Bill Gates invests in two-stroke engines
Microsoft head Bill Gates has invested a whopping $23.5 million US in engine producer EcoMotors International. The company is a start-up company who is working on research and development of environmentally-friendly engine technology. