Diesel Fuel Combustion Efficiency and Engine Designs

Recently, an engineer, who knows a lot more about combustion, pointed out that most of the engine design companies have spent considerable time and money focusing on determining the absolute best configuration of the entire engine combustion system. The variables are many and when you try to match it all up perfectly it ends up still leaving the fuel efficiency well below 50%.

I checked out the literature reviewing the history of the development and it is lengthy and full of incredible designs that look as if the engineers were given a great deal of allowance for even the most far out possibilities. It seems that once into the challenge, it was realized that with so many variables to consider maybe we can simply roll the dice and perhaps discover one that is far better than all the rest.

Fuel and air mixing, pressures, temperatures and how they are timed to enter the combustion cylinders were just part of the problem. Even the cylinder walls and their geometries proved to be critical to the best designs and matching them all up was full of problems. Even those that reached the finals sometimes were scrapped simply because they could not meet the emission reductions required for the time period.

If you are interested in reading the details here are some of the most notable references:

• Spark Ignition Engine – HighBeam.com
• Internal Combustion Engine – ThunderPress.net
• Ignition System – Motorera.com