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Engineering Explained Just wondering shouldn’t this engines power output/efficiency be compared with 6 cylinder engine since essentially you have 6 pistons, rods, injectors etc. Those numbers seem very comparable to what modern 3.0 V6 Diesel engine is outputting. A similar argument is often made for Mazda rotary engine where its 1.3 displacement is multiplied by 2 when compared to conventional piston engines due to the number of combustion cycles per “crank” rotation. Would like to know your thoughts 🤔. Thanks for the awesome content.
Engineering Explained I am actually curious how are they lubricating the cylinder on the top side if it is orientated in a vertical axis. Because it will not allow for a simple oil pan method that the bottom cylinder can use. Tq if you can answer my curiosity
it would be lubricated by oil pressure and a nozzle that squirts oil onto the bottom of the piston, nearly all modern engines are lubricated with pressurized oil and dont rely on oil slinging around the moving parts similar to a manual gearbox, but you do have a good point, how to keep oil from puddling inside the piston and crevices that would normally face the opposite way
You seemed to lack an explanation on how the Achates Power design is superior to the past two-stroke opposed-piston diesel engines? And how they over a came inherent inefficiency in a two-strokes. Such as the tendency of the exhaust and intake air to mix. Since there is no separate exhaust and intake strokes. And the additional cost not only for turbo and a supercharger but many other support system? So cost comparison with a conventional 6 piston Diesel is needed too. So it seem more relevant to large engine applications.
Idk, it's not new enough so it doesn'r run under UEFI. You'll have to burn an MBR boot partition and enable vt-d capability to make it run from the BIOS.
Any idea what thermal efficiency we're getting from our standard V-4 engines? 30%? And does this mean that, say, 70% of the fuel's total chemical energy is lost as heat through the radiator and drive train?
The average thermal efficiency for gasoline engines is in the 20-25% range, diesel engines are much better around 35-40% they will never be that great though thanks to thermodynamics the best case scenario for Internal combustion engines is in the mid 50% range if that for thermal efficiency when your turning one form of energy to another there's going to be energy lose its inevitable and unavoidable nothing can ever be 100% efficient which is why perpetual motion devices don't work
Theprfesssor that's not exactly why perpetual motion devices are impossible. They are impossible because they produce more energy then they use, as in above 100% efficiency. In theory you can have near 100% energy conversion efficiency. For example Electric Motors can convert electrical to kinetic energy up to 99.99% efficiency.
@@XLR8bg The problem with perpetual motion machine they are trying to do work without energy input, a violation of the fist law of thermodynamics but even if you give them energy to get going they still won't stay going because they will use up the energy and eventually stop, the sun has always been their but it to won't last forever along with all the energy it's given btw the best electric motors can do is 90-96% efficiency which is amazing but still not 100 because thermodynamics is probably the most challenged yet successful theory in physics
It's a great design. I operated them on submarines in the US Navy. I'd say the biggest sticking point is training people to work on them, with getting customers to wrap their heads around the idea.
In most households (60%) women make the purchasing decisions on cars. Why should the customers understand how the engine works, if majority of them does not care about such things even now? :D
@@joser.colmenares3495 very reliable and robust. The US Navy have been using that design since WWII. It was also used on Diesel Electric Locomotives. Fairbanks-Morse 38 8-1/8
The Famous Soviet cargo diesel locomotive TE-3 borrowed the type of diesel engine. Despite some constructive faults the loco reliably pulled heavy trains at low speeds down to the full stop.
The super charger isn't really there to raise cylinder pressure. It's a scavenging blower it's there because the pistons don't do pumping work so they don't pump out exhaust gas. The blower pushes fresh cooler air in causing the hotter exhaust gas to flow out the top. This is also the reason mounting the engine horizontally doesn't work as well and hurts efficiency because it reduces scavanging that's naturally aided by thermal gradients.
I used to work for Rootes UK - They fitted Three Cyl opp piston engines to 10 ton trucks. To say they were efficient is an understatement, very good fuel economy and virtually no smoke or haze from the exhaust even on a cold morning at start up. The power from the 206cu in engine was more than enough, they were some of the fastest trucks on the roads. Supercharging does make for a noisy engine but this would not be a problem today with better insulation.
@@SirMo In their day they were fitted to about half the out put of 10ton plus trucks coming out of Rootes factory. The buses on the Isle of Wight used them, but to be fair were a bit noisy. Many coaches had them, combined with the Avenger Coach Chassis. To me they sounded sweet and the pollution was near non existent. When one came into the workshop there was only a very slight trace of fumes compared with other diesel lorries that left a fog of black smoke. Smooth to drive too, the engine never faltered.
The Commer two Stoke, was a noise engine, apart from that, it had power speed economy. What baffled many mechanic if the worked on them was the timing. Many idle gears, 4 stroke turn the engine over twice timing marks lined up, on the 2 stroke engine the ratio turning the engine over marks to line up, ive forgotten something like 1897 to 1.
@@ukghconst One other thing was the massively big, chunky Piston curved crank rods and crank shaft - Not an engine for the faint hearted to work on. Having said that. The new 2020 USA design of the 2 stroke opposed piston engine is virtually NON polluting - a very sound achievement, they are clever people.
Unless you own an oil company. That's one reason The Big 3 in the USA won't switch to more efficient engines like this. It would cost them money to convert to new products and the oil companies would bribe them not to change to keep profits as high as possible.
@@derdrache0512 Diesel, Gasoline, Jet fuel and even propane are all processed from oil. That's another reason the oil companies are so rich. Without them gas and diesel vehicles would be useless and so would jet aircraft. We'd also have to use natural gas for our barbeques. Oil has many uses besides lubricating engines, and making plastic and asphalt.
It's not just that -3- cylinders is ideal, but ideally it should be in - multiples - of 3. I've been on various ships that use a 12-cyl, 24-piston engine, but they're timed as multiple banks of 3 cylinders all in the same crankcase.
In the British army back in the 70's we used Pescara single cylinder compressors to power our pneumatic tools. Had to wind the starting handle round and round to pull the pistons apart until they automatically tripped, flying back in for the initial ignition. Ran like a dream, dead easy to maintain, great pieces of kit.
I think the opposed piston idea is a great one, and the fuel injection with the boosted intake avoids the 2cycle problem and permits only fresh air to exit the exhaust port. Just fantastic.
Jumo developed the design in the 30s.. for the Junkers military planes & made a flight across the Atlantic loooong before any other aircraft.. Arcades haven't applied ANYTHING new to the design.. only modern auxiliaries in injector technology etc from other makers.. Napier did the most in development but politi s overruled.. nothing has changed there
@@Errol.C-nz Actually the Napier Deltic engine in railway locomotives wasn't very reliable. I think the problem was cracking around the exhaust ports The big Deltics were in service for around 20 years (two 18 cylinder engines) The "Baby Deltic" only lasted around 10 years (Single 9 cylinder engine) In the marine application, the Deltic replaced the Merlin in fast patrol boats There was another opposed piston engine use here in Britain. The Commer TD3 aka "double knocker" This was a 3 cylinder engine used in small lorries. It had one crankshaft driven by 2 rocker shafts, one for each bank of pistons When Chrysler bought Rootes Group, the engine died
All 2 strokes have to have a positive pressure on the inlet manifold/ In the case of petrol 2 strokes, the positive pressure is provided by the crank case (hence needing a total loss lubrication system)
@@g8ymw the deltic in rail engines was the same as used by the navey.. it was the budget minded rail beaurocracy that was the fault there cutting service maintainance schedules.. NOT the engine or its design & still by a long shot the most powerful engine fitted in rail
@bcstractor you're not understanding what a two stroke cycle is. You're thinking of engines that require a fuel oil mixture that is used to lubricate the crankshaft. If you remove that part it's not going to be burning oil so will be as clean as any traditional 4 stroke motor.
I was engineer on ships with 8 cylinder opposed piston B & W engines of 12,000hp. The top pistons were the exhaust gas ones, connecting to the single crankshaft below by side rods. The top piston provided about 25% of the power. They weighed 4 ton apiece!
@@orppranator5230 since the pistons always move in sync and in opposite directions, when one piston moves up the other moves down, if the weight is similar it cancels out. But if you put the engine on its side you would have constant weight on the bottom half of the cylinder causing uneven friction.
I love it! Now they need to add steam injection and make it 65% efficient. If you don't believe me look it up. I thought of it in 2007 after I bought a diesel truck in 2006 and eventually went back to school to become a mechanical engineer to develop this and other ideas. Then last year I found out that someone else is doing research on it, and proved that by injecting steam(that is heated by the exhaust around and after the catalytic converter thereby preventing it from getting too hot and reclaiming the waste energy) into the cylinder at the right time, the steam is heated further by combustion and cools the combustion below 1500 degrees celcius which prevents nitric oxide production but adds to the average combustion pressure throughout the powerstroke, and increases the mass flowrate and expansion through the turbo thereby increasing turbo efficiency as well as boost pressure. Both of these increase the power and efficiency of a diesel engine. It also has the huge advantage of not needing all of the horrible power and efficiency robbing exhaust gas recirculation systems to prevent nitric oxide because your combustion temps stay low enough to prevent their creation. Also the reduced temperatures mean less waste heat transferred through the cylinder walls, increasing efficiency again. It's a win - win situation that only works with diesels, and has the chance of making the diesel cleaner burning than any gasoline engine. The diesel engine is the engine of the future.
David Scott Interesting - presumably you would need a sizeable water tank in order to produce this steam though. How much water is needed on average in an example application for the same amount of diesel?
It is a good idea but keep in mind the complexity of adding a new system like the steam generation (pressurized), the safety measures around it and, more importantly, the posible corrosion caused by the generated SO2 plus water injected as steam. Additionally, this method is commonly used in gas turbines as a way of reducing the combustion chamber temperature and NOx generation.
I study at mechanical engineering faculty on local university (specifically information technology, which does not have much in common) and we were thought about 6 stroke water injecting ICE at English language classes. The process was not bound to diesel only, the main advantage mentioned was recovering of heat from combustion. I support this technology of recovering heat, it probably is better than something like Stirling engine or Peltier cell. I am happy to supply destilled water to my car no problem.
its an engine with a moving cylinder head, see Migweb msg engine concept , where one piston is offset to the two cranks by a few degrees to increase even more performance and higher torque.
@@benedictodiptasuta9306 so your telling me that by saying a powerful motorcycle has the same thing as a tiny German car that some how that makes it not tiny?😂
If you like these, check out the Napier Deltic engines which were used on UK torpedo boats and diesel electric locomotives. They had three banks of this type of engine tied together in a triangle with the three crank shafts at the corners. A stunning piece of kit.
I used to build these for a living, great things, as long as the right people ran them and maintained them. 42K for the navy types in one part of the world resulted in lots of troubles....
If you're willing to stay boxer, take a look at the EE20. Don't know if it's any good though. I'll stick to my EJ25 for now, although I'd LOVE a diesel.
Had two engineers from Achates Power give a lecture for our Engines course at Cal Poly on their OP2S. It was a really interesting lecture. From what I remember they mentioned that the size of the engine was really holding back their production. They had mentioned that an OP2S was mounted in an F-series on an angle so that it could fit in the existing frame. Super cool stuff.
MPG Some opposed piston engines have a single crankshaft mounted in the middle of the engine above the cylinders and are connected to the pistons via a linkage, perhaps the engineers at Achates should think of this design as it is a far more compact configuration.
It seemed to lack an explanation on how the Achates Power design is superior to the past two-stroke opposed-piston diesel engines? And how they over a came inherent inefficiency in a two-strokes. Such as the tendency of the exhaust and intake air to mix. Since there is no separate exhaust and intake strokes. And the additional cost not only for turbo and a supercharger but many other support system? So cost comparison with a conventional 6 piston Diesel is needed too. So it seem more relevant to large engine applications.
Would love to see one of these put into a general aviation aircraft. Power to weight ratio of a 2 stroke with higher fuel efficiency than most 4 strokes, running diesel that can usually be found at airports in the form of Jet-A, supercharged and turbocharged for high altitude performance. It checks all the boxes
Junkers of Germany did exactly that starting in the 1930's. Look up Junkers Jumo 205. Impressive engines. Never could understand why they aren't more commonplace.
@@SuperYellowsubmarin overhead valve had better oil control. a port on a cylinder wall is hard to stop oil getting in when the piston sliding by it needs it to keep from seizing.
Tilling Stevens in England developed a three cylinder opposed piston diesel engine in the early fifties for use in buses due to it's inherent smoothness. It entered production as the Commer TS3, not without its faults but sounded glorious when given some stick!
In homestead fl. There is the largest diesel electric power plant in the u.s. it has 8 op engines and 9 v12 dla engines in 1975 i spent many hrs with my friend who was the plant operator on the midnight shift and these nearly 2 story high engines all ran in sync at 450 rpm and it felt like an earthquake in the ground even 3 blocks away. What was cool was to stand on top of an engine over a cylinder while the fuel mixture was turned up ritch until that cylinder began detonating . It would lift you inches off the head. Also it was so loud inside the plant that you had to screem loud into another person's ear to be heard. The plant was flexible as well when diesel fuel was expensive they could either mix the diesel with natural gas or run on natural gas alone but that did increase the operating temperature. THE sound of detonating engine; (LOUD) BAM BAM BAM .The cylinders in the op engines are so big that you could fit 2 people standing face to face inside one. The crankcase was waist deep in oil. There were blast doors on the side 6 foot square that were spring loaded to release pressure in case of a crankcase explosion. Which could happen if the engine ever began detonating for a long enough time fire pushing past the rings could ignite the oil fumes in the crankcase. Anyway thats a bit of my experience with op engines. RIP To my best friend Kim Crain plant operator, and son of Edward E. Crain prof. Architecture University of Florida @ Gainesville Fl. Alumni.
Ron Rothrock have you ever heard the 2 stroke Detroit diesels? All diesels are loud but those things are ridiculous loud. I had one in an old dump truck. 60mph and it sounded like a jet was flying over you.
I'm honestly shocked more 2 stroke engines haven't become common these days. The major flaw was that fuel escaped via the intake air not being well controlled. That doesn't much matter when we have direct injection as the norm. 2 stroke engines have shown to have more thermal efficiency with a smaller, lighter engine whilst retaining high power. Hopefully this helps push more development of 2 stroke engines.
@@WhysafraidofCause Because its designed to burn oil. Because they're using 2 strokes where a cheap engine is needed and its far cheaper to burn oil. But there have been plenty of 2 strokes which use oil conventionally throughout history, plenty in research today, its not a requirement to burn oil for 2 strokes. Indeed it wouldn't work with fuel injection at all if you were burning oil as the pre-injection areas still need oil. And its not a requirement to have the fixed/no valves you see on most two strokes. There's a lot of novel designs like piston valves but there's also conventional poppet valves in historical and research 2 stroke engines. Ie you can make one work fairly similarly to a 4 stroke, but with half as many cycles per power stroke you get far less friction. Research 2 stroke engines are showing a far greater efficiency than 4 stroke with far less emissions. A little difficulty with NOx emissions but generally better than 4 strokes on emissions overall. The main difficulty is a smooth torque curve. But with hybrids that can be managed, and the focus on fuel efficiency and low emissions even prior to hybrid engines makes it baffling to me nobody tried them in the modern age,
@@WhysafraidofCause you don't need to burn oil if you use a turbo or supercharger as opposed to crankcase pressure to force induction. You can then have a wet crankcase like most 4-strokes.
My dad bought a TS 3 Commer "Knocker" Truck in 1955. It was a tip truck. It had a 3 cylinder supercharged, opposed piston 2-stroke engine as described here. It had loads of power and was a screamer. Anyone who'd had experience with one could recognize its exhaust note blocks away.Only, it didn't have 2 crankshafts; the two sets of pistons and conrods were connected by massive rocker arms connected to a single crank.
@@Kevin-ix4qz yes, but a regular 2 stroke ain't that efficient. This on the other hand is a 2 stroke, efficient, powerful and no valve train! mmpt, NOICE!
That comes from it being a 2 stroke diesel they've always had good torque numbers when compared to contemporary 4 strokes because you get 2x as many power strokes per revolution.
@Chase Rayfield those performance numbers are already achieved with a conventional 2l bi-turbo engine... dont see any advantage at the moment... fuel efficiency?
The Routes group in the UK did a 3 cylinder 3ltr diesel engine in the 1960s called the Commer TS3 (Tilling Stephens) and I did drive one in a 42 seater coach. A very smooth engine whic h had the habit of de-coaking its exhaust system without warning creating plumes of smoke but very economical. This unit was horizontal and had a single crankshaft connected each side by several con-rods. Thanks for the video.
When I was a kid living in Turangi there were a number of Commer trucks powered by TS3 horizontally opposed piston engines. The sound they made was so distinct that I could pick them out over other trucks without seeing them when I was 5 years old. They were small engines, about 3.6 litres and made good power in their day I have been told. Hi from NZ, Anthony
anthony i worked on these engines . you are correct regards the sound, it was the blower .we had to decoke them alot also rootes tried out a ts4 but it was not put in any commers .they would have been easier to work on on tilt cabs but the commer never had one in those days
A brilliant sound that I remember from the old Palmers Concrete mixer trucks in Dunedin. Hearing a fully loaded Commer with its TS3 knocker engine screaming while climbing a Dunedin hill is one of my great childhood memories.
I remembered that I watched this video 2 years ago and immediately I thought: this is extremely nice, it's genius and will save the combustion engine for some other decades. I'm still waiting, I'm still convinced that this is a real valid project.
@@l0k048 that and i personally like diesel engines. I think the world needs them more now then ever. The CAN be very green for the world. Much more then gasoline. For example.....if we got rid of gasoline and every car or truck was diesel powerd it would cut the world oil use MORE then in half! Now. Lets go to the next level..... If we made every engine biodiesel. I guarantee the worlds pollution would get wayyyyy better to almost nothing... now let's talk Electric..... first off there's no way our power grid can hold a billion cars charging on it every single day let alone in a heatwave. 2nd of all..... batteries are not green! Quick Google search of how a battery is made will confirm that and you can see with your own eyes how much work and pollution is made to build the battery look up how lithium batteries are made and how it affects the environment. Now times that by a billion......
@@dieselbossbrandon Biofuels don't work on a large scale because of all the land for food production needed to make the fuels. The grid doesn't need to change much up until about 50% electric adoption so long as we charge smartly, i.e. at night during low demand when electricity is cheapest. For the final 50% the grid will undergo upgrades. These upgrades may be mitigated by the onset of self driving cars which are expected to reduce the number of cars needed on the road. You could spend thousands on owning a car, or you can subscribe to a car service for ~$500/year. Batteries are also much much cleaner over the course of their lifetime compared to combustion engines and all the dirty extraction and refining of fuel needed to run them. Now times that by a billion.........
Commer rootes ts3 1950s cancelled by Chrysler in the 1970s So 3 cylinder opposed piston two stroke supercharged ,developments were turboed in the 1950 3250 cc producing 105hp-225hp
@@HiltownJoe The Germans made gasoline versions during WWII if I remember correctly, the only issue is timing, not just the fuel injection, but the spark as well. It's not that it was impossible, the Germans were trying to achieve as simple a design as possible for reliability reasons. They ended up going with diesel but the engine could barely go above 1,400 rpm, and for aviation purposes that wasn't nearly enough.
Agree, just wondering why from 2012 no-one used in production...
3 года назад+2
Did you consider how are they going to set up a reliable lubrication without oil leaving the cylinder walls from the exhaust holes? Even if they make it work, I wouldn't buy it until many buy and use and prove that it is reliable.
@ great point, boxer engines which face similar problems do consume more oil (not by much) and do have more points of failure, but one would assume that a company boasting efficiency would have a solution of sorts to a major inefficiency.
Commer lorries in 50s and 60s used a Tilling Stevens 3 cylinder supercharged Twostroke with 6 pistons connecting to a single crankshaft using 2 large rocker arms. Beautiful engineering even though quite loud exhaust note. Would need easy decoke and replacement piston rings around hundred thousand miles ,then ready for another hundred thousand. Had to use an anti phasing device as being a twostroke could run backwards on lorry pulling to a halt. The supercharger was mechanical Roots type so quite expensive to produce. Throttle control was operated using a vacuum tube and the vehicles braking system completely Air pressure actuation, including Handbrake. Superb engineering.
In a two stroke cycle timing is everything. It is therefore pretty amazing that they can maintain as high an efficiency as they do over a broad an operating range as they do. But I wonder what would be possible if the engine only worked at a single speed and power level. In a convention vehicle the engine has to sized to meet the peak power demands of the vehicle will ever need, but for the vast majority of the time it only needs to produce a quarter of that peak power. As such the engine is mostly not operating at its peak efficiency power and rpms. But if the engine is sized only to just meet the power demands of the vehicle averaged over say 30-50 miles of highway driving, then the engine can be much smaller since it doesn't have to provide the large amounts of peak power required for acceleration and hill-climbing. Nor does it have to run at very low power during deceleration or downhill sections. Instead it just produces that same time-averaged power level regardless of what the vehicle is doing. This is the concept referred to as a sustainer engine. But of course the engine can't be sized that way if it is the only source of power. And that is where a battery electric drive train comes in. All power to the wheels come from electric motors sized to meet peak power demands. Electric motors have a very broad and flat efficiency plateau around the design condition. So it is very nearly as efficiency at 20% power as it is at 100%. And most motors can operate for short periods at nearly double their rated power and so can give short bursts of very high power for accelerating down an highway onramp so as to be at speed by the end. The energy to drive those motors comes from a combination of power from the batteries and the piston engine. The batteries type and pack size would then be designed to be able to provide the extra power when discharging to supply the difference between maximum motor power the set power output of the piston engine, and to be able to contain enough total energy to provide that extra power for long enough to climb a long uphill grade. The peak charging power of the batteries would have to be sufficient to absorb peak braking power produced by the motors acting as generators and the power from the sustainer engine, which would still be producing it "one lone song" in anticipation of the energy needed to climb the hill on the other side of the current downhill grade. Since the sustainer engine is not mechanically connected to the wheels it can spin at whatever speed is most efficiency and minimizes the weight of the engine and attached generator. Since power is simply torque time speed, a high rpm, lightweight and low torque engine can produce the all the power needed. Also electrical machine weight is more of a function of their torque than power, the same high rpms will minimize the weight and volume of the generator as well. Average power can be calculated from average fuel efficiency and thermal efficiency. Modern aerodynamic rigs can get 9 miles per gallon cruising at 65 mph and if we assumed a fuel to drive shaft efficiency of 30% at low power during cruise and do a plus a bit of math, this works out to only 125 hp. Since the electric drive motors are the ones driving the wheels, they will be the ones to generate the 1500-2000 ft-lbs of torque required, not the sustainer. So the piston engine could actually be a very compact and light high speed/low torque engine such as a 1 L motorcycle engine that can easily produce 125 hp (imagine the chuckle though when you raise the cab and show the other drivers this tiny engine the size of a Honda Goldwing sitting in the middle of all these batteries, power electronics and high torque electric motors and tell them that is the only power source driving your rig :-) . High rpms also helps to reduce the generator weight and volume since electrical machine weight and volume is more of a function of how much torque they have to produce rather than how much power. So a high speed/low torque generator can put out the same power as a low speed/high torque generator but weigh considerably less. In addition to saving fuel by running the sustainer like these opposed piston engines at 40%-50% efficiency, a hybrid electric system would save a lot of wear and tear on brakes as well as save energy since most braking power will come from the drive motors running in regen mode and storing that energy in the batteries. So brakes might just never wear out if the driver can avoid a lot of late hard braking. And you wouldn't have to use engine braking to try to saving the brakes and pissing off everybody who lives within a half a mile when you downshift. And possible battery only operation or the sustainer throttled down to bring its noise down could be used to drive nearly silently through very noise sensitive neighborhoods at night because trucking doesn't fall neatly into an 8-5 schedule. Well this is a long comment on an old video, so likely nobody but me will ever see it. But in general I think hybrid electric systems with a small sustainer engine could make a large difference in everything from heavy-duty pickups to large semis where, apologies to Elon Musk, 100% battery electric trucks just don't make economic sense. But that doesn't mean that an battery electric drive system can't have utility, you just have to come at it from the right angle.
I agree that a sustain/generator engine would be good for heavy vehicles, basically a diesel electric system from a train but for semi trucks. One small problem for high power density engines, wear and tear. Long lived engines, life is measured in hours not miles, do not operate at high RPMs. Your idea for having an engine basically running at 100% is best served by a 2000 ish RPM running generator, such an engine would be between 3 and 6 litters, depending on vehicle size and toe capacity. Say a compact V6 or V8 engine. The semi truck will remain large, the new electric systems will require the space that was once used for the larger 14+ litter inline 6. Cooling requirements will be reduced, allowing for a more aerodynamic design as well.
The perfect design. A combustion engine making electricity that drives a motor/generator at each wheel. By varying motors in series and parallel, you change their torque-power. By using wheel motors there’s no axles, transmissions and gears plus built in stability control. You also take advantage of the multiple motor-speed/ fuel consumption thing that ocean-going motorboaters have known about for decades.
@@Squeezmo One giant problem with not having a transmission is that you either have very little power available from a standstill, or your motor is spinning at very high rpm once your moving, limiting its service life and maximum speed. Transmissions solve lots of problems. Electric cars will still use transmissions, though far fewer gears are used. Having independent motors is nifty solution, though it will cause issues if one or more dies. 4 motors quadruples the odds of motor failure.
@@TitoRigatoni British Commer TS3 truck, also British Chieftain tank, and BR Class 55 "Deltic" locomotive which had 2 engines, each with 18 cylinders, 36 pistons and 3 crankshafts! Go to RUclips to listen to the amazing sound of these locomotives.
@@davidstewart4570 I am well aware they've been used in tanks and locomotives, also submarines and patrol boats. I'd never heard of them being used in trucks though, thanks for the info!
There were 6, 10 cylinder (opposed piston) F&M engines on the USCG Ice Beaker I was on. They had been going for 25 years when I was on the ship and they kept going until the ship was decommissioned in 1986. The ship was commissioned in 1944. They never broke down, and were always maintained and overhauled by ship staff. It was interesting to see them replacing the lower main bearings.
PS, the Napier Deltic Engine, was basically a redrawn Junkers Jumo engine, with 3 crankshafts instead of 2. It could develop around 2500hp. It had 18 cylinders, 36 pistons and was used in RN warships, including minesweepers. Also a class of very fast, powerful Co-Co locomotives, furnished with a pair of engines, derated to 1650hp each, each driving a Dynamo powering a 3-(series wound) motor bogie. They locomotives may have had over-speed Governors to restrict them to 100mph, but I’m not certain about this.
"Power efficiency"? What's that? It's power is 100 hp per liter (motorcycles are double that). Its energy efficiency is between 40 and 50 percent (motorcycles are half that).
@@MultiPleaser it's diesel! Motorcycles have gasoline engines, and those motorcycle engines generates those high level powers at very high rpm. Saying power, only HP, not torque! Modern diesels generates almost the same HP per liter as much as gasolines at lower rpm, and still generates much much more torque than gasolines.
@@gokceralp Only with a turbo charger or two, compared to a normally aspirated gasoline engine. But, as soon as you put a turbo or two on a gasoline engine, the diesel is old news.
i do remember going with my father as a kid to help him repair his mates commer 2 stroke lorry, a 3 cylinder apposed piston diesel engine, the difference i believe was the commer used rocker arms to join the pistons to a single crank shaft (if memory serves me well) and a blower to keep the flow of gasses, clever bit of old tech that'll be great to see used with modern advancements
Ah, the "commer-knocker", so called from its distinctive sound. It had -umm - reliability issues, as opposed piston designs can because of their more complex drive gearing.
@@kenoliver8913 my dad hauled close to 7.5t all over Germany, for most of the 90’s with his TS3 powered BMC van. Not a single reliability issue, and it was no spring chicken then. The only breakdown was a failed hydraulic clutch line that was repaired at the roadside.
If you want to count efficiency for electric motors you should also calculate the efficiency of how the electricity was made. A coal plant has around 40% efficiency, and considering that the electric motors are not that efficient anymore
What folks seem to not realise or turn a blind eye to is that to get these " efficient green electric motors" to run are the diesel powered equipment and mines just like coal copper iron really any resource used in modern day is stripped from the earth in non "green" ways. I just find it hilarious when they bring that up like there saving the planet.
Wow! 55% efficiency. I love the concept of lower piston speed but longer strike and more torque, not to mention the lack of wasted energy entering the cylinder head. What are emissions like? Have they been able to be controlled sufficiently to meet Euro 6 requirements? What sort of fuel efficiency does this design achieve (real figures for a 1500kg vehicle)?
