preview

The Diesel Hybrid Combustion Engine Essay

Good Essays

The Diesel Hybrid Combustion Engine

Two main types of engines powering everyday machinery are diesel and gasoline internal combustion engines. Both vary on efficiency levels, but are still effective. Diesel engines have high efficiency levels, such as producing great amount of torque at very low rpms. They are also known for their fuel-efficient behavior and capability to produce low emissions.

Their capability to produce power at an efficient rate with little wear on the engine, this makes these engines ideal for hybrid integration. Hybrid integration takes a typical engine and combines it with an electric generator and motor, with the application of other electrical systems applied. Allowing the …show more content…

These tests represent the percentage of green house gases that the engine will produce over its lifetime. The results are as follows: the gasoline combustion engine is 88%, the diesel-hybrid engine is 56% (Weiss 29).

The MIT testing and research went into much more detail besides fuel efficiency and emission release. These areas are still are very important in the mind of the everyday consumer.

Current Developments:

The diesel-hybrid idea is now being applied to several different applications. It ranges from road, to water, and railroad. In each scenario the applications are the similar but the designs are different.

In Vancouver, Canada, RailPower Technologies has designed a hybrid locomotive, the Green Goat, which utilizes diesel fuel and electric motors. The basic design started with removing all the original engine parts and replacing them with a 6.0L Daewoo diesel engine and 20 volt lead acid batteries (Siuru 1). This design uses the diesel engine, which acts as a generator to charge the batteries. The batteries are then used to power the locomotive. Batteries propel the locomotive leaving more empty space under the hood. The result of all this is: ability to create a smaller hood increasing overall visibility for locomotive engineers, fuel economy improvement of 35%, and a 90% reduction of overall emissions (Siuru 1).

In 2001, New York City

Get Access