Green

Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.  Build a better internal combustion engine, and you just may trigger a revolution in the automobile industry.

Engineers looking to improve the efficiency of the standard internal combustion engine may someday view Carmelo Scuderi in the same way they view William John Macquorn Rankine and Nicolaus Otto.  Just over eight years after the engineer and inventor demonstrated his mechanical masterpiece to his family in West Springfield, MA, and, unfortunately, seven years after his passing, heavy hitters in the auto industry are finally looking into Scuteri’s prototype of a more fuel-efficient internal combustion engine.

As any mechanical engineer could tell you, the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine is notoriously inefficient.  In a typical engine—the basic design of which hasn’t changed much for a century—only about a third of the chemical energy contained in a gallon of gasoline is converted into mechanical energy.  The remaining two thirds is converted to heat or lost as unburned fuel through exhaust.

The engineers at Scuderi Group think that they can do much better than that.  And they have the prototype they hope proves it.

In a typical four-stroke engine, each piston-cylinder group performs four basic functions.  It mixes fuel and air, it compresses the mixture, it ignites the pressurized fuel-air mixture, and then it exhausts the left-over gasses.  In a Scuderi engine, the cylinders are divided up into complimentary pairs.  One piston-cylinder handles nothing but air intake and compression; its partner handles nothing but combustion and exhaust.  A valve channels the pressurized fuel-air mixture from the former piston-cylinder to the latter.  The savings come in the form of mechanical resistance throughout the engine, greater compression of the fuel-air mixture, and a more complete burning of the fuel-air mixture itself.  According to Scuderi’s calculations, pairing two of these piston-cylinder partnerships into a four-cylinder engine could result in 40% of the chemical energy in a gallon of gasoline being converted into mechanical energy.

And that’s not all.  Scuderi believes that by combining this piston-cylinder arrangement with a turbocharger and a tank that holds compressed air—to further improve efficiency—could increase a vehicle’s fuel economy by 50%.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a half-dozen or so car makers, including PSA Peugeot Citroen and Honda, have signed non-disclosure agreements with the Scuderi Group, the company formed by Scuderi’s family, to examine Scuderi’s technology more closely.  Executives from Daimler and Fiat have also confirmed interest in Scuderi’s designs.  Sivam Sabesan, an engine expert at Frost & Sullivan who has studied the Scuderi engine, says there are no obvious flaws that suggest the engine won’t work, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal.  Still, according to Sabesan, the engine needs at least two more years of development before it could be production-ready.

By Robert Pothier