Lasers could replace spark plugs in car engines

Car engines could soon be fired by lasers instead of spark plugs, researchers say.

A team at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics will report on 1 May that they have designed lasers that could ignite the fuel/air mixture in combustion engines.
The approach would increase efficiency of engines, and reduce their pollution, by igniting more of the mixture.
The team is in discussions with a spark plug manufacturer.
The idea of replacing spark plugs - a technology that has changed little since their invention 150 years ago - with lasers is not a new one.
Spark plugs only ignite the fuel mixture near the spark gap, reducing the combustion efficiency, and the metal that makes them up is slowly eroded as they age.

But only with the advent of smaller lasers has the idea of laser-based combustion become a practical one.

Ceramic powders             
 
A team from Romania and Japan has now demonstrated a system that can focus two or three laser beams into an engine's cylinders at variable depths.
That increases the completeness of combustion and neatly avoids the issue of degradation with time.
However, it requires that lasers of high pulse energies are used; just as with spark plugs, a great deal of energy is needed to cause ignition of the fuel.
"In the past, lasers that could meet those requirements were limited to basic research because they were big, inefficient, and unstable," said Takunori Taira of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences in Okazaki, Japan.

"Nor could they be located away from the engine, because their powerful beams would destroy any optical fibres that delivered light to the cylinders."
The team has been developing a new approach to the problem: lasers made of ceramic powders that are pressed into spark-plug sized cylinders.
These ceramic devices are lasers in their own right, gathering energy from compact, lower-power lasers that are sent in via optical fibre and releasing it in pulses just 800 trillionths of a second long.
Unlike the delicate crystals typically used in high-power lasers, the ceramics are more robust and can better handle the heat within combustion engines.
The team is in discussions to commercialise the technology with Denso, a major automobile component manufacturer.

800-horsepower Mustang on the way

The 2012 Shelby GT500 Super Snake will be available with an upgrade kit enabling it to produce 800 horsepower.

An 800-horsepower version of the Ford Mustang will be unveiled at the New York Auto Show later this month.

The 2012 Shelby GT500 Super Snake will be built by Shelby American Inc., a Las Vegas-based performance car company. Shelby works with Ford Motor Co. to create various high-performance versions of the iconic Mustang.

While the base Super Snake will produce a mere 750 horsepower, those who feel the need for more power will be able to add an optional upgrade package that will provide 50 more. Shelby provides no warranty on the engine and transmission, in either case.

The base version of the outgoing 2011 Super Snake produces 630 horsepower, although no-warranty option packages have been available in recent months to push horsepower in those cars up to as much as 800, as well.

The 2012 Super Snake will be legal to drive on public roads on all 50 states, the carmaker promised, and it will cost less than $100,000.

Prices for the 2011 Super Snake start about $80,000 in total, including the separate purchase of a car from Ford -- a factory-produced Shelby GT500 -- and the necessary modifications.

"Shelby American has a rich history at the New York International Auto Show," said John Luft, president of Shelby American. in an announcement. "The very first Shelby car was introduced there in 1962, as well as the 1968 and 2008 Shelby GT500KR and the 2006 Shelby Hertz GT-H."

The original partnership between Ford and Shelby American founder Carroll Shelby, one that resulted in Mustang-based performance cars that can be worth millions of dollars today, ended in 1969. Ford and Shelby entered into a new agreement in 2003 that has produced a new line of Shelby Mustangs, some built by Ford Motor Co. and others built at the Shelby American factory.