Plasma Ignition System Increases Internal Combustion Engine Efficiency 20% | Hacker News Reader

Plasma Ignition System Increases Internal Combustion Engine Efficiency 20%

arstechnica.com

9 pointsgiardini6 comments

How is the plasma created? Seems like it's just by dropping very high voltages into an air gap in the engine, I guess alike a spark plug?

The visual difference here is striking- the conventional small spark, versus a whole annular ring of plasma. That, intuitively, makes this seem like a semi-obvious improvement for starting ignition.

A lot of this article spends time navel gazing over will or wont EV's take over. Personally I'd really like to have some range extending capabilities. I think if we wanted to, we could make small, compact, efficient suitcase sized generators, tailored to the EV. A Tesla home charger tops out at 11kW power. That's ~15 HP. It'd be so nice to quell range anxiety with even 10HP/7kW of charging capacity via fuel. This won't keep the car going down the highway, but it'll give consumers the option to tap the common, easy-and-fast-to-get high-energy-density source that's available almost everywhere, and provide assurance they can get way out there, maybe be a little mindless & not worry about being full-up stranded.

That said, I can argue against range-extenders too. I want to think that, with optimization, these can be made small & fairly efficient. But why even bother with efficiency, if it's barely going to get used- if the goal is to be an adequate backup? What would the cost be? Why take up the space?

I think the idea is worth exploring. Maybe not just in EV/range-extender space. Generator-sets are weighty & big, especially ones that care about efficiency. I keep feeling like some miniaturization is definitely available. It feels like 10 HP is not that much power, that we could refine these systems, that they don't need to be as big as they are, that less materials could translate to lower costs.

I don't think range extenders are practical given the weight, complexity and minimal power output.

I think the answer is a bigger battery - but only if range is a limiting factor. Because if the range is rarely used, it's expensive for a "what if" situation that may never happen. Sort of like those 4x4 guys with a snorkel on their truck.

I already agreed pretty readily with your reservation about the rarely-used part.

I still can't escape the idea that, with a little more try, a 10HP generator could be 1/3rd the size. Engines are, yeah, complex; I've tried to & fucked up tending to the carb on my small unit. Anything we can do to get solid state seems like a win- fuel injection, electronic valve control, this neat new ignition capability. Small wins, helping size, hopefully reliability, efficiency. Integrate the motor & generator housings, if we can, use more integrated systems integration.

7kW would still charge at the rate many cars do charge at. Double that & this seems really useful, if it's small & cost effective. I've been not-great at getting to it for a while, but I used to go drive out, & mix car camping & hiking & driving around for a week or two. An EV would be unsuitable, particularly given that hills are an attraction. But an EV with a range extender would be superb. My car could slowly charge over night.

Toyota makes vehicles with range extenders such as the Prius.

It's a very sizable 100 HP engine capable of moving the car on it's own. I think that's radically radically over-qualified. I specifically think we can build something much much smaller, and tuned for fixed-output efficiency: assume it can always output 10kW, not more not less.

So they have been toying with it since 2019 and are not interested in manufacturing = they seek IP licensing = nobody will ever see this as a product as all car companies already wound down R&D for combustion engines. Then we have 20% claim versus 6% test result, but the test messed with EGR and engine timing without measuring effect on power/torque curves.

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