.
Ciatti and his colleagues are trying to make this a success commercially as it won’t affect the car’s performance and is good with the power range when driven.
Source: ANL Newsroom
