EcoMotors' Don Runkle Discusses Career, OPOC Engine-Generator and More...
By John O'Dell August 2, 2010
Don Runkle, the former GM and Delphi engineering executive who now heads EcoMotors International as it strives to launch a new small-size, big-power, fuel-efficient combustion engine with potential for use with plug-in hybrids, stationary power generators and small aircraft, is the subject of the first "Power Breakfast" interview and profile series launched today by our colleagues over at Auto Observer.
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EcoMotors CEO Don Runkle displays briefcase-sized OPOC motor capable of generating 10 kilowatts of electricity - sufficient to power a home.
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EcoMotors CEO Don Runkle displays briefcase-sized OPOC motor capable of generating 10 kilowatts of electricity - sufficient to power a home.
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The piece, by former Wall Street Journal and New York Times writer Doron Levin, examines Runkle's fascinating career track - he helped develop the EV1 as well as a number of conventional gasoline engines while at General Motors; looks at the OPOC (opposed piston, opposed cylinder) engine EcoMotors is developing - warts and all; and explains how Runkle plans to hide his new iPhone 4G when meeting with EcoMotors' investor Bill Gates so as not to get caught up in the enmity between Apple and Gate's Microsoft.
It's an enlightening, and fun, read and we recommend it.
You might also want to check our piece on Ecomotors if you missed it first time around.
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Here: http://www.pattakon.com/pattakonOPRE.htm is the pattakon OPRE engine, an alternative of the OPOC engine.
In case the OPRE is not better in every respect, nobody is going to get hurt.
But in case the OPRE is far better than the OPOC, ECOMOTORS has the option to keep on working on a similar project (some parts of the OPOC fit to the OPRE, like the external pistons CEO Don Runkle holds in his hands in the photo).
It doesn?t take an expert to see that the present issues the OPOC engine is trying to address are solved by the unconventional arrangement of the OPRE that avoids the problematic ?internal? pistons of the OPOC, the four heavy and long connecting rods and the two massive wrist pins, the external scavenging pump of the OPOC and several other ?problems? like the scavenging, the lubrication, the compact design, the wide rev and load range, the high revving, the balancing.
As for the high fuel efficiency of the OPOC, the extended piston dwell of the OPRE at the combustion dead center enables even higher.
The perfect balancing of the OPRE (including all kinds of inertia vibrations and of ?power pulses? vibrations) allows applications like the Portable Flyer at http://www.pattakon.com/pattakonFly.htm .
Manousos Pattakos
Here
http://www.pattakon.com/pattakonPatOP.htm
you can see the PatOP engine.
The PatOP engine is the single crankshaft version of the OPRE engine.
Thank you
Manousos Pattakos
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