Bill Gates Buys Stake in EcoMotors, Producer of Potentially Revolutionary Engine
By Scott Doggett July 12, 2010
By Danny King, Contributor
Bill Gates is buying a stake of EcoMotors International, illustrating the Microsoft chairman's confidence in the development of the company's so-called OPOC engine, whose design is said to boost fuel economy by as much as 50 percent while cutting engine weight in half.
Gates, along with Silicon Valley-based venture-capital firm Khosla Ventures, invested a combined $23.5 million in the two-year-old company, said EcoMotors CEO and former General Motors executive Don Runkle in an interview with Green Car Advisor today. Runkle declined to disclose how much of the investment was from Gates or how big a stake Gates and Khosla will have in the Troy, Michigan-based company.
The investment illustrates how much confidence, Gates, who co-founded Microsoft in 1975, has in EcoMotors' Opposed-Piston Opposed-Cylinder (OPOC) engine, which was originally conceived by company Chairman and former Volkswagen head of powertrain development Peter Hofbauer. Using two pistons per cylinder that move in opposite directions, the two-stroke OPOC, which can run on fuels ranging from conventional gasoline to diesel to ethanol, doesn't require a cylinder head or valve train and cuts piston travel distance in half.
As a result, EcoMotors estimates that the OPOC engine is about half the weight and uses half the parts of a similarly-powered conventional engine, and may boost fuel economy by as much as 50 percent. For instance, EcoMotors' 300-pound EM 100 engine puts out 325 horsepower, or slightly more than one horsepower per pound. Additionally, because of its relatively small size, multiple OPOC motors can be paired and connected with an electronically-controlled clutch.
"The OPOC engine can be an important step in providing affordable, low-emissions transportation for the developing world," Gates said in a statement released by EcoMotors today. "EcoMotors has developed a promising technology that could help reduce levels of greenhouse-gas emissions in a low-cost, globally relevant way."
With the additional cash in hand, EcoMotors, whose president is former Ford Motor Co. executive John Coletti, has "a significant runway" to further develop the engine, which was used by European aerospace giant EADS in the diesel-hybrid-electric-powered helicopter it exhibited at the Berlin Air Show last month, according to Runkle.
The company is talking to "a number" of potential customers in the automotive industry and expects to deploy its engines in production vehicles within "a few years," said Runkle.
Gates appears to be following fellow tycoon Warren Buffett into the alternative-powertrain business. Buffett, the Berkshire Hathaway CEO who started donating much of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2006, two years ago paid $230 million for a 10 percent stake in China-based electric-car maker BYD.
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This is really exciting technology! In how many years should we expect to see an OPOC engine in an actual production car?
Will this be a good move? Maybe we should see if this actually worked out. Or els, some parts will eventually not fall into place. I hope that shops like Car Parts Los Angeles and others will compensate on this EcoMotors that Bill Gates wanted to buy.
Quote from an interview of CEO Don Runkle (of OPOC engine):
?The OPOC is cheaper, better, simpler, stronger, lighter and cleaner than any other power generating technology now or in the foreseeable future. . .The engine?s width is exaggerated a bit . . .?
Looking from a strictly technical viewpoint:
The OPOC
The two external pistons of the OPOC are the good ones. Their arrangement and lubrication is similar to those of the cross-head engines. A drawback is the necessarily long and heavy piston pin that extends well outside the cylinder. Another drawback is the two long and heavy connecting rods per external piston (about 2.5 times longer than the single connecting rod of the internal piston) and the increased number of crankpins and bearings.
As compared to a piston performing a pure sinusoidal motion of the same stroke, the external piston of the OPOC moves more slowly around the Combustion Dead Center (CDC). This would improve the combustion efficiency, yet they come the internal pistons to spoil this advantage. The internal pistons of the OPOC move, around the CDC, more quickly than a piston performing a pure sinusoidal motion of the same stroke. Finally the volume between the two pistons and the cylinder increases, around the CDC, more quickly than in case of pistons performing pure sinusoidal motion.
There is also a difficult lubrication issue with the internal pistons of the OPOC, especially the one thrusting over the exhaust ports. The hot cylinder with the exhaust port slots is where the piston skirt has to touch (to slide, to abut) in order to pass to the cylinder the thrust loads generated by the inclination of the connecting rod. The problem is that increasing the quantity of the oil at the exhaust port area of the cylinder, the oil consumption (it escapes at the exhaust) is also increased and the quality of the oil degrades sooner.
