Slashdot Mirror
Laser Ignition May Replace the Spark Plug
dusty writes "Laser Focus World has a story on researchers from Ford, GSI, and The University of Liverpool and their success in using near-infrared lasers instead of spark plugs in automobile engines. The laser pulses are delivered to the combustion chamber one of two ways. One, the laser energy is transmitted through free space and into an optical plug. Two, the other more challenging method uses fiber optics. Attempts so far to put the second method into play have met some challenges. The researchers are confident that the fiber-optic laser cables' technical challenges (such as a 20% parasitic loss, and vibration issues) will soon be overcome. Both delivery schemes drastically reduce harmful emissions and increase performance over the use of spark plugs. So the spark plug could soon join the fax machine in the pantheon of antiquated technologies that will never completely disappear. The news release from The University of Liverpool has pictures of the freakin' internal combustion lasers."
If it makes cool red lights flash under the hood like KITT, I'm all for it.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
When the vehicle gets to be a few years old, and the rings start letting extra oil past. Soon the lenses are covered with soot. Sparks can still jump through a moderate layer of soot, can the laser?
This will probably arrive as a viable and reliable technology right about the same time the internal combustion engine is on it's way out.
Don't think fax machine, think FD Trinitron.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Is it one shark per cylinder?
Yeah, they're gonna be pissed.
I'd go trade mark that name quick if I were you... "SharkPlugs"
this is typical insane engineering- if this succeeds then a mechanic would need to be an expert in light theory and frickin laser beams to work on your car.
Only as much as they need to be an expert in fluid dynamics to change your oil.
this is not the way to make cars more efficient- spark plugs work great and im sure these lasers cant give any more power - the spark plug ignites the gas already, and it BURNS- how much more combustion could you get?
It is a good question as to how this would work any better but if you've ever spent any time under the hood you know it doesn't take much in the way of fouling or plug wire degradation to change fuel efficiency. If this system can avoid those kinds of issues it would make certain aspects of tune ups obsolete and would also increase fuel efficiency over a period when traditional plugs and wires would degrade but not to the point of seemingly needing replaced.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
the spark plug ignites the gas already, and it BURNS- how much more combustion could you get?
It's not so much getting more combustion, but making the combustion behave how we want it to. And there's a long way that can be gone.
But whether this has any real point compared to other fuels, such as diesel that have a big leg up on gasoline to start with, is up for debate.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
inefficient. Adding a laser is not going to do much.
Gasoline will auto-ignite just fine, it's just much trickier to control when it ignites than with spark ignition or diesel ignition.
Mercades has a engine in development called the diesotto that does this.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Great, the laser pulses will probably be DRM encoded so that only authorized chips are used and vendors that insert the appropriate smart card can perform service on them...
The advent of CPU-enhanced cars is a great one, but this is one place where the govt really needs to step in an open things up. For standard engine codes, things aren't too bad; but Lord help you if you want to read an ABS or airbag code from a GM vehicle (for example). They're locked down. I have some decent PC-based code reader hardware and software, but in order to read the ABS error that my two vehicles are both showing (GM, learn to design ABS, will ya!), I need to spend hundreds or thousands on their own software/hardware to simply find out which of my four ABS sensors is faulty.
The more they get into specialized things like this, including laser ignition, the more I worry that I won't be able to be a backyard mechanic any more.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I've spent entirely too much time under the hood of a car(21 year auto mechanic), and you are entirely incorrect.
Degrading plug wires either cause a misfire, which is blindingly obvious and kills mileage horribly, or doesn't. There is no middle ground. Plug wire misfires happen maybe once or twice in the 300,000 mile life of a (japanese...) car.
Modern electronic ignition systems are fairly immune to spark plug wear until extreme circumstances, such as missing three tuneups in a row with standard plugs. Then you will sometimes get drivibility issues and lose 1mpg, tops.
Back in the days of points it was different, plug wear and point wear (mostly point wear) had huge effects on mileage between tuneups. These days, the effects are minimal at most.
Those aren't spark plugs, they're glow plugs. different animal altogether. No spark, just a hot wire...
There's another obvious application for this - detonating nuclear bombs.
Nuclear weapons require that all the charges be detonated simultaneously, within nanoseconds, so that the implosion squeeze is precisely symmetrical. (OK, A-bomb geeks, I'm ignoring asymmetrical designs and flying-plate systems here.) If the timing is even a few nanoseconds off, the core won't be compressed; it will just blow out on one side, and a "fizzle" yield will result.
The usual trick for this is to use an "exploding wire" detonator. Unlike regular detonators, which have an intermediate explosive to start the main explosive, exploding wire detonators do it in one step, by discharging a capacitor bank through a resistance buried in the explosive. This takes a very fast high-voltage high-current switch, and the traditional solution is a krytron, a gas-discharge vacuum tube from the thyatron family. There have been big flaps over the years about various countries trying to acquire krytrons, which aren't classified but are export-controlled.
Krytrons are 1940s technology. This laser ignition system could be its replacement. One big laser pulse pumped through fibers of equal length to each detonation point should do the job. And it's off the shelf dual-use technology.
Sparkplugs cost like, uhm, a dollar.
The problem with putting lasers in your engine is that it gets hot in there, and laser lifetime plunges drastically when you run them at elevated temperatures. I'm sure the dealers will love us having to replace our laser-plugs every two months, but no one else will.
(And if you're thinking thermo-electric cooling is the answer, that's going to use a whole lot of juice; don't know how feasible it is.)
We used a similar system starting back in the late 1990s for initiating ordnance systems. The primary explosive would be doped with a small amount of carbon black to enhance absorption. One advantage was that specific equipment was required for proper initiation, which (in theory) made it safer.
Dynamite and a laser beam indeed.
Forget that, I'm still waiting for a car analogy even after scrolling by 90% of the posts.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
There's probably a good reason, but why not use microwaves? Wouldn't that be better to ensure even burn?