Could a better engine save the world?

Hybrids and plug-in electric vehicles promise to be the future of transport. In the present, though, the old-style, fossil-fuel-based internal combustion engine still rules.

But what if we could get a wildly more efficient internal combustion engine into the market over the next few years? How much of an impact could that have on our global energy and carbon footprints?

A huge impact, according to the people at ULTRaMO, a UK-based startup that’s working to develop a new type of internal combustion engine that could be up to twice as efficient as the ones in use today. Still in the conceptual stage, the ULTRaMO engine could be used not only in transport, but in energy microgeneration and agricultural and industrial applications, according to the company.

In theory, given the efficiencies being claimed, replacing every standard internal combustion engine with an ULTRaMO could save $1.2 trillion in oil expenses every year and cut global carbon emissions by 1.3 billion tonnes. Of course, that level of adoption would be ultra-ambitious even for a technology that’s built and ready for market. For an engine that hasn’t been released yet in prototype form, the caveats are all the greater.

Still, despite the limited amount of details the ULTRaMo team are willing to offer at this time on the engine’s actual design and the lack of a working model, ULTRaMO is generating some buzz in the right circles. The theoretical concepts behind the new thermodynamic cycle being proposed for the engine have met with approval from a group of experts from PERA, a European innovation network. And the engineering ideas have been ratified by Richard Atkins, a lecturer on engine manufacture and testing at Kingston University.

The breakthrough design ULTRaMO says it’s developed better captures the engine’s waste heat and uses it to generate energy. According to an article on the technology in the publication The Engineer, the improvement eliminates the standard internal combustion engine’s cooling system and instead converts waste heat into kinetic energy.

This past September, the startup received some grant funding from SEEDA, the South East England Development Agency. And it’s made it to the top 10 per cent of ideas submitted to GE’s Ecomagination Challenge, the winner of which is set to be announced tomorrow. The company has also attracted inquiries from at least two large engine manufacturing firms.

Next on ULTRaMO’s agenda is completion of a working demonstration model of its engine, something the company hopes to achieve sometime next spring. After another 18 months of pre-production prototyping, the startup hopes to then have a product that’s ready for market.