Pulse-R™ gains efficiency and reduces emissions through the following benefits over a conventional piston engine.
Pulse-R has global patents filed to cover its novelty in architecture, operating systems and manufacturing, and the Pulse-R brand is covered by international trademark protection.
LPG, CNG, bio-gas and even hydrogen are all fuels ideally suited to the Pulse-R concept.
These fuels tend to have a higher effective octane rating than gasoline, they burn slower and have a higher threshold against undesirable pre-ignition and detonation. These uncontrolled ignition phenomena are often referred to as pinking or pinging.
To exploit, for best efficiency, the beneficial octane characteristics of gas fuels, an engine needs to run at a higher compression ratio or with some level of supercharged forced induction. In a conventional engine this requires the addition of an expensive compressor, or, to achieve high compression, a restrictive inlet and exhaust valve configuration where the valves need to close when the piston is near TDC to prevent contact between piston and valves. This is why all high output diesel engines use superchargers or turbochargers.
Pulse-R overcomes these issues on both counts by allowing a free breathing, very high compression engine that incorporates an element of ‘self-supercharging’ by using gas momentum dynamics and reflected pressure pulses to force charge the inlet air.
This is why our prototype Pulse-R gas engine delivers over 35% more torque at 1,500-3,500 rpm than the market-leading direct injection diesel engine upon which it is based.
Pulse-R technology will make a step change to the efficiency of low cost stationary engines for many applications including micro-electricity generation.
It has particular advantages over conventional engine architectures when optimised for gas fuels including LPG, CNG and bio-gas.
It will be low cost to develop for production as it requires only optimisation and detailed development, there are no significant technical or manufacturing hurdles to overcome, and it can be built on any existing piston engine base.
It is more reliable as there is less to go wrong, and every component in the engine is fully mature and already manufactured at high volume and low cost. Valve train stresses are very low.