Spark-free, fuel-efficient engines can lower nitrogen emissions remarkably
With the rising population and the booming automobiles industry across the globe, the demand for oil is rising so dramatically, that does not seem can be matched by its production - which eventually may lead to a crisis soon.
Cuing on these lines, the MIT researchers have come up to help curb the global demand for oil. Though making fuel-efficient engines is no more the in-thing for the researchers, they have eventually come up with a newer innovation with the ordinary spark-ignition automobile engines.
They have designed a new technology that can transform the ordinary spark-ignition automobile engines into a spark-free operating mode, under certain driving conditions!
This in turn does not just move the engine towards being more fuel-efficient, but also just as clean.
The internal combustion engine -- homogeneous charge compression ignition or HCCI - pushes up the spark-ignition engine's fuel efficiency. In an HCCI engine, the combustion temperatures can be kept lower, emitting nitrogen pollutants to a negligible amount.
This 'mode-switching capability' of cars could help improve fuel economy by several miles per gallon in millions in just a few years.
Such a change, alone can cut oil demand in the United States alone by a considerable million barrels a day, over time, with the U.S. presently consuming more than 20 million barrels of oil a day.
Diagram courtesy: MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment
