EcoMotors OPOC Engine Design

[maroonfrog1]

... so I'm reading an old copy of Fast Company magazine at the dentist office ... and, being a new diesel convert with my new TDI, I am drawn to an article on a company called EcoMotors. They have patents on an engine design called OPOC .. Opposed-Piston Opposed-Cylinder. Go to http://www.ecomotors.com/engine-design and check out the specs for their larger diesel OPOC engine. The lead engineer is, of course, German, and worked for VW for quite some time. I wonder how this power density compares to the best TDI engines out today?

 

[TurbinePower]

This again?

It has, so far as I can tell, never gotten past the prototype stage. Maybe not even to an independently working prototype. That same design has been hawked about since ~2000, but nothing has come of it.

I was really excited in high school when I first saw it, ditto for the MYT engine (swashplate camdrive engine). Nothing has come from either of them in over a decade of being "just around the corner."

It's like cold fusion.

 

[GoFaster]

Been around a while. Extensive discussion in this old thread ...

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=290378&highlight=OPOC

 

[German_1er_diesel]

The lead engineer is, of course, German, and worked for VW for quite some time.

Wasn't Peter Hofbauer the lead engineer for VW's diesel engines for a long, long time?

 

[GoFaster]

Yes, he was.

 

[740GLE]

I also saw it in a recent issue of Popular Mechanics

 

[Powder Hound]

It probably keeps coming up because it is interesting in appearance and it somewhat resembles the old Jumo engines that achieved a record (for the time) low BSFC. They were diesel engines used to power Zepplins on intercontinental flights, IIRC.

In this latest and greatest form however, it appears that the biggest accomplishment of the engine design is to pry speculative $$ from the pockets of technically vacuous investors, and to no real effect other than lightening the wallets of the pigeons.

 

[MrMopar]

It probably keeps coming up because it is interesting in appearance and it somewhat resembles the old Jumo engines that achieved a record (for the time) low BSFC. They were diesel engines used to power Zepplins on intercontinental flights, IIRC.

Diesel was not powerful enough or developed enough to power Zeppelins past the prototype. Most of Zeppelins used spark-ignition engines (a lot of Maybach engines) that were fueled with Blaugas stored uncompressed. The fuel weighed a similar amount to air so as it was used it it didn't affect the trim of the airship.

 

[German_1er_diesel]

The Hindenburg used V16 Mercedes diesels.

And the stuff earlier Zeppelins used wasn't the same as "Blaugas" which was propane/butane. The Zeppelins used a mix of hydrogen, methane, propene, ethylene, acetylene and butene.