This could replace the Atkinson cycle engines in the Toyota Prius. I predict that this engine won't be used in consumer vehicles because it is too simple and it will last too long.
Agree with this comment. The manufacturer of vehicle will be bankrupt because the customer just buy the vehicle and less or very less repaired the engine.
@@knewledge8626 Electric vehicles need a power station to generate the electricity. Australia does not have enough coal units to meet current peak demand on some summer days so we'd need to build new coal, gas or nuclear units BEFORE going electric. I also doubt there is enough high grade carbon (graphite) being mined in the world to build the batteries and I'm certain no-one has devised an economically viable Lithium battery recycling process. Au is smaller than California yet could not go electric. I reckon this 3 cylinder diesel has some merit and we are a long way from maximising the ICE.
@@knewledge8626 It could be used as a ground engine and a range extender for cars. I think we are 10+ years away from EVs even being 20% of the cars. Charging times and range are still issues. In cold climates heating the cabin will reduce range. There are batteries on the horizon that charge faster than Li and have a greater capacity. Super capacitors may replace batteries. There are are the economics and politics and the ugliness of capitalism to deal with. An EV can last much longer because they are simpler machines and have less maintenance. If the average car lasts 20 years or more the economic effects will ripple through the economy. EVs don't need transmissions, radiators, engines, exhaust systems, gasoline, diesel, oil and transmission fluid etc.. The oligarchs will have something to say about that. What may happen is a lot of families who own homes will own 2 cars, one for around town and commutes and the other one for long commutes. It is sad that there is so much technology is being developed to get a small gain in efficiency though Rube Goldberg style engineering,
@@tofanbaskoro3200 Had Mazda 626 for 18 years, engine was never repaired and outlived the car. It was "sold" at 220k miles with no engine issues whatsoever. Now I have next model 6.
Not only is this not new technology, this is yet another case of US motor technology lagging way behind Europe. In the 1950's the Rootes Group in the UK had a successful truck using this technology in the TS2 engine and developed in the 1950s, Napier had an 18cylinder "Deltic" engine in railway locomotives providing the motive power for British Rail's Class 55s. This engine had 3 crankshafts with the cylinders arranged in a triangular configuration, in banks of six cylinders. Achaetes triumph is to make a two stroke engine that can comply with modern emissions regulations.
This is so cool. When I started working on my own cars, I did a headgasket repair on my supra in highschool. I actually thought about an engine design like this completely on my own and asked my dad about it since he was a mechanic in the military in his younger years. He said about the same thing that you did about auto manufacturers had created this design and I did the research. I feel like the old designs only didn't catch on because they didn't have the computer precision we do today. I knew this would be about the most efficient engine design if it were precise enough. That's why I've always been impartial to i6 engines because although they are somewhat heavy in the nose of a car, they are beautifully balanced compared to a v8. Each engine design has benefits and drawbacks, but I have a hard time thinking about drawbacks to an engine like this.
Instead of TDC AND BDC, it is actually inner and outer dead center. Worked on Fairbanks Morse OP engines and taught them for the U.S. COAST GUARD from 1976 to 1987
Please tell me where you see the simplicity. Just image starting this thing: You start rotating, one combustion occurs, but there is no air pressure on the intakt yet. So no fresh air enters the cylinders. So it just won't start. On submarines, trains or other stationary aplliance that won't be a problem - compressed air is stored and available to start those engines. By the way just like the german no crankshaft diesel engines on the U-Boot. And by the way not having a crankshaft sounds way more simplistic, doesn't it? /watch?v=QUbBqSu9Hdc /watch?v=pzRu3ijghBQ /watch?v=liFMZpPfeWA Well, any 2-stroke design is just environmentally bad (2-stroke-gasoline) or needs too complicated compressed air supply to start the engine for a car (2-stroke-diesel). And no matter how good you think this opposed pistons efficiency is: turbines are better; convert that into electricity, store it in a battery, drive with it, even use regenerative breaking and beat this supposedly 55% efficiency by A LOT. There IS a reason why concepts like this never made it. Those are not new ideas!
@@RubyRhod If you compare this to a Detroit diesel two-stroke, this design eliminates a lot of potentially trouble-prone extras. Having said that, the Detroits were/are extremely reliable, give a long service life, and, as to your first remark, very easy to start. Incidentally, the sugar milling company I work for still has a large number of 8v-92 Detroits in their locomotive fleet (2 foot gauge) and a few years ago, we replaced one of the engines that had done over 40,000 hours and was still running sweet. However, by that time it was using copious amounts of oil and was getting a bit rattley.
The biggest hurdle is emissions. Two factors are two stroke and Diesel. It will be interesting to see what auto manufacturer R&D come up with to address it.
i kinda disagree. 2 stroke on diesels are quite different compared to gasoline 2 strokes. whereas a gasoline 2 stroke can run no turbo. there is such a thing as a 'blown 2-stroke diesel', and is basically a neccesity if you want it anywhere near effective. plus the technical problem of the injection system.
Traveler X Remember that everything has an advantage and disadvantage. Two stroke engines reach higher RPM's faster with reduced weight due to less moving parts. As far as emissions go, Mazda has found a way to re-introduce exhaust back into the intake stream to reduce NOx. They've been developing a new rotary engine that solves the emmisions issues.
i don't know about the not burning oil, since i do believe that diesel fuel itself is sort of a lubricant, but since it's injected in the middle of the cylinder, only about half of cylinder, that is mostly the area closest to the injectors is going to be more lubricated, and the piston rings is going to be slightly less lubricated closer to BDC. also to the 'combining' the intake and exhaust stroke, back to my argument of 'blown 2 stroke diesels'. a turbine is kind of used to 'purge' the air from the previous combustion, and by the time the fuel is injected, it's likely that the exhaust port has already been closed, so the amount of unburnt fuel escaping the exhaust is going to be very minimal. my point is, there's just so many problems with the technicalities of the design that could be fixed with good engineering, but while this config is not a new tech, it is mixed with a lot of new tech, and isn't as widely used, so in the end we the 'consumers' are mostly in the blind of the actual potential problem this engine could have
I have had the good fortune to ride in a coach, and to drive a horsebox, both powered by the Rootes / Commer TS3, 3-Cylinder, opposed piston, supercharged diesel engine. I think, but I’m not certain, that it was supercharged by a Roots-Supercharger. With the 2 rotors. I haven’t seen -or heard, any more since 1977. I’ve never had to work on one of these units, but I appreciated them for the reasons you narrated. I’m not sure, but I think the TS3 might have been about 4 litres or just over. I forget, now.
It's funny how things go full circle. A engine built in the early 20th century is brought back and with a modification or two turns out to be a better design than current engines.
It's new kooks trying to resurrect technology which has been long dead for good reason in a bid to attract VC. This engine will never meet emissions. Period. Maybe it'll see the light of day in Mil prototype but the DoD is so slow to adopt new tech they'll be long bankrupt before anything would hit the battlefield.
otm646 What would the reason be for it not passing emissions? You could add a dpf etc to it just as well as in normal 4-stroke diesels. Also the efficiency being higher should mostly impact emissions positively. My guess would be that the NOx emissions could be a problem in this kind of a configuration, as I would suspect that combustion temperatures are actually higher in this engine than in usual 4-stroke diesels.
Fascinating video! Can't wait to see this technology in use for regular vehicles in the future. PS: I will be attending University in France for mechanical/automotive engineering this year and I hope someday I'll be able to help develop something like this. Really exciting stuff!
Rudolph Diesel is now doing his " Happy Dance" in Heaven. Yes, I believe that the Diesel engine is the most perfect engine, and Achates Power is bringing it to fruition.
This would be a great primary mover for electric generators. Such an application would also prove the device in "real word" conditions. Inherently smooth running as well.
It is. The US Navy has been using this type of engine for generators on submarines for decades. Same for diesel-electric locomotives. It can handle variable loads with constant speed.
Great presentation! I've been following Achates since their first press releases. I have wondered about opposed piston engines since learning about the Junkers Jumo series in/before WW2. Fascinating. Highly successful. But scary to risk on a Detroit mass production scale 'till now? Electronics makes this a whole new ball game. Force scavenged 2 stroke w/ no head is on another level. The supercharger for scavenging is reminiscent of the GMC -71 series. This alleviates the cycle of typical 2 stroke scavenging issues. I am investigating scratch building one using as many production parts as possible & using gasoline. 12:1 & EFI?The lack of a cylinder head sidesteps so many mechanical, Thermal efficiency, & detonation issues. The lack of red hot exhaust valves alone changes the detonation picture. I had not considered the cycle overlap with 4 cylinders. Might have to accept that. Is that really a big issue?
I honestly wouldn't think that the overlap would be an issue at all; the exhaust gas is what makes the turbo spin so I'd think more consistent application of it would make the turbo run better than when it peaks and falls, not worse. Of course, I'm not a professional mechanic or an engineer and don't know the exact science behind any of the mechanics outside the combustion cycle, so I may be missing something about those graphs. I can fix an engine and locate problems just fine, but I don't use anthing more complex than an adjustable wrench for that and couldn't tell you any exact detail about any problem beyond just what the problem is and the cause.
well this depends on the language, in my country engines and motors have the same name, so technically here the most efficient and environment friendly engine is an eletric engine xD
@@l0k048 That heavily depends on the source of energy for the electric engine. A coal driven electric engine definetly isn't more environment friendly than a highly efficient diesel engine. As long as electric cars are such a dirty business they are no alternative.
@@Squee7e agreed, I think hydrogen fuel and similar things might be a more likely future if we want to be environmentally friendly and not destroy the planet
@@MaxCroat If I recall, hydrogen fuel has far less energy than gasoline and it takes more energy to produce hydrogen than what hydrogen itself provides. The whole "green energy" boom is simply rhetoric used to create new energy markets.
@@astr0creep6x6x6 I don't know honestly. There probably will be a more efficient energy source in the future, but right now it isn't as simple as some people think "cars are bad". Everything is bad at this point. Wind turbines are expensive to produce and the production also creates a lot of pollution. That goes for pretty much every "green" energy source. It sure will take some more time to develop something better.
The only real engineering problem to overcome will be keeping engine lubricating oil out of the combustion process like all 2 stroke designs. I lived with Fairbanks-Morse OP diesels on nuclear submarines and they are wonderful. Crazy smooth because naturally balanced with the pistons counter balancing each other. Notice the lack of big counterweights in the videos. Emissions, well they will burn the oil that gets into the combustion so no need to worry about that. The other biggie is 2 stroke usually have about half the cylinder firing pressure as 4 stroke diesels so NOx will be significantly reduced depending on the about of super & turbocharging. The other challenge for automotive applications will be packaging the thing under existing hoods due to its tall height as mentioned in the F150 demo.
The 3.26L 3-cylinder opposed piston Commer TS3 had success in the UK in the 50s and 60s, despite having only one crankshaft and a horribly complicated connecting rod linkage arrangement. Cylinders were horizontal and it was intended to fit the low engine bay of the (then) new fangled cab over trucks (which are now ubiquitous in Europe.) I can only think the opposed piston died because of packaging issues: diesel engines being required to fit the same engine bay as gasoline engines, in engine bays that have got tighter and tighter with time. BTW The Napier Deltic (marine and train engine) is really interesting, basically 3 Culverin 6 cylinder opposed piston (diesel aircraft!) engine blocks bolted together. Contemporaries had figured out how to get the timing right with in a square arrangement with 4 crankshafts, but only Napier found a way to do it with 3 in a triangle. You should do a video on it - i can point you to some resources. Napier made some very odd configurations, including the W12 Napier Lion from 1917 which was used to break numerous speed records. Sad that their name now only appears on turbochargers.
punker4real. cars are typically designed around a small selection of different powertrains, for example a model might be available with the following options: gasoline straight 4, gasoline V6, or diesel. When the designer selects the diesel engine, an opposed piston diesel will be rejected in favour of a straight 4 diesel if its dimensions differ too much from the gasoline options offered. 50 years ago they left plenty room in an engine bay for a mechanic (or owner) to work in, so putting an odd engine in as an afterthought would not be a problem. Now cost cutting and streamlining have made engine bays very tight, as they are (as you say) literally designed around the powertrain. This is driven by the modern tendency to think only of the purchase price, and not of the cost or difficulty of servicing later on.
This seems well suited to serial hybrid electric drive, where the loss of efficiency introduced by generation/inversion may be offset by by the increased thermodynamic efficiency. Similarly, the 2 stroke power band problem could be mediated by the electrics, combined with short term storage.
OK! I’ve just looked up the TS3, and learned that it was smaller than I thought. Just over 3 litres. I think it’s a great pity, that opposed piston engines aren’t very common, these days. I may have an idea, about this. I owned 2 London Transport buses, one single deck with underfloor, horizontal engine, the other, double deck with vertical engine over the front axle. The horizontal engine smoked a lot, starting from cold, suggesting that oil pooled in the cylinders, whist resting. This could be a problem, nowadays. Neither engine smoked when warmed up, after a couple of minutes.
The disadvantage of this engine was high oil consumption which resulted in high burned and unburned hydrocarbon emissions. The cause of this high oil consumption was the pistons passing in front of the intake and exhaust ports.
mijnkampvuur once the piston rings start to crack you will see the oil consumption, or see it coming out of the air box tubes like the old two stroke diesels. By the time this thing gets choked down by US requirements with exhaust particulate filter, SCR, VGT turbo, urea injection etc. it will be just as good as any other engine out there, not better.
Grant Schoen You are right about a 2 stroke engine consuming oil (thus higher emissions and more wear than in a 4 stroke engine) However this is inherent to the design of the engine, it is not the point of the engine.
Yes, it is inherent to the design, but also is kind of the point - which is for the sake of simplicity & weight/cost savings to not have a separate crank-case/valve-train from the cylinder block, thus a higher weight/power ratio.
Grant Schoen. . the extra oil consumption and wear would be avoided if at all possible. . and so of course it is not any point at all -- but cannot be avoided.
Its interesting, however there is more to the story then meets the eye here. If these engines have been in production since the 1900s and have the same power and torque outputs with a near 20 % increase in efficiency, why havent they already been implemented? I'd imagine there are some challenges that aren't so apparent. Also great channel, you present mechanical/mathematical information in an engaging way.
I have a feeling its because that its because when they took out all 2stroke motor for emission reasons they probably took these guys out as well. But I also think that it might also waste unburnt fuel as well with the exhaust port beening opened and closed longer then the intake port
You don't see these engines in cars simply because they are so big. These engines look to be ideally suited to constant speed applications like generators and ship propulsion applications.
@@marktucker8896 Yet Boxer engines are still being used and developed, so why should two piston setups each other be bulkier than two pistons facing away from each other? It feels like opposing pistons not only give less control over variation in injection timing, but both weight and heat could be bigger problems. With so much heat being generated in such a small area, the metal where the pistons meet would have to be thicker and use of lighter = heat sensitive materials becomes a problem. I have no scientific basis for that, they're all just guesses ...
@@Car_Mo while I am no engineer, interesting that none of the examples online show an engine revving. I suspect they will have a very narrow sweet spot. May well be an ideal engine as part of a hybrid set up. The US army appears to be interested, if it works we will see more of this engine.
I posted this comment in June 2022, 4 years after the posting of this video. I'm surprised no one is mass producing these engines yet. I'd say let's start making them. They're 4 years overdue.
Fantastic! I remember reading about these engines a few years ago and wondering why they weren't in production. I didn't realize they were still actively working on it. I can't wait for these engines to be available to the public, it should enable some pretty cool things.
Obviously because it isn't all that obvious. Oil use was mentioned earlier and also the drag of both a compressor and a turbo is probably not included in the overall efficiency numbers.
Old concept but it doesn't mean it's a bad design. I worked on Fairbanks Morse MEP engines, a huge submarine diesel that was converted to burn natural gas and drive a natural gas compressor. Also check out the Napier Deltic engine, a 3 crankshaft engine.
I scrolled down in the comments just to see how long before someone mentioned the Deltic. You can't do a video about opposed piston engines without talking about it!
Has the deltic engine ever been used commercially? Curious question, the natural gas engine, what kind of concept was it? Was it with pilot diesel or spark plugs?
@@TheOpenSourceMerc Not strictly true. ICE still has a place for HGVs and other haulers until either hydrogen or battery technology improves. Biodiesel is a carbon neutral alternative in the interim. :)
@@TheOpenSourceMerc Gasoline has a specific energy of approximately 46 megajoules per kilogram, diesel is slightly lower at about 43 megajoules per kilo, and the opposed piston engine has an efficiency, in practice, of about 40%. An electric motor has an efficiency of about 90%, but lithium-ion batteries have a specific energy, in practice, of about 0.35 megajoules per kilo. Unless someone finds a way to make a much more energy-dense battery that is also readily rechargeable, which right now no one seems to be even close to, it is electric cars that are dead. ICE cars are the present and the future.
@@redrackham6812 Put your money where your ideas are, and buy a car with this engine for you and your next generation. Good luck with investments in gas related engines for small applications (cars). Not all is about autonomy (efficiency and specific energy), is also about contamination, cost of liquid storage and transport, convenience energy reload (in your home instead drive to a place to refill) and so on. ICE cars are dying very fast, just some people don't understand it yet.
@@javqui410 As far as I am aware, this car is not even on the market yet. And I am not currently in the market for a car. But if I were, I would with great confidence choose a conventional ICE-powered vehicle over a battery-powered one, which I would not even consider for a moment. Very obviously, the overwhelming majority of the population agrees with me: more ICE-powered cars were sold in the US alone just last year than battery-powered cars exist in the whole world.
My grandfather ran 2 commer "knockers" each pulling 2 trailers way back when "ROAD TRAIN"s were "LONG LOAD"s. Denfinitely knew what time he left and when he was coming home.
I see the potential to integrate this engine nicely to a DCT and create a simplification to the DCT. If you use an arrangement that has three smaller gears that are used to couple the drive between the two crankshafts and ensure that these gears have different diameters to each other you could then connect a clutch to two of these gears and have a DCT with separate odd gear and even gear input shafts. This would simply the DCT design.
Jeremiah Fix Might sound like masness, but trust me, this would work perfectly and would also extend the durability of the gearbox itself by reducing stress on the gears
James Lineberger A couple of years ago, I went on an SAE tour of the Fairbanks Morse plant in Beloit, Wisconsin. It is always interesting to see an active manufacturing facility.
Have a look at the old Napier Deltic design; it optimised the form factor for three cylinder pairs. It was used in diesel locomotives, and naval applications. The only real drawback was reduced reliability. It'll be interesting to see whether the use of modern materials and modern manufacturing can fix that.
the biggest reliability problem with the class 55 "deltic" locomotive was the LACK of maintenance. as there were so few of them, they didn't get the down time to keep them running well.
I guess putting two diesel fuel injectors on each sides for each of it's cylinder's(which consists of two pistons) will be a game changer(and it'll increase power figures in an opposed engine even further), although I'm not sure whether it'll be effecient then.
It all comes down to whether it can meet emissions regulations. Existing diesels can get much higher thermal efficiency figures than they run at currently provided nobody worries about NOx emissions. High combustion temperature is ideal for high thermal efficiency, the problem is it's enough to break the nitrogen molecules in the air into free nitrogen, which can form all the NOx that's prematurely killing people in big cities all around the world. This is a lot of the reason opposed piston engines are popular in ships - once they're in international waters they can and do burn any old muck they can buy, switching to cleaner fuel when they come into port. It's the reason why the 15 biggest container ships put out more Sulphur and NOx pollution than the entire world's cars. One of the coolest opposed cylinder engine designs was the deltic used in UK trains, which used 3 crank shafts in a triangle, with 3 combustion chambers.
Jeffrey Havlik Understood but emissions instrumentation in a test cell and in a vehicle are basically identical. Test cell actually runs more instrumentation.
they even all lied about the current crop of diesel, scamming the public into putting out these pollutants pretending they did more mpg etc. People still buy their cars tho so maybe they deserve to breathe it
Medical Cannabis Spain they do get more mpg. By running at higher temperatures a diesel can get better thermal efficiency and mpg. But it will produce more sulfur and other pollutants
Have a look at the English Commer TS3 engine from the 1950s. Three cylinders-6 pistons-1 crankshaft. extremely efficient. However extremely loud. Commonly known as the COMMER KNOCKER .I remember them very well. I used to hich a ride to my technical college 60 miles away in one which was driven by my brother-in-law the late 50s when I was an apprentice.
I think it's an amazing concept. Like anything in life, until it gets on the street, there is no way to identify and work out all the bugs, if there are any.
Thanks for watching everyone!! If you enjoyed this video you may enjoy these others about new engine technologies:
Mazda SPCCI SkyActiv-X - ruclips.net/video/yNSxow3W7ek/видео.html
HCCI Engines - ruclips.net/video/OVWZFdb_AGc/видео.html
RCCI Engines - ruclips.net/video/pCr6bjQMrgU/видео.html
VC-Turbo Engine - ruclips.net/video/A6H66xfEZC4/видео.html
Dynamic Force Engine - ruclips.net/video/wwLxxZm_LRQ/видео.html
Mercedes 50% Efficient Engine - ruclips.net/video/kOhmgpkiIfg/видео.html
Mazda Dynamic Pressure Turbo - ruclips.net/video/UCEarzwakgc/видео.html
Gas vs Diesel Engines - ruclips.net/video/rXVJG9n6BAs/видео.html
Any chance of covering the Napier Deltic engine?
Engineering Explained Just wondering shouldn’t this engines power output/efficiency be compared with 6 cylinder engine since essentially you have 6 pistons, rods, injectors etc. Those numbers seem very comparable to what modern 3.0 V6 Diesel engine is outputting. A similar argument is often made for Mazda rotary engine where its 1.3 displacement is multiplied by 2 when compared to conventional piston engines due to the number of combustion cycles per “crank” rotation. Would like to know your thoughts 🤔. Thanks for the awesome content.
Engineering Explained I am actually curious how are they lubricating the cylinder on the top side if it is orientated in a vertical axis. Because it will not allow for a simple oil pan method that the bottom cylinder can use.
Tq if you can answer my curiosity
it would be lubricated by oil pressure and a nozzle that squirts oil onto the bottom of the piston, nearly all modern engines are lubricated with pressurized oil and dont rely on oil slinging around the moving parts similar to a manual gearbox, but you do have a good point, how to keep oil from puddling inside the piston and crevices that would normally face the opposite way
You seemed to lack an explanation on how the Achates Power design is superior to the past two-stroke opposed-piston diesel engines? And how they over a came inherent inefficiency in a two-strokes. Such as the tendency of the exhaust and intake air to mix. Since there is no separate exhaust and intake strokes.
And the additional cost not only for turbo and a supercharger but many other support system? So cost comparison with a conventional 6 piston Diesel is needed too.
So it seem more relevant to large engine applications.
3 cylinder, 6 piston engine. Must have had Hyperthreading enabled.
This made me laugh.
Thats great
Kek
Idk, it's not new enough so it doesn'r run under UEFI. You'll have to burn an MBR boot partition and enable vt-d capability to make it run from the BIOS.
@@user-el5mg4it9t wut
i wouldn't say i'm opposed to it.
get out
Even the puns are efficient.
Hardy har har 🙄🙄🙄
you won't find much opposition
Trying to come up with a response has left me exhausted.
It should be put in perspective, 55% is an insane improvement in efficency
Any idea what thermal efficiency we're getting from our standard V-4 engines? 30%? And does this mean that, say, 70% of the fuel's total chemical energy is lost as heat through the radiator and drive train?
The average thermal efficiency for gasoline engines is in the 20-25% range, diesel engines are much better around 35-40% they will never be that great though thanks to thermodynamics the best case scenario for Internal combustion engines is in the mid 50% range if that for thermal efficiency when your turning one form of energy to another there's going to be energy lose its inevitable and unavoidable nothing can ever be 100% efficient which is why perpetual motion devices don't work
Theprfesssor that's not exactly why perpetual motion devices are impossible. They are impossible because they produce more energy then they use, as in above 100% efficiency. In theory you can have near 100% energy conversion efficiency. For example Electric Motors can convert electrical to kinetic energy up to 99.99% efficiency.
@@XLR8bg
The problem with perpetual motion machine they are trying to do work without energy input, a violation of the fist law of thermodynamics but even if you give them energy to get going they still won't stay going because they will use up the energy and eventually stop, the sun has always been their but it to won't last forever along with all the energy it's given
btw the best electric motors can do is 90-96% efficiency which is amazing but still not 100 because thermodynamics is probably the most challenged yet successful theory in physics
@@theprfesssor You guys are both saying the same thing in different ways and both making true points. No need to argue :)
It's a great design. I operated them on submarines in the US Navy. I'd say the biggest sticking point is training people to work on them, with getting customers to wrap their heads around the idea.
In most households (60%) women make the purchasing decisions on cars. Why should the customers understand how the engine works, if majority of them does not care about such things even now? :D
Was the reliability better or worse than a traditional diesel? Tech sounds cool but there are always hidden obstacles that are not so obvious
@@joser.colmenares3495 very reliable and robust. The US Navy have been using that design since WWII. It was also used on Diesel Electric Locomotives.
Fairbanks-Morse 38 8-1/8
With the reduced complexity of no cams and cyl heads, that should not be difficult, eh?
The Famous Soviet cargo diesel locomotive TE-3 borrowed the type of diesel engine. Despite some constructive faults the loco reliably pulled heavy trains at low speeds down to the full stop.
next stop: quantum stroke engine. each piston is simultaneously in compression and decompression.
Lol
That's basically a rotary setup. Look up the Liquid Piston Engine. Pretty neat, but like this engine, I wanna see a bigger application.
Only if you're not watching it. Watching it causes each piston to be either in compression or decompression.
@@dgnash Glass headers are out of the question. Same with any ECU setups.
@@dgnash I did not understand what you said so I'm just gonna be happy I did engineering rather than physics class...
2 stroke, super efficient, supercharged AND turbocharged!! I'm sold
😍😍
The super charger isn't really there to raise cylinder pressure. It's a scavenging blower it's there because the pistons don't do pumping work so they don't pump out exhaust gas. The blower pushes fresh cooler air in causing the hotter exhaust gas to flow out the top. This is also the reason mounting the engine horizontally doesn't work as well and hurts efficiency because it reduces scavanging that's naturally aided by thermal gradients.
plus adding on eco fuel as f1 intended.
sounds fishy when you hear a about turbocharging a conventional two stroke to be honest
@@SeNu420 it's far from a conventional two stroke though.
I used to work for Rootes UK - They fitted Three Cyl opp piston engines to 10 ton trucks. To say they were efficient is an understatement, very good fuel economy and virtually no smoke or haze from the exhaust even on a cold morning at start up. The power from the 206cu in engine was more than enough, they were some of the fastest trucks on the roads. Supercharging does make for a noisy engine but this would not be a problem today with better insulation.
Wonder why we don't see more of them. That sounds fantastic.
@@SirMo In their day they were fitted to about half the out put of 10ton plus trucks coming out of Rootes factory. The buses on the Isle of Wight used them, but to be fair were a bit noisy. Many coaches had them, combined with the Avenger Coach Chassis. To me they sounded sweet and the pollution was near non existent. When one came into the workshop there was only a very slight trace of fumes compared with other diesel lorries that left a fog of black smoke. Smooth to drive too, the engine never faltered.
@@SirMo They were Killed off by Chrysler in 1970 , because they had done a deal with Cummins.
The Commer two Stoke, was a noise engine, apart from that, it had power speed economy.
What baffled many mechanic if the worked on them was the timing.
Many idle gears, 4 stroke turn the engine over twice timing marks lined up, on the 2 stroke engine the ratio turning the engine over marks to line up, ive forgotten something like 1897 to 1.
@@ukghconst One other thing was the massively big, chunky Piston curved crank rods and crank shaft - Not an engine for the faint hearted to work on. Having said that. The new 2020 USA design of the 2 stroke opposed piston engine is virtually NON polluting - a very sound achievement, they are clever people.
With efficiency numbers that high, it's hard to be "opposed" to it!
Unless you own an oil company. That's one reason The Big 3 in the USA won't switch to more efficient engines like this. It would cost them money to convert to new products and the oil companies would bribe them not to change to keep profits as high as possible.
@@baddriversofmoosejaw8681 it's also possible these giants hindering BEV adaption.
Its still using diesel, so its still using oil. Oil won’t be there someday. But if you use other fuels its truly hard to oppose
@@derdrache0512 Diesel, Gasoline, Jet fuel and even propane are all processed from oil. That's another reason the oil companies are so rich. Without them gas and diesel vehicles would be useless and so would jet aircraft. We'd also have to use natural gas for our barbeques. Oil has many uses besides lubricating engines, and making plastic and asphalt.
Key word 2 stroke - emissions hold back production in the USA due to our overly strict standards
It's not just that -3- cylinders is ideal, but ideally it should be in - multiples - of 3.
I've been on various ships that use a 12-cyl, 24-piston engine, but they're timed as multiple banks of 3 cylinders all in the same crankcase.
Jeff Khoury Interesting!
Fairbanks-Morse engines come to mind.
@@tom7601 Those are the ones I was thinking of.
The Napier Deltic locomotive and boat engine had three banks of three or six cylinders turning three crankshafts.
In the British army back in the 70's we used Pescara single cylinder compressors to power our pneumatic tools. Had to wind the starting handle round and round to pull the pistons apart until they automatically tripped, flying back in for the initial ignition. Ran like a dream, dead easy to maintain, great pieces of kit.
I think the opposed piston idea is a great one, and the fuel injection with the boosted intake avoids the 2cycle problem and permits only fresh air to exit the exhaust port. Just fantastic.
Jumo developed the design in the 30s.. for the Junkers military planes & made a flight across the Atlantic loooong before any other aircraft.. Arcades haven't applied ANYTHING new to the design.. only modern auxiliaries in injector technology etc from other makers.. Napier did the most in development but politi s overruled.. nothing has changed there
@@Errol.C-nz Actually the Napier Deltic engine in railway locomotives wasn't very reliable.
I think the problem was cracking around the exhaust ports
The big Deltics were in service for around 20 years (two 18 cylinder engines)
The "Baby Deltic" only lasted around 10 years (Single 9 cylinder engine)
In the marine application, the Deltic replaced the Merlin in fast patrol boats
There was another opposed piston engine use here in Britain. The Commer TD3 aka "double knocker"
This was a 3 cylinder engine used in small lorries.
It had one crankshaft driven by 2 rocker shafts, one for each bank of pistons
When Chrysler bought Rootes Group, the engine died
All 2 strokes have to have a positive pressure on the inlet manifold/
In the case of petrol 2 strokes, the positive pressure is provided by the crank case (hence needing a total loss lubrication system)
@@g8ymw the deltic in rail engines was the same as used by the navey.. it was the budget minded rail beaurocracy that was the fault there cutting service maintainance schedules.. NOT the engine or its design & still by a long shot the most powerful engine fitted in rail
And no 2-stroke oil to burn/exit.
2 stroke, efficient compression. can't ask for more
A 2 stroke banana for you..
2 strokes are banned here for commercial vehicles.
@bcstractor not really.
@@iceberg789 that's only 2 stroke oil burning engines, this wouldn't be.
@bcstractor you're not understanding what a two stroke cycle is. You're thinking of engines that require a fuel oil mixture that is used to lubricate the crankshaft. If you remove that part it's not going to be burning oil so will be as clean as any traditional 4 stroke motor.
I was engineer on ships with 8 cylinder opposed piston B & W engines of 12,000hp. The top pistons were the exhaust gas ones, connecting to the single crankshaft below by side rods. The top piston provided about 25% of the power. They weighed 4 ton apiece!
You’d think they would want them sideways so less of the power goes towards fighting gravity to pull the pistons back up again.
@@orppranator5230 then you get to deal with friction instead xP
@@orppranator5230 since the pistons always move in sync and in opposite directions, when one piston moves up the other moves down, if the weight is similar it cancels out. But if you put the engine on its side you would have constant weight on the bottom half of the cylinder causing uneven friction.
Gotta drink the fuel to move a 4 ton piston.
How can one piston in a 2 piston cylinder be only 25 % of the power output
I love it! Now they need to add steam injection and make it 65% efficient. If you don't believe me look it up. I thought of it in 2007 after I bought a diesel truck in 2006 and eventually went back to school to become a mechanical engineer to develop this and other ideas. Then last year I found out that someone else is doing research on it, and proved that by injecting steam(that is heated by the exhaust around and after the catalytic converter thereby preventing it from getting too hot and reclaiming the waste energy) into the cylinder at the right time, the steam is heated further by combustion and cools the combustion below 1500 degrees celcius which prevents nitric oxide production but adds to the average combustion pressure throughout the powerstroke, and increases the mass flowrate and expansion through the turbo thereby increasing turbo efficiency as well as boost pressure. Both of these increase the power and efficiency of a diesel engine. It also has the huge advantage of not needing all of the horrible power and efficiency robbing exhaust gas recirculation systems to prevent nitric oxide because your combustion temps stay low enough to prevent their creation. Also the reduced temperatures mean less waste heat transferred through the cylinder walls, increasing efficiency again. It's a win - win situation that only works with diesels, and has the chance of making the diesel cleaner burning than any gasoline engine.
The diesel engine is the engine of the future.
David Scott Interesting - presumably you would need a sizeable water tank in order to produce this steam though. How much water is needed on average in an example application for the same amount of diesel?
Sounds like you could be on to something there
It is a good idea but keep in mind the complexity of adding a new system like the steam generation (pressurized), the safety measures around it and, more importantly, the posible corrosion caused by the generated SO2 plus water injected as steam. Additionally, this method is commonly used in gas turbines as a way of reducing the combustion chamber temperature and NOx generation.
David Scott
Wow that's phenomenal, thank you for sharing. I'm going to look it up never heard of it before 👍😉
I study at mechanical engineering faculty on local university (specifically information technology, which does not have much in common) and we were thought about 6 stroke water injecting ICE at English language classes. The process was not bound to diesel only, the main advantage mentioned was recovering of heat from combustion. I support this technology of recovering heat, it probably is better than something like Stirling engine or Peltier cell. I am happy to supply destilled water to my car no problem.
I want this just to be able to say I have a three cylinder six piston engine
Everyone would be so confused, it would be awesome
Would that be a 3-cylinder I6?? 🤔
Bugatti: 16 cylinder 32 piston engine
3-6 mafia.
its an engine with a moving cylinder head, see Migweb msg engine concept , where one piston is offset to the two cranks by a few degrees to increase even more performance and higher torque.
friend: *laughs at me for having a 3 cylinder car"
the 3 cylinder:
cool fact:
The $150,000+ BMW i8 is a 3-cylinder
The largest displacement production bike, Triumph Rocket III, has 3 cylinders
@@benedictodiptasuta9306 Yes, and it is only about 50kg heavier than say, a Laverda Mirage.
@Thomas B stress..... that engine won't last very long.
Mercedes already had a 3 cylinder diesel in the smart car
@@benedictodiptasuta9306 so your telling me that by saying a powerful motorcycle has the same thing as a tiny German car that some how that makes it not tiny?😂
If you like these, check out the Napier Deltic engines which were used on UK torpedo boats and diesel electric locomotives. They had three banks of this type of engine tied together in a triangle with the three crank shafts at the corners. A stunning piece of kit.
And US boats in Vietnam and a monster fire pump for the fire brigade in Newyork
I used to build these for a living, great things, as long as the right people ran them and maintained them. 42K for the navy types in one part of the world resulted in lots of troubles....
@@Grey_Area570 I heard Napier's had trouble making the design work until someone suggested running one of the cranks backwards?
Make it horizontal and I’ll put it in my subaru
Jacob Horton look up Commer TS3 engine , mite be what your looking for
RWD conversion?
The reverse boxer engine
If you're willing to stay boxer, take a look at the EE20. Don't know if it's any good though. I'll stick to my EJ25 for now, although I'd LOVE a diesel.
Tucker Koogler - this would be a self-boxing engine.
If Amazon got wind of this, they'd want to use it in their shipping facilities....
Had two engineers from Achates Power give a lecture for our Engines course at Cal Poly on their OP2S. It was a really interesting lecture. From what I remember they mentioned that the size of the engine was really holding back their production. They had mentioned that an OP2S was mounted in an F-series on an angle so that it could fit in the existing frame. Super cool stuff.
Awesome, thanks for sharing!
Yes, I would imagine engine height being a significant application limitation
MPG Some opposed piston engines have a single crankshaft mounted in the middle of the engine above the cylinders and are connected to the pistons via a linkage, perhaps the engineers at Achates should think of this design as it is a far more compact configuration.
It seemed to lack an explanation on how the Achates Power design is superior to the past two-stroke opposed-piston diesel engines? And how they over a came inherent inefficiency in a two-strokes. Such as the tendency of the exhaust and intake air to mix. Since there is no separate exhaust and intake strokes.
And the additional cost not only for turbo and a supercharger but many other support system? So cost comparison with a conventional 6 piston Diesel is needed too.
So it seem more relevant to large engine applications.
It could be configured horizontally too. Like is done in a boxster.
So height isn't a significant application limitation
Would love to see one of these put into a general aviation aircraft. Power to weight ratio of a 2 stroke with higher fuel efficiency than most 4 strokes, running diesel that can usually be found at airports in the form of Jet-A, supercharged and turbocharged for high altitude performance. It checks all the boxes
Junkers of Germany did exactly that starting in the 1930's. Look up Junkers Jumo 205. Impressive engines. Never could understand why they aren't more commonplace.
Weight and cost of development, is why you don't find them. Superior Air Parts did announce the Gemini for some time, but now it seems lost in limbo.
The Junkers Ju 86 powered by one of those engines hit nearly 50.000 ft.
@@SuperYellowsubmarin
overhead valve had better oil control. a port on a cylinder wall is hard to stop oil getting in when the piston sliding by it needs it to keep from seizing.
@@hg60justice that's for sure. That's probably why such developments as Gemini and Deltahawk are so long.
Also as both sides are moving at the same time, i'd expect this engine to produce very little vibrations
Tilling Stevens in England developed a three cylinder opposed piston diesel engine in the early fifties for use in buses due to it's inherent smoothness. It entered production as the Commer TS3, not without its faults but sounded glorious when given some stick!
@@jonathangriffin1120 I heard they were prone to breaking the supercharger drive shaft.
Chrysler dropped the engine when they bought Rootes Group
@@g8ymwBuying out the competition, right??
Turn it horizontal, and you have a flat engine, that doesn't eat head gaskets.
I love it.
@Sammy Phillps because they suck
@@mikkelklein5011 and blow
@@mikkelklein5011 It doesn't have head gaskets. It doesn't even have heads. Di you even watch the video?
@@TitoRigatoni that's my point. Are you slow?
@@mikkelklein5011 yes :-(
In homestead fl. There is the largest diesel electric power plant in the u.s. it has 8 op engines and 9 v12 dla engines in 1975 i spent many hrs with my friend who was the plant operator on the midnight shift and these nearly 2 story high engines all ran in sync at 450 rpm and it felt like an earthquake in the ground even 3 blocks away. What was cool was to stand on top of an engine over a cylinder while the fuel mixture was turned up ritch until that cylinder began detonating . It would lift you inches off the head. Also it was so loud inside the plant that you had to screem loud into another person's ear to be heard. The plant was flexible as well when diesel fuel was expensive they could either mix the diesel with natural gas or run on natural gas alone but that did increase the operating temperature. THE sound of detonating engine; (LOUD) BAM BAM BAM .The cylinders in the op engines are so big that you could fit 2 people standing face to face inside one. The crankcase was waist deep in oil. There were blast doors on the side 6 foot square that were spring loaded to release pressure in case of a crankcase explosion. Which could happen if the engine ever began detonating for a long enough time fire pushing past the rings could ignite the oil fumes in the crankcase. Anyway thats a bit of my experience with op engines. RIP To my best friend Kim Crain plant operator, and son of Edward E. Crain prof. Architecture University of Florida @ Gainesville Fl. Alumni.
I just asked that question in the comments...about noise. Being 2-stroke I would imagine it would have noise issues, just like 2-stroke gas engines.
Ron Rothrock have you ever heard the 2 stroke Detroit diesels? All diesels are loud but those things are ridiculous loud. I had one in an old dump truck. 60mph and it sounded like a jet was flying over you.
that sounds cool and dangerious lmao
They didn't blow it up did they, my man!?
rubberhamburger those Detroit diesels sound awesome, but can be loud. We had a strait piped 6-71 you could hear that thing days away!
I'm honestly shocked more 2 stroke engines haven't become common these days. The major flaw was that fuel escaped via the intake air not being well controlled. That doesn't much matter when we have direct injection as the norm. 2 stroke engines have shown to have more thermal efficiency with a smaller, lighter engine whilst retaining high power. Hopefully this helps push more development of 2 stroke engines.
Yay! Wifey material 😜
👍
2 stroke burns oil as a design piece, probably would have trouble with emissions
@@WhysafraidofCause Because its designed to burn oil. Because they're using 2 strokes where a cheap engine is needed and its far cheaper to burn oil. But there have been plenty of 2 strokes which use oil conventionally throughout history, plenty in research today, its not a requirement to burn oil for 2 strokes. Indeed it wouldn't work with fuel injection at all if you were burning oil as the pre-injection areas still need oil. And its not a requirement to have the fixed/no valves you see on most two strokes. There's a lot of novel designs like piston valves but there's also conventional poppet valves in historical and research 2 stroke engines.
Ie you can make one work fairly similarly to a 4 stroke, but with half as many cycles per power stroke you get far less friction.
Research 2 stroke engines are showing a far greater efficiency than 4 stroke with far less emissions. A little difficulty with NOx emissions but generally better than 4 strokes on emissions overall. The main difficulty is a smooth torque curve. But with hybrids that can be managed, and the focus on fuel efficiency and low emissions even prior to hybrid engines makes it baffling to me nobody tried them in the modern age,
Wassup ma
@@WhysafraidofCause you don't need to burn oil if you use a turbo or supercharger as opposed to crankcase pressure to force induction. You can then have a wet crankcase like most 4-strokes.
My dad bought a TS 3 Commer "Knocker" Truck in 1955. It was a tip truck. It had a 3 cylinder supercharged, opposed piston 2-stroke engine as described here. It had loads of power and was a screamer. Anyone who'd had experience with one could recognize its exhaust note blocks away.Only, it didn't have 2 crankshafts; the two sets of pistons and conrods were connected by massive rocker arms connected to a single crank.
Same
You had me at 'no valve train'.
It's called a 2 stroke. Been around for a while...
@@Kevin-ix4qz yes, but a regular 2 stroke ain't that efficient. This on the other hand is a 2 stroke, efficient, powerful and no valve train!
mmpt, NOICE!
@@ONEKristaps I couldn't agree more. I also am impressed with rotax etec engines
yea F* valve... they ain't a game developer no more!!
oh wait.. ._. wrong valve
I was currious to know what a 4 stroke with a sleeve valve would do for efficiency.
Very impressive torque figures - I like it.
That comes from it being a 2 stroke diesel they've always had good torque numbers when compared to contemporary 4 strokes because you get 2x as many power strokes per revolution.
as long as it is an ICE,whether the form. iam in
@Chase Rayfield those performance numbers are already achieved with a conventional 2l bi-turbo engine... dont see any advantage at the moment... fuel efficiency?
I thought it was impressive too until he said it was turbo charged and super charged. At that point the torque figures aren’t nearly as impressive.
Chase Rayfield if that's the case why did the Detroit Diesel 2 stroke fall out of favor?
The Deltic train in the UK used three of those in a triangle set up, still has a massive cult following
The deltic engine is so big, though.
@@PanduPoluan The Commer TS3 however is much closer in size and is almost exactly the design being considered here.
@@ColinMill1 I owned one. superbe to drive except for the clouds of smoke on start up that took a few miles to burn off. See my comment above.
@@PanduPoluan Same basic concept could have been built a lot smaller though.
Cult following! Nah...:)
The Routes group in the UK did a 3 cylinder 3ltr diesel engine in the 1960s called the Commer TS3 (Tilling Stephens) and I did drive one in a 42 seater coach. A very smooth engine whic h had the habit of de-coaking its exhaust system without warning creating plumes of smoke but very economical. This unit was horizontal and had a single crankshaft connected each side by several con-rods.
Thanks for the video.
Thanks for the explanation! I have heard of these engines being used in locomotives and was wondering how it works. Very clear explanation!
Achates has also being used in strip mining dump trucks. It do to its cost and complexity it only seems appropriate to very large engines.
When I was a kid living in Turangi there were a number of Commer trucks powered by TS3 horizontally opposed piston engines. The sound they made was so distinct that I could pick them out over other trucks without seeing them when I was 5 years old.
They were small engines, about 3.6 litres and made good power in their day I have been told.
Hi from NZ,
Anthony
anthony i worked on these engines . you are correct regards the sound, it was the blower .we had to decoke them alot also rootes tried out a ts4 but it was not put in any commers .they would have been easier to work on on tilt cabs but the commer never had one in those days
A brilliant sound that I remember from the old Palmers Concrete mixer trucks in Dunedin. Hearing a fully loaded Commer with its TS3 knocker engine screaming while climbing a Dunedin hill is one of my great childhood memories.
I think GM bought the company and smashed up all the moulds as the engine gave more power, was more efficient and smaller than three crappy V8s
T U R A N G I
andy it was not a rootes engine then? , as i was told when i worked at a commer dodge garage.
I remembered that I watched this video 2 years ago and immediately I thought: this is extremely nice, it's genius and will save the combustion engine for some other decades.
I'm still waiting, I'm still convinced that this is a real valid project.
I hope it saves the diesels. Because i sure as hell dont want the world going electric.....
@@dieselbossbrandon why ? environment concerns?
@@l0k048 that and i personally like diesel engines. I think the world needs them more now then ever. The CAN be very green for the world. Much more then gasoline. For example.....if we got rid of gasoline and every car or truck was diesel powerd it would cut the world oil use MORE then in half! Now. Lets go to the next level..... If we made every engine biodiesel. I guarantee the worlds pollution would get wayyyyy better to almost nothing... now let's talk Electric..... first off there's no way our power grid can hold a billion cars charging on it every single day let alone in a heatwave. 2nd of all..... batteries are not green! Quick Google search of how a battery is made will confirm that and you can see with your own eyes how much work and pollution is made to build the battery look up how lithium batteries are made and how it affects the environment. Now times that by a billion......
@@dieselbossbrandon I second your reasoning.
@@dieselbossbrandon Biofuels don't work on a large scale because of all the land for food production needed to make the fuels. The grid doesn't need to change much up until about 50% electric adoption so long as we charge smartly, i.e. at night during low demand when electricity is cheapest. For the final 50% the grid will undergo upgrades. These upgrades may be mitigated by the onset of self driving cars which are expected to reduce the number of cars needed on the road. You could spend thousands on owning a car, or you can subscribe to a car service for ~$500/year. Batteries are also much much cleaner over the course of their lifetime compared to combustion engines and all the dirty extraction and refining of fuel needed to run them. Now times that by a billion.........
Commer rootes ts3 1950s cancelled by Chrysler in the 1970s
So 3 cylinder opposed piston two stroke supercharged ,developments were turboed in the 1950 3250 cc producing 105hp-225hp
Just watching that 3D CAD model be moved around made my computer crash
You need to upgrade, then. I make more complicated CAD models than that every day with no problems.
Pro E
@@gonesideways6621 I prefer Inventor, myself.
Penang..malaysia
As a car mechanic, really looking forward to have this engine on the market.
I'd love to see these implemented...there hasn't been a huge innovation in engines for a very long time.
Yea and diesels are treated like the plague in the states
@@jakewhite3163 quite the opposite. americans love their big diesels
@@jakewhite3163 I actually do not see why this design wouldn't also work with other fuels and a spark plug in the center.
@@HiltownJoe The Germans made gasoline versions during WWII if I remember correctly, the only issue is timing, not just the fuel injection, but the spark as well. It's not that it was impossible, the Germans were trying to achieve as simple a design as possible for reliability reasons. They ended up going with diesel but the engine could barely go above 1,400 rpm, and for aviation purposes that wasn't nearly enough.
@@butterh2 Yeah right. They killed the VW group diesels.
This needs to go mainstream without delay.
Agree, just wondering why from 2012 no-one used in production...
Did you consider how are they going to set up a reliable lubrication without oil leaving the cylinder walls from the exhaust holes? Even if they make it work, I wouldn't buy it until many buy and use and prove that it is reliable.
@ great point, boxer engines which face similar problems do consume more oil (not by much) and do have more points of failure, but one would assume that a company boasting efficiency would have a solution of sorts to a major inefficiency.
Commer lorries in 50s and 60s used a Tilling Stevens 3 cylinder supercharged Twostroke with 6 pistons connecting to a single crankshaft using 2 large rocker arms. Beautiful engineering even though quite loud exhaust note. Would need easy decoke and replacement piston rings around hundred thousand miles ,then ready for another hundred thousand. Had to use an anti phasing device as being a twostroke could run backwards on lorry pulling to a halt. The supercharger was mechanical Roots type so quite expensive to produce. Throttle control was operated using a vacuum tube and the vehicles braking system completely Air pressure actuation, including Handbrake. Superb engineering.
In a two stroke cycle timing is everything. It is therefore pretty amazing that they can maintain as high an efficiency as they do over a broad an operating range as they do. But I wonder what would be possible if the engine only worked at a single speed and power level. In a convention vehicle the engine has to sized to meet the peak power demands of the vehicle will ever need, but for the vast majority of the time it only needs to produce a quarter of that peak power. As such the engine is mostly not operating at its peak efficiency power and rpms.
But if the engine is sized only to just meet the power demands of the vehicle averaged over say 30-50 miles of highway driving, then the engine can be much smaller since it doesn't have to provide the large amounts of peak power required for acceleration and hill-climbing. Nor does it have to run at very low power during deceleration or downhill sections. Instead it just produces that same time-averaged power level regardless of what the vehicle is doing. This is the concept referred to as a sustainer engine. But of course the engine can't be sized that way if it is the only source of power. And that is where a battery electric drive train comes in.
All power to the wheels come from electric motors sized to meet peak power demands. Electric motors have a very broad and flat efficiency plateau around the design condition. So it is very nearly as efficiency at 20% power as it is at 100%. And most motors can operate for short periods at nearly double their rated power and so can give short bursts of very high power for accelerating down an highway onramp so as to be at speed by the end. The energy to drive those motors comes from a combination of power from the batteries and the piston engine. The batteries type and pack size would then be designed to be able to provide the extra power when discharging to supply the difference between maximum motor power the set power output of the piston engine, and to be able to contain enough total energy to provide that extra power for long enough to climb a long uphill grade. The peak charging power of the batteries would have to be sufficient to absorb peak braking power produced by the motors acting as generators and the power from the sustainer engine, which would still be producing it "one lone song" in anticipation of the energy needed to climb the hill on the other side of the current downhill grade.
Since the sustainer engine is not mechanically connected to the wheels it can spin at whatever speed is most efficiency and minimizes the weight of the engine and attached generator. Since power is simply torque time speed, a high rpm, lightweight and low torque engine can produce the all the power needed. Also electrical machine weight is more of a function of their torque than power, the same high rpms will minimize the weight and volume of the generator as well.
Average power can be calculated from average fuel efficiency and thermal efficiency. Modern aerodynamic rigs can get 9 miles per gallon cruising at 65 mph and if we assumed a fuel to drive shaft efficiency of 30% at low power during cruise and do a plus a bit of math, this works out to only 125 hp. Since the electric drive motors are the ones driving the wheels, they will be the ones to generate the 1500-2000 ft-lbs of torque required, not the sustainer. So the piston engine could actually be a very compact and light high speed/low torque engine such as a 1 L motorcycle engine that can easily produce 125 hp (imagine the chuckle though when you raise the cab and show the other drivers this tiny engine the size of a Honda Goldwing sitting in the middle of all these batteries, power electronics and high torque electric motors and tell them that is the only power source driving your rig :-) . High rpms also helps to reduce the generator weight and volume since electrical machine weight and volume is more of a function of how much torque they have to produce rather than how much power. So a high speed/low torque generator can put out the same power as a low speed/high torque generator but weigh considerably less.
In addition to saving fuel by running the sustainer like these opposed piston engines at 40%-50% efficiency, a hybrid electric system would save a lot of wear and tear on brakes as well as save energy since most braking power will come from the drive motors running in regen mode and storing that energy in the batteries. So brakes might just never wear out if the driver can avoid a lot of late hard braking. And you wouldn't have to use engine braking to try to saving the brakes and pissing off everybody who lives within a half a mile when you downshift. And possible battery only operation or the sustainer throttled down to bring its noise down could be used to drive nearly silently through very noise sensitive neighborhoods at night because trucking doesn't fall neatly into an 8-5 schedule.
Well this is a long comment on an old video, so likely nobody but me will ever see it. But in general I think hybrid electric systems with a small sustainer engine could make a large difference in everything from heavy-duty pickups to large semis where, apologies to Elon Musk, 100% battery electric trucks just don't make economic sense. But that doesn't mean that an battery electric drive system can't have utility, you just have to come at it from the right angle.
this.
I agree that a sustain/generator engine would be good for heavy vehicles, basically a diesel electric system from a train but for semi trucks. One small problem for high power density engines, wear and tear. Long lived engines, life is measured in hours not miles, do not operate at high RPMs. Your idea for having an engine basically running at 100% is best served by a 2000 ish RPM running generator, such an engine would be between 3 and 6 litters, depending on vehicle size and toe capacity. Say a compact V6 or V8 engine. The semi truck will remain large, the new electric systems will require the space that was once used for the larger 14+ litter inline 6. Cooling requirements will be reduced, allowing for a more aerodynamic design as well.
Yes, this would be ideal for a hybrid car.
The perfect design. A combustion engine making electricity that drives a motor/generator at each wheel. By varying motors in series and parallel, you change their torque-power. By using wheel motors there’s no axles, transmissions and gears plus built in stability control. You also take advantage of the multiple motor-speed/ fuel consumption thing that ocean-going motorboaters have known about for decades.
@@Squeezmo One giant problem with not having a transmission is that you either have very little power available from a standstill, or your motor is spinning at very high rpm once your moving, limiting its service life and maximum speed. Transmissions solve lots of problems. Electric cars will still use transmissions, though far fewer gears are used. Having independent motors is nifty solution, though it will cause issues if one or more dies. 4 motors quadruples the odds of motor failure.
Why aren't these engines already in use today? I mean has there been any reason that has hindered development so far? They make perfect sence to me...
They used to be in trucks many years ago i seen one before sounds mint
@@BIGSMOKE-bl2lq What truck did you see that had an opposed-piston engine?
Emissions mostly. 2-stroke diesels tend to run very dirty.
@@TitoRigatoni British Commer TS3 truck, also British Chieftain tank, and BR Class 55 "Deltic" locomotive which had 2 engines, each with 18 cylinders, 36 pistons and 3 crankshafts! Go to RUclips to listen to the amazing sound of these locomotives.
@@davidstewart4570 I am well aware they've been used in tanks and locomotives, also submarines and patrol boats. I'd never heard of them being used in trucks though, thanks for the info!
There were 6, 10 cylinder (opposed piston) F&M engines on the USCG Ice Beaker I was on. They had been going for 25 years when I was on the ship and they kept going until the ship was decommissioned in 1986. The ship was commissioned in 1944. They never broke down, and were always maintained and overhauled by ship staff. It was interesting to see them replacing the lower main bearings.
bigwheelsturning the Mighty Mack! I have one of those engines in my tug.
I ran a couple of tugs, years ago, that had Fairbanks-Morse engines. Loved the power they made!!
PS, the Napier Deltic Engine, was basically a redrawn Junkers Jumo engine, with 3 crankshafts instead of 2. It could develop around 2500hp. It had 18 cylinders, 36 pistons and was used in RN warships, including minesweepers. Also a class of very fast, powerful Co-Co locomotives, furnished with a pair of engines, derated to 1650hp each, each driving a Dynamo powering a 3-(series wound) motor bogie. They locomotives may have had over-speed Governors to restrict them to 100mph, but I’m not certain about this.
Seems so simple compared to complex multi-cam valve systems. Thanks for the video!
That's not because its an opposed-piston block. It's because it's a 2-cycle design, which can be done without being piston opposed.
@@Cotronixco 2-stroke diesel still need a single valve in each cylinder. This design doesn't have any.
I guess you havent seen the insanely complex variable camshaft engine that just looks like its waiting to break
Damn, two stroke, turbo diesel, with two crankshafts. Max power efficiency with tons of torque.
I wonder what it weighs per hp or ft-lb ratings?
"Power efficiency"? What's that? It's power is 100 hp per liter (motorcycles are double that). Its energy efficiency is between 40 and 50 percent (motorcycles are half that).
@@MultiPleaser it's diesel! Motorcycles have gasoline engines, and those motorcycle engines generates those high level powers at very high rpm. Saying power, only HP, not torque! Modern diesels generates almost the same HP per liter as much as gasolines at lower rpm, and still generates much much more torque than gasolines.
