There's a company called Achates Power which is developing an engine they claim can burn gasoline and diesel without spark plugs. I have been following the developments for a little while now and I'm wondering if we will see this engine take over the market or peter out like so many other "revolutionary" automotive technologies. Does anybody else know about this company or if/when they will be offering crate engines? Even if the claims are a little bold I still think the engine is worth giving a shot.

 

Don't get too excited about them. They have been around for years and are still in development and trying to find someone to actually buy the product. You won't be finding one of these on the Summit web site crate engine section any time soon.



Company Timeline - Achates

 

won't likely see anything of it until china finds a way to rip off the design....

 

The spread between compression ratios to fire both gasoline and diesel is a bit much to reliably make happen, although forced induction could raise the compression high enough to make it feasible for diesel on a lower-compression head/piston design.

And then there's emissions. So much fine-tuning is done in either a gas or diesel engine to make it reasonable that I don't see it being possible to run both fuels.

 

A couple things:

1) There have been engines that run on both gas and diesel since at least WW2 - they were called "multi fuels" back in the day. They worked like this - if you want to run on diesel, you put diesel in the tank. If you want to run on gas, you put gas plus a little shot of engine oil in the tank.

Just for kicks, I have ran my 4BT Cummins on gasoline with a touch of engine oil. Power is less than with diesel, but it runs just fine.

2) It actually takes more compression to fire gasoline in a compression ignition engine than it does diesel as gasoline has a higher auto ignition temperature.

 

Good points, RedNeck

But emissions-wise, that would not fly these days.

 

Krewat, yes the engine is designed with forced induction to get the higher compression ratios needed.
As far as I understand it the engine will be released as gasoline/ethanol only and diesel only to meet emissions. They even claim diesel emissions will be better than standard "V" engines because of the higher temperatures in the compression cycle.
@85e150six4mtod: Thank you for that link however I am going to have to disagree on your suggested timeline. I forget where I heard this, be it in one of those manufacturer expo videos or something of that nature but, Achates has been working with Cummins on some sort of hush-hush projects and is pushing to get deals with some American auto manufacturers. I know it will still be a while but the thought of a low-maintenance, highly efficient engine makes me want to jump at the first whisper of release.

 

Sadly, this statement is only too true. So much corporate espionage these days it's no wonder big companies fight tooth and nail to protect their products.

The world we live in...