The Pinnacle Engine
Illustration by Joe Saputo via Pinnacle Engines
Monty Cleeves, founder of Pinnacle Engines, wasn’t satisfied with the waste heat generated by conventional engine cycles, so he invented his own. Sort of. The Pinnacle engine is an opposed piston engine--a setup that is quite en vogue among engine designers right now--that dispenses with heavy cylinder heads that backstop the controlled fuel explosions. Instead, the design opts to place the explosion between two opposing pistons that are pushed apart in opposite directions (visualization here).
No heavy cylinder heads means engines are far lighter, and greater power density means less energy is lost as heat. Then there’s the patented Cleeves cylce, that essentially allows the engine to switch between Otto cycle combustion (conventional gasoline engine, constant volume combustion) and Diesel cycle combustion (constant pressure combustion) depending on what’s more efficient for the job at hand. Pinnacle engineers are working to tweak other aspects--turbocharging, direct injection, valve timing--to squeeze even more out of the design.
Throw in the fact that it exhibits efficiency gains across a range of fuels--gasoline, compressed natural gas, ethanol--and the Pinnacle engine shows promise. A small, scooter-sized engine will hit Asian markets in 2013, barring setbacks. But a larger automobile engine could be ready by 2016, with an estimated improvement over current conventional engines of--you may have guessed--up to 50 percent.
I'm standing on the edge of me.