@@gokceralp Only with a turbo charger or two, compared to a normally aspirated gasoline engine. But, as soon as you put a turbo or two on a gasoline engine, the diesel is old news.
ww2 germans used them in pt boats
Thank you for always keeping us up-to-date on these incredible automotive trends!!!
Thanks for continuing to watch, can't do it without ya!
you could but it would be weird
i do remember going with my father as a kid to help him repair his mates commer 2 stroke lorry, a 3 cylinder apposed piston diesel engine, the difference i believe was the commer used rocker arms to join the pistons to a single crank shaft (if memory serves me well) and a blower to keep the flow of gasses, clever bit of old tech that'll be great to see used with modern advancements
Ah, the "commer-knocker", so called from its distinctive sound. It had -umm - reliability issues, as opposed piston designs can because of their more complex drive gearing.
@@kenoliver8913 my dad hauled close to 7.5t all over Germany, for most of the 90’s with his TS3 powered BMC van. Not a single reliability issue, and it was no spring chicken then. The only breakdown was a failed hydraulic clutch line that was repaired at the roadside.
Excellent engine. 40 years back I worked on Doxford marine engines and nothing beats them in reliability and efficiency.
Vinsu Karma with modern technology the concept can get only better.
Electric motors are 98% efficient. You will never beat that and simplicity with an ice.
Shabba Ukelele, according to what standard? Well I suppose it doesn’t matter as long as you believe what is profitable to others.
If you want to count efficiency for electric motors you should also calculate the efficiency of how the electricity was made. A coal plant has around 40% efficiency, and considering that the electric motors are not that efficient anymore
What folks seem to not realise or turn a blind eye to is that to get these " efficient green electric motors" to run are the diesel powered equipment and mines just like coal copper iron really any resource used in modern day is stripped from the earth in non "green" ways. I just find it hilarious when they bring that up like there saving the planet.
Wow! 55% efficiency. I love the concept of lower piston speed but longer strike and more torque, not to mention the lack of wasted energy entering the cylinder head.
What are emissions like? Have they been able to be controlled sufficiently to meet Euro 6 requirements? What sort of fuel efficiency does this design achieve (real figures for a 1500kg vehicle)?
This could replace the Atkinson cycle engines in the Toyota Prius. I predict that this engine won't be used in consumer vehicles because it is too simple and it will last too long.
Agree with this comment. The manufacturer of vehicle will be bankrupt because the customer just buy the vehicle and less or very less repaired the engine.
I doubt if it will be used in consumer Vehicles because electric motors are the future.
@@knewledge8626 Electric vehicles need a power station to generate the electricity. Australia does not have enough coal units to meet current peak demand on some summer days so we'd need to build new coal, gas or nuclear units BEFORE going electric.
I also doubt there is enough high grade carbon (graphite) being mined in the world to build the batteries and I'm certain no-one has devised an economically viable Lithium battery recycling process.
Au is smaller than California yet could not go electric.
I reckon this 3 cylinder diesel has some merit and we are a long way from maximising the ICE.
@@knewledge8626 It could be used as a ground engine and a range extender for cars. I think we are 10+ years away from EVs even being 20% of the cars. Charging times and range are still issues. In cold climates heating the cabin will reduce range. There are batteries on the horizon that charge faster than Li and have a greater capacity. Super capacitors may replace batteries.
There are are the economics and politics and the ugliness of capitalism to deal with. An EV can last much longer because they are simpler machines and have less maintenance. If the average car lasts 20 years or more the economic effects will ripple through the economy. EVs don't need transmissions, radiators, engines, exhaust systems, gasoline, diesel, oil and transmission fluid etc.. The oligarchs will have something to say about that.
What may happen is a lot of families who own homes will own 2 cars, one for around town and commutes and the other one for long commutes. It is sad that there is so much technology is being developed to get a small gain in efficiency though Rube Goldberg style engineering,
@@tofanbaskoro3200 Had Mazda 626 for 18 years, engine was never repaired and outlived the car. It was "sold" at 220k miles with no engine issues whatsoever. Now I have next model 6.
Not only is this not new technology, this is yet another case of US motor technology lagging way behind Europe. In the 1950's the Rootes Group in the UK had a successful truck using this technology in the TS2 engine and developed in the 1950s, Napier had an 18cylinder "Deltic" engine in railway locomotives providing the motive power for British Rail's Class 55s. This engine had 3 crankshafts with the cylinders arranged in a triangular configuration, in banks of six cylinders. Achaetes triumph is to make a two stroke engine that can comply with modern emissions regulations.
Also used in Chieftain and T-64 Tanks.
About fifty years ago I had a Comer TS3 again three cylinder six piston they were used in boats and trucks and ran very well !
The Commer TS3 Engine worked very efficiently and with economy for many years back in the 50s & 60s
This is so cool. When I started working on my own cars, I did a headgasket repair on my supra in highschool. I actually thought about an engine design like this completely on my own and asked my dad about it since he was a mechanic in the military in his younger years. He said about the same thing that you did about auto manufacturers had created this design and I did the research. I feel like the old designs only didn't catch on because they didn't have the computer precision we do today. I knew this would be about the most efficient engine design if it were precise enough. That's why I've always been impartial to i6 engines because although they are somewhat heavy in the nose of a car, they are beautifully balanced compared to a v8. Each engine design has benefits and drawbacks, but I have a hard time thinking about drawbacks to an engine like this.
Impartial? I think you mean partial to i6
Nice to see the Knocker engine popping up again.
If this engine could be adapted into a passenger vehicle at a reasonable price I'd buy one tomorrow!
I’d buy one today
...If the entire thing costs $20 cause that’s all I got
There is currently an F150 with an Achates engine being tested.
I'd wait for the 1st generation of these engines to point out the flaws that manufacturers need to work on - and then buy a 2nd gen.
@@FredNagel As if they'd care enough to fix the flaws
My stepdad had one of those in a Tractor. Blew my mind when He described the Engine. Cool stuff
Please update us all on the development of this engine. It has been 2 years!
Bordering on 3 years. in 4 months and 12 days, it will be exactly 3 years (give or take 1 day and 3 hours, to include all possible timezones).
technically since 1882...
@@BrandonLeeActual Still, we need answers!
Yes. It could be great. But 'They' have decided on Batteries for the future. You know, for the Elite, to get around in the City..
My first truck an English Commer CB powered by a rootes TS3 two stoke three bore opposite six piston diesel great thing hellish noisy
Instead of TDC AND BDC, it is actually inner and outer dead center. Worked on Fairbanks Morse OP engines and taught them for the U.S. COAST GUARD from 1976 to 1987
Yes, many American WW2 submarines were powered by Fairbanks-Morse opposed piston engines. They kicked SERIOUS butt.
Everything up to the Virginia class were/are equipped with an FM 38ND 8 ⅛ as an emergency generator, MM2(SS)
Yeah, we had these on my old tugboat, The Socrates. It had 2 Fairbanks Morse Engines out of old locomotives.
I was in the navy from 2003 till 2008 and we used the Fairbanks Morse op engines at our ship wide generators.
Love this engine tech, such a cool way to go about simplification and efficiency.
Please tell me where you see the simplicity.
Just image starting this thing:
You start rotating, one combustion occurs, but there is no air pressure on the intakt yet. So no fresh air enters the cylinders. So it just won't start.
On submarines, trains or other stationary aplliance that won't be a problem - compressed air is stored and available to start those engines. By the way just like the german no crankshaft diesel engines on the U-Boot. And by the way not having a crankshaft sounds way more simplistic, doesn't it?
/watch?v=QUbBqSu9Hdc
/watch?v=pzRu3ijghBQ
/watch?v=liFMZpPfeWA
Well, any 2-stroke design is just environmentally bad (2-stroke-gasoline) or needs too complicated compressed air supply to start the engine for a car (2-stroke-diesel).
And no matter how good you think this opposed pistons efficiency is: turbines are better; convert that into electricity, store it in a battery, drive with it, even use regenerative breaking and beat this supposedly 55% efficiency by A LOT.
There IS a reason why concepts like this never made it. Those are not new ideas!
@@RubyRhod If you compare this to a Detroit diesel two-stroke, this design eliminates a lot of potentially trouble-prone extras. Having said that, the Detroits were/are extremely reliable, give a long service life, and, as to your first remark, very easy to start. Incidentally, the sugar milling company I work for still has a large number of 8v-92 Detroits in their locomotive fleet (2 foot gauge) and a few years ago, we replaced one of the engines that had done over 40,000 hours and was still running sweet. However, by that time it was using copious amounts of oil and was getting a bit rattley.
The biggest hurdle is emissions. Two factors are two stroke and Diesel. It will be interesting to see what auto manufacturer R&D come up with to address it.
Diesel exhaust fluid (urea), catalytic converter, and a particulate filter.
i kinda disagree. 2 stroke on diesels are quite different compared to gasoline 2 strokes. whereas a gasoline 2 stroke can run no turbo. there is such a thing as a 'blown 2-stroke diesel', and is basically a neccesity if you want it anywhere near effective. plus the technical problem of the injection system.
Defeat devises
Traveler X Remember that everything has an advantage and disadvantage. Two stroke engines reach higher RPM's faster with reduced weight due to less moving parts. As far as emissions go, Mazda has found a way to re-introduce exhaust back into the intake stream to reduce NOx. They've been developing a new rotary engine that solves the emmisions issues.
i don't know about the not burning oil, since i do believe that diesel fuel itself is sort of a lubricant, but since it's injected in the middle of the cylinder, only about half of cylinder, that is mostly the area closest to the injectors is going to be more lubricated, and the piston rings is going to be slightly less lubricated closer to BDC. also to the 'combining' the intake and exhaust stroke, back to my argument of 'blown 2 stroke diesels'. a turbine is kind of used to 'purge' the air from the previous combustion, and by the time the fuel is injected, it's likely that the exhaust port has already been closed, so the amount of unburnt fuel escaping the exhaust is going to be very minimal.
my point is, there's just so many problems with the technicalities of the design that could be fixed with good engineering, but while this config is not a new tech, it is mixed with a lot of new tech, and isn't as widely used, so in the end we the 'consumers' are mostly in the blind of the actual potential problem this engine could have
I have had the good fortune to ride in a coach, and to drive a horsebox, both powered by the Rootes / Commer TS3, 3-Cylinder, opposed piston, supercharged diesel engine. I think, but I’m not certain, that it was supercharged by a Roots-Supercharger. With the 2 rotors. I haven’t seen -or heard, any more since 1977. I’ve never had to work on one of these units, but I appreciated them for the reasons you narrated. I’m not sure, but I think the TS3 might have been about 4 litres or just over. I forget, now.
3.5 litres with an amazing power/weight ratio.
It's funny how things go full circle. A engine built in the early 20th century is brought back and with a modification or two turns out to be a better design than current engines.
It's new kooks trying to resurrect technology which has been long dead for good reason in a bid to attract VC. This engine will never meet emissions. Period. Maybe it'll see the light of day in Mil prototype but the DoD is so slow to adopt new tech they'll be long bankrupt before anything would hit the battlefield.
They've reinvented the stinkin' Commer Knocker but without the noise (which was the best part of the POS lol)
otm646 What would the reason be for it not passing emissions? You could add a dpf etc to it just as well as in normal 4-stroke diesels. Also the efficiency being higher should mostly impact emissions positively.
My guess would be that the NOx emissions could be a problem in this kind of a configuration, as I would suspect that combustion temperatures are actually higher in this engine than in usual 4-stroke diesels.
What if you put a big SCR to the exhaust and pump in a lot of addblue? To meet emissions standards.
Gonna be really interesting if the rotary makes a comeback in a few years
Fascinating video! Can't wait to see this technology in use for regular vehicles in the future.
PS: I will be attending University in France for mechanical/automotive engineering this year and I hope someday I'll be able to help develop something like this. Really exciting stuff!
Awesome, best of luck with your studies!
I hope things go well for you in university and your career, Jose.
Bonne chance !
Rudolph Diesel is now doing his " Happy Dance" in Heaven. Yes, I believe that the Diesel engine is the most perfect engine, and Achates Power is bringing it to fruition.
Best of luck with your studies, and I believe that You will be in the forefront of automotive technology.
This would be a great primary mover for electric generators.
Such an application would also prove the device in "real word" conditions.
Inherently smooth running as well.
It is. The US Navy has been using this type of engine for generators on submarines for decades.
Same for diesel-electric locomotives.
It can handle variable loads with constant speed.
Great presentation! I've been following Achates since their first press releases.
I have wondered about opposed piston engines since learning about the Junkers Jumo series in/before WW2. Fascinating. Highly successful. But scary to risk on a Detroit mass production scale 'till now? Electronics makes this a whole new ball game. Force scavenged 2 stroke w/ no head is on another level.
The supercharger for scavenging is reminiscent of the GMC -71 series. This alleviates the cycle of typical 2 stroke scavenging issues.
I am investigating scratch building one using as many production parts as possible & using gasoline. 12:1 & EFI?The lack of a cylinder head sidesteps so many mechanical, Thermal efficiency, & detonation issues. The lack of red hot exhaust valves alone changes the detonation picture.
I had not considered the cycle overlap with 4 cylinders. Might have to accept that. Is that really a big issue?
I honestly wouldn't think that the overlap would be an issue at all; the exhaust gas is what makes the turbo spin so I'd think more consistent application of it would make the turbo run better than when it peaks and falls, not worse. Of course, I'm not a professional mechanic or an engineer and don't know the exact science behind any of the mechanics outside the combustion cycle, so I may be missing something about those graphs.
I can fix an engine and locate problems just fine, but I don't use anthing more complex than an adjustable wrench for that and couldn't tell you any exact detail about any problem beyond just what the problem is and the cause.
This the most efficient and environment friendly engine..gotta have one..
well this depends on the language, in my country engines and motors have the same name, so technically here the most efficient and environment friendly engine is an eletric engine xD
@@l0k048 That heavily depends on the source of energy for the electric engine. A coal driven electric engine definetly isn't more environment friendly than a highly efficient diesel engine.
As long as electric cars are such a dirty business they are no alternative.
@@Squee7e agreed, I think hydrogen fuel and similar things might be a more likely future if we want to be environmentally friendly and not destroy the planet
@@MaxCroat If I recall, hydrogen fuel has far less energy than gasoline and it takes more energy to produce hydrogen than what hydrogen itself provides. The whole "green energy" boom is simply rhetoric used to create new energy markets.
