Start your car with a laser to cut your carbon
Engineers at the University of Liverpool, working with the Ford Motor Company, have received a £198,910 grant from the Carbon Trust to develop a laser ignition system which could cut car exhaust emissions. Transport accounts for 25% of UK carbon emissions so finding new ways of making automotive engines less polluting is vital to meet the UK’s carbon reduction targets.
Replacing conventional spark ignition with laser ignition enables much greater control over the combustion of the air and fuel mix and can cut a car’s carbon emissions in a number of ways.
Unlike the venerable sparkplug ignition system, which fires just one or at best two sparks right next to the combustion chamber roof, it is possible to ‘aim’ a laser ignition system to ignite the fuel anywhere in the combustion chamber, therefore focusing the beam where the fuel is most concentrated. By using ultra-fast computing to direct the laser, the engine can be run on a much more efficient or ‘leaner’ fuel/air mixture, which would directly cut a car’s carbon emissions. This heightened control also helps overcome the poor cold-start performance of engines running high blends of biofuels.
The laser beam can be delivered to the combustion chamber through a thin fibre optic cable, taking up less space than the spark plug, making room for larger diameter valves, enabling better combustion through more efficient gas flow through the engine.
Mark Williamson, Director of Innovations at the Carbon Trust, said: “For many of us car travel can contribute a major part of our daily carbon footprint. We have to find ways to make vehicles cleaner if the UK is to hit its carbon emissions targets. Laser ignition is a really exciting technology because it improves the efficiency of petrol cars and could, in the future, speed the uptake of cars run on biofuels derived from sustainable organic materials such as algae.”
Dr Tom Shenton, Reader in Engineering at the University of Liverpool and Principal Investigator on the project, said: “The key to reducing emissions in the spark-ignition engine is improved control, and for the last one hundred years the primary means of ignition control has been the spark plug. With laser ignition we now have an exciting new alternative which will give much greater scope for engine controller optimisation and the implementation of new engine designs.”
The Carbon Trust is currently on the lookout for other technologies with significant carbon saving potential to receive up to £500k of grant funding through its Applied Research scheme. Three open calls are run each year and the next call opened on 22 June 2009 and will close on 17th September 2009 Applications can be made at www.carbontrust.co.uk/appliedresearch.
The Carbon Trust's Applied Research grant scheme has supported 184 projects from around 1800 applications and committed a total of £23m towards research worth around £54m. At least 65% of completed projects have, or are in the process of generating new patents, making commercial sales or receiving further investment into the development of the technology.
The scheme has provided grant funding to a wide range of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies including fuel cells, combined heat and power, bioenergy, solar power, low carbon building technologies, marine energy devices and more efficient industrial processes
In October 2008, the Carbon Trust also launched the Algae Biofuels Challenge with an ambitious mission: to commercialise the use of algae biofuel as an alternative to fossil based oil by 2020. Initial forecasts suggest that algae-based biofuels could replace over 70 billion litres of fossil derived fuels used worldwide annually in road transport and aviation by 2030 (equivalent to 12% of annual global jet fuel consumption or 6% of road transport diesel). This would equate to an annual carbon saving of over 160 million tonnes of CO2 globally and a market value of over £15 billion.
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