In order to counterbalance the first order inertia forces and moments, the OPOC engine has to use internal and external pistons of the same reciprocating mass (it is the mass of the piston, of the piston pin and of the upper part of the connecting rod mass). Yet each internal piston has a small piston pin and a single short connecting rod, while each external piston has two long and heavy connecting rods and a big and heavy piston pin. The solution (?) is to add mass to the internal pistons. This increases the inertia loads and the friction loss. Besides, it is the offset between the two cylinders of the OPOC that generates a 2nd order unbalanced inertia moment. There is also a strong unbalanced inertia torque of 2nd order (just like in any four in-line conventional engine).
The OPOC engine is so long (wide) because it is based on an opposed cylinder to counterbalance the inertia loads. Despite all this complication (four pistons, two short connecting rods, four long connecting rods, two cylinders) the ?vibration-free? or ?balance quality? of OPOC is not exceptional.
Another issue is the different timing, during the scavenging, of the one cylinder as compared to the other: The cylinder that uses the internal piston to controls the exhaust ports aspirates differently than the cylinder that uses the external piston to control the exhaust ports. This asymmetry may be compensated at some revs and loads, yet it cannot at a wide rev and load range.
The two long connecting rods at the sides of each cylinder are bridged at their small ends by a long pin (the wrist pin of the external piston) that makes the arrangement vulnerable to twisting of the external piston about its cylinder axis
The lower side of each manifold communicates with the upper side of the same manifold through two narrow ?channels? between the cylinder and the long connecting rods. As a result, most of the gas-flow happens through the upper ports of the cylinder (asymmetrical flow) and the scavenging scheme is something between the uniflow-scavenging and the loop-scavenging, which is another necessary compromise for the OPOC.
Last, but not least, is the scavenging process, i.e. the most critical and power consuming process in a two-stroke engine. In the OPOC the scavenging is realized externally by a turbo-charger, not the ideal solution for engines that operate in a wide rev and load range.
The OPRE
Take now the OPOC engine, throw away the two internal pistons, throw away the four long connecting rods, throw away the two long and heavy piston pins and replace the unique multi-crank-pin crankshaft by a pair of single-crank-pin crankshafts located outside the pistons. What is left is the OPRE engine.
The OPRE needs not long connecting rods neither an opposed cylinder to be ?vibration-free?. And its width is more than 30% smaller than an OPOC of the same piston stroke.
The combustion takes place at the slow dead center that provides a 30 to 40% additional time (as compared to the conventional engine) and a 20% additional time (as compared to the OPOC) to the fuel to get prepared and burned more efficiently. This extended piston dwell at the CDC allows a way higher rev range (it allows Direct Injection Diesels operating efficiently at 6000 rpm).
If the one combustion per crank rotation is not adequate, additional OPRE modules can be added in series to make a multicylinder OPRE engine.
By using the external side of the pistons (i.e. the wrist pin or cool side of the piston) as a ?zero? cost, zero friction volumetric piston-type scavenging pump, the OPRE takes its final form. If the forced induction (turbo-charge) is desirable, it is OK for OPRE, because it can operate efficiently with and without turbo charging.
The integrated volumetric scavenging pumps of OPRE allow the operation either with symmetrical timing or with asymmetrical timing between the intake and the exhaust.
In the case of ?divided load? applications, for instance when the OPRE is used as a range-extender with one electric generator on each crankshaft, its NVH properties are the best among the internal combustion engines (the Wankel rotary engine included). The OPRE range-extender is not only perfectly free of inertia vibrations, which is also true for the Wankel range-extenders, but it is also free from power pulses vibration on its mounds (supports) which is not the case for the Wankel range-extenders wherein each combustion into the Wankel rotary engine causes a reaction torque (power vibration) on its supports.
Another ?divided load? application of the OPRE is the Portable Flyer. With a couple of counter-rotating propellers the reliable, lightweight, efficient and true vibration-free OPRE makes a Portable Flyer (presented at http://www.pattakon.com/pattakonFly.htm ) that can change the world. Yet we have to fly first, to prove it.
Despite what CEO Don Runkle (OPOC engine) claims, as compared to the OPOC engine the pattakon Opposed-piston-Pulling-Rod-Engine (OPRE engine) is: more compact, lighter, simpler, cheaper, is based on ?built-in? scavenging pump of the piston type, has a wider rev range, is more vibration-free, provides additional time to the fuel to get prepared and burned more efficiently, has better lubrication, etc.
For more (videos of the OPRE prototypes running on Diesel fuel,
dimensions, weight etc): http://www.pattakon.com/pattakonOPRE.htm
Thanks
Manousos Pattakos
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