@@astr0creep6x6x6 I don't know honestly. There probably will be a more efficient energy source in the future, but right now it isn't as simple as some people think "cars are bad". Everything is bad at this point. Wind turbines are expensive to produce and the production also creates a lot of pollution. That goes for pretty much every "green" energy source. It sure will take some more time to develop something better.
this engine should be called a referee engine..it's opposite to the boxer engine :P
lol
Elaborate
TryMonster I need this in my Subaru sti and rev it out to 9000rpms
Called a knocker
Fist bump
The only real engineering problem to overcome will be keeping engine lubricating oil out of the combustion process like all 2 stroke designs. I lived with Fairbanks-Morse OP diesels on nuclear submarines and they are wonderful. Crazy smooth because naturally balanced with the pistons counter balancing each other. Notice the lack of big counterweights in the videos. Emissions, well they will burn the oil that gets into the combustion so no need to worry about that. The other biggie is 2 stroke usually have about half the cylinder firing pressure as 4 stroke diesels so NOx will be significantly reduced depending on the about of super & turbocharging. The other challenge for automotive applications will be packaging the thing under existing hoods due to its tall height as mentioned in the F150 demo.
Just position the engine horizontally like an airplane engine with I configuration
Rootes Commer TS3 was as common truck engine in my youth. Sounded fabulous under load.
The first time someone told me about the boxer engine, I imagined it like this.
notsonic Same!
+
it means youre born to be a 2 stroke opposed piston engineer!
This is like inverted boxer
When my bro was like 3 he would beat himself up like a boxer and then fall on the ground.... does that count?
The 3.26L 3-cylinder opposed piston Commer TS3 had success in the UK in the 50s and 60s, despite having only one crankshaft and a horribly complicated connecting rod linkage arrangement. Cylinders were horizontal and it was intended to fit the low engine bay of the (then) new fangled cab over trucks (which are now ubiquitous in Europe.) I can only think the opposed piston died because of packaging issues: diesel engines being required to fit the same engine bay as gasoline engines, in engine bays that have got tighter and tighter with time. BTW The Napier Deltic (marine and train engine) is really interesting, basically 3 Culverin 6 cylinder opposed piston (diesel aircraft!) engine blocks bolted together. Contemporaries had figured out how to get the timing right with in a square arrangement with 4 crankshafts, but only Napier found a way to do it with 3 in a triangle. You should do a video on it - i can point you to some resources. Napier made some very odd configurations, including the W12 Napier Lion from 1917 which was used to break numerous speed records. Sad that their name now only appears on turbochargers.
londonalicante. cars are typically designed around the powertrain rather then it being put in later
punker4real. cars are typically designed around a small selection of different powertrains, for example a model might be available with the following options: gasoline straight 4, gasoline V6, or diesel. When the designer selects the diesel engine, an opposed piston diesel will be rejected in favour of a straight 4 diesel if its dimensions differ too much from the gasoline options offered. 50 years ago they left plenty room in an engine bay for a mechanic (or owner) to work in, so putting an odd engine in as an afterthought would not be a problem. Now cost cutting and streamlining have made engine bays very tight, as they are (as you say) literally designed around the powertrain. This is driven by the modern tendency to think only of the purchase price, and not of the cost or difficulty of servicing later on.
This seems well suited to serial hybrid electric drive, where the loss of efficiency introduced by generation/inversion may be offset by by the increased thermodynamic efficiency. Similarly, the 2 stroke power band problem could be mediated by the electrics, combined with short term storage.
I agree. They won't make it in USA ever tho. Thanks joe
OK! I’ve just looked up the TS3, and learned that it was smaller than I thought. Just over 3 litres. I think it’s a great pity, that opposed piston engines aren’t very common, these days. I may have an idea, about this. I owned 2 London Transport buses, one single deck with underfloor, horizontal engine, the other, double deck with vertical engine over the front axle. The horizontal engine smoked a lot, starting from cold, suggesting that oil pooled in the cylinders, whist resting. This could be a problem, nowadays. Neither engine smoked when warmed up, after a couple of minutes.
The disadvantage of this engine was high oil consumption which resulted in high burned and unburned hydrocarbon emissions.
The cause of this high oil consumption was the pistons passing in front of the intake and exhaust ports.
Any two-stroke is going to consume oil, that is the whole point of the design
mijnkampvuur once the piston rings start to crack you will see the oil consumption, or see it coming out of the air box tubes like the old two stroke diesels. By the time this thing gets choked down by US requirements with exhaust particulate filter, SCR, VGT turbo, urea injection etc. it will be just as good as any other engine out there, not better.
Grant Schoen You are right about a 2 stroke engine consuming oil (thus higher emissions and more wear than in a 4 stroke engine) However this is inherent to the design of the engine, it is not the point of the engine.
Yes, it is inherent to the design, but also is kind of the point - which is for the sake of simplicity & weight/cost savings to not have a separate crank-case/valve-train from the cylinder block, thus a higher weight/power ratio.
Grant Schoen. . the extra oil consumption and wear would be avoided if at all possible. . and so of course it is not any point at all -- but cannot be avoided.
Its interesting, however there is more to the story then meets the eye here. If these engines have been in production since the 1900s and have the same power and torque outputs with a near 20 % increase in efficiency, why havent they already been implemented? I'd imagine there are some challenges that aren't so apparent. Also great channel, you present mechanical/mathematical information in an engaging way.
I have a feeling its because that its because when they took out all 2stroke motor for emission reasons they probably took these guys out as well. But I also think that it might also waste unburnt fuel as well with the exhaust port beening opened and closed longer then the intake port
You don't see these engines in cars simply because they are so big. These engines look to be ideally suited to constant speed applications like generators and ship propulsion applications.
@@marktucker8896 Yet Boxer engines are still being used and developed, so why should two piston setups each other be bulkier than two pistons facing away from each other?
It feels like opposing pistons not only give less control over variation in injection timing, but both weight and heat could be bigger problems. With so much heat being generated in such a small area, the metal where the pistons meet would have to be thicker and use of lighter = heat sensitive materials becomes a problem.
I have no scientific basis for that, they're all just guesses ...
@@Car_Mo while I am no engineer, interesting that none of the examples online show an engine revving. I suspect they will have a very narrow sweet spot. May well be an ideal engine as part of a hybrid set up. The US army appears to be interested, if it works we will see more of this engine.
@@Car_Mo Pistons are cooled by lubricating oil spray at the bottom. As much cylinder wall gets thinner, better water cools it.
This is an exceptionally informative yet concise video, nice one mate.
I posted this comment in June 2022, 4 years after the posting of this video. I'm surprised no one is mass producing these engines yet. I'd say let's start making them. They're 4 years overdue.
but no vtec because no cams :c
lasagna bloke The Fuel Injector and turbocharger System can work with the ECU to alter the Air:Fuel Ratio and can make something close to VTEC
Regular 2stroke engines have had variable exhaust timing for many years. No problem to ad it on a opposed piston 2stroke if needed.
no vtec = inferior engine
Unlike my S2000, it actually has torque haha
emperorSbraz muh vtec😰😰😤😤👿😱
My dad worked on the Napier Deltic engine in the 50's . The short stroke and thus higher RPMs is a big advantage.
It would be interesting to see someone try to use these in racing.
Napier licensed the technology from Jumo
Beautiful work, amazing thermal efficiency 55%
Nothing is as beautiful as an 18 Cylinder “Napier Deltic”
Fantastic! I remember reading about these engines a few years ago and wondering why they weren't in production. I didn't realize they were still actively working on it. I can't wait for these engines to be available to the public, it should enable some pretty cool things.
Obviously because it isn't all that obvious. Oil use was mentioned earlier and also the drag of both a compressor and a turbo is probably not included in the overall efficiency numbers.
Old concept but it doesn't mean it's a bad design. I worked on Fairbanks Morse MEP engines, a huge submarine diesel that was converted to burn natural gas and drive a natural gas compressor. Also check out the Napier Deltic engine, a 3 crankshaft engine.
I scrolled down in the comments just to see how long before someone mentioned the Deltic. You can't do a video about opposed piston engines without talking about it!
The Deltic is really an interesting engine and unfortunately not appreciated enough.
Has the deltic engine ever been used commercially?
Curious question, the natural gas engine, what kind of concept was it? Was it with pilot diesel or spark plugs?
Spark plug.
Curtis cool, the ship I work on has an LNG engine that runs with pilot diesel. I've only seen spark plugs on paper, never in reality.
" I had hoped they would be in production by now "
Not going to happen, ice cars are dead now. Electric or bust.
@@TheOpenSourceMerc Not strictly true. ICE still has a place for HGVs and other haulers until either hydrogen or battery technology improves. Biodiesel is a carbon neutral alternative in the interim. :)
@@TheOpenSourceMerc Gasoline has a specific energy of approximately 46 megajoules per kilogram, diesel is slightly lower at about 43 megajoules per kilo, and the opposed piston engine has an efficiency, in practice, of about 40%. An electric motor has an efficiency of about 90%, but lithium-ion batteries have a specific energy, in practice, of about 0.35 megajoules per kilo. Unless someone finds a way to make a much more energy-dense battery that is also readily rechargeable, which right now no one seems to be even close to, it is electric cars that are dead. ICE cars are the present and the future.
@@redrackham6812 Put your money where your ideas are, and buy a car with this engine for you and your next generation. Good luck with investments in gas related engines for small applications (cars). Not all is about autonomy (efficiency and specific energy), is also about contamination, cost of liquid storage and transport, convenience energy reload (in your home instead drive to a place to refill) and so on. ICE cars are dying very fast, just some people don't understand it yet.
@@javqui410 As far as I am aware, this car is not even on the market yet. And I am not currently in the market for a car. But if I were, I would with great confidence choose a conventional ICE-powered vehicle over a battery-powered one, which I would not even consider for a moment. Very obviously, the overwhelming majority of the population agrees with me: more ICE-powered cars were sold in the US alone just last year than battery-powered cars exist in the whole world.
My grandfather ran 2 commer "knockers" each pulling 2 trailers way back when "ROAD TRAIN"s were "LONG LOAD"s.
Denfinitely knew what time he left and when he was coming home.
As someone who's currently doing a valve job on a gas engine, having no valve train at all sounds very nice!
Good for clients bad for mechanics :)
I see the potential to integrate this engine nicely to a DCT and create a simplification to the DCT. If you use an arrangement that has three smaller gears that are used to couple the drive between the two crankshafts and ensure that these gears have different diameters to each other you could then connect a clutch to two of these gears and have a DCT with separate odd gear and even gear input shafts. This would simply the DCT design.
Naughty internet person Dual Clutch Transmission aka DSG etc.
The Dual Clutch Transmissions are not durable enough for a truck in the first place.
peterhejlejensen, the weight of Chiron!
Michael Harrison, sounds like mechanical madness 🧐
Jeremiah Fix Might sound like masness, but trust me, this would work perfectly and would also extend the durability of the gearbox itself by reducing stress on the gears
Four Fairbanks Morse 10 cylinder opposed piston engines powered my ship in the Coast Guard. They were Awesome!
James Lineberger A couple of years ago, I went on an SAE tour of the Fairbanks Morse plant in Beloit, Wisconsin. It is always interesting to see an active manufacturing facility.
Which cutter were you on, James?
The Commer "knocker" TS3 of the 1950s used a flat 3 cylinder, 6 piston engine, one crankshaft.
Have a look at the old Napier Deltic design; it optimised the form factor for three cylinder pairs. It was used in diesel locomotives, and naval applications. The only real drawback was reduced reliability. It'll be interesting to see whether the use of modern materials and modern manufacturing can fix that.
Yes, it could.
With modern technics even steam locomotives can get very efficient.
the biggest reliability problem with the class 55 "deltic" locomotive was the LACK of maintenance. as there were so few of them, they didn't get the down time to keep them running well.
Ynot6 , I believe the Deltics engines were left running when the loco was not working because of it’s starting issues.
@@AJ-qn6gd and maybe the startup routine, manually pumping up the oil pressure to start with!
Very cool content. This channel rocks!
Thanks, glad you enjoy it!
Best thumbnail ever. Good visualisation and hooked me immediately. The graphics, colours and design plus the topic. What a catch.
I guess putting two diesel fuel injectors on each sides for each of it's cylinder's(which consists of two pistons) will be a game changer(and it'll increase power figures in an opposed engine even further), although I'm not sure whether it'll be effecient then.
It all comes down to whether it can meet emissions regulations. Existing diesels can get much higher thermal efficiency figures than they run at currently provided nobody worries about NOx emissions. High combustion temperature is ideal for high thermal efficiency, the problem is it's enough to break the nitrogen molecules in the air into free nitrogen, which can form all the NOx that's prematurely killing people in big cities all around the world.
This is a lot of the reason opposed piston engines are popular in ships - once they're in international waters they can and do burn any old muck they can buy, switching to cleaner fuel when they come into port. It's the reason why the 15 biggest container ships put out more Sulphur and NOx pollution than the entire world's cars.
One of the coolest opposed cylinder engine designs was the deltic used in UK trains, which used 3 crank shafts in a triangle, with 3 combustion chambers.
peglor Their engines exceed emissions standards by a considerable amount.
maybe in a lab, but I won't believe it until they get an actual vehicle EPA certified.
Jeffrey Havlik
Understood but emissions instrumentation in a test cell and in a vehicle are basically identical. Test cell actually runs more instrumentation.
they even all lied about the current crop of diesel, scamming the public into putting out these pollutants pretending they did more mpg etc. People still buy their cars tho so maybe they deserve to breathe it
Medical Cannabis Spain they do get more mpg. By running at higher temperatures a diesel can get better thermal efficiency and mpg. But it will produce more sulfur and other pollutants
The ship I was stationed on had a fairbanks and Morris 8 OP for it's EDG. thing was awesome
Innovation is always a good thing. Maybe we will see those engines in the future in our vehicles, or maybe not, but I think it's worth the try
Adrien COURNAND 1920 Junkers Jumbo , Dornier Waal Flying Boat, mainly usel for Post service between Germany and South America !
Have a look at the English Commer TS3 engine from the 1950s. Three cylinders-6 pistons-1 crankshaft. extremely efficient. However extremely loud. Commonly known as the COMMER KNOCKER .I remember them very well. I used to hich a ride to my technical college 60 miles away in one which was driven by my brother-in-law the late 50s when I was an apprentice.
I think it's an amazing concept. Like anything in life, until it gets on the street, there is no way to identify and work out all the bugs, if there are any.
The ports wipe off the oil film and carry over to the exhaust - meeting emission regs means accelerated bore wear
One sixth of a Napier Deltic, one of my favourite engines.