Thaindian News

Washington, April 21 (ANI): Automakers are now one step closer to replace more than 150-year-old spark plugs with laser igniters, which promise cleaner, more efficient, and more economical vehicles.

In the past, lasers strong enough to ignite an engine’s air-fuel mixtures were too large to fit under an automobile’s hood.

Now, researchers from Japan have developed the first multibeam laser system small enough to screw into an engine’s cylinder head.

The new laser system is made from ceramics, and could be produced inexpensively in large volumes, said Takunori Taira of Japan’s National Institutes of Natural Sciences and an author of the study.

According to him, conventional spark plugs pose a barrier to improving fuel economy and reducing emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), a key component of smog.

The team heats the powders to fuse them into optically transparent solids and embeds metal ions in them to tune their properties.

They built its laser from two yttrium-aluminum-gallium (YAG) segments, one doped with neodymium, the other with chromium. They bonded the two sections together to form a powerful laser only 9 millimeters in diameter and 11 millimeters long (a bit less than half an inch).

The composite generates two laser beams that can ignite fuel in two separate locations at the same time. This would produce a flame wall that grows faster and more uniformly than one lit by a single laser.

The laser is not strong enough to light the leanest fuel mixtures with a single pulse. By using several 800-picosecond-long pulses, however, they can inject enough energy to ignite the mixture completely.

He has already tested the new dual-beam laser at 100 Hz.

The laser-ignition system, although highly promising, is not yet being installed into actual automobiles made in a factory.

The study will be presented at this year’s Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics to be held in Baltimore May 1 - 6. (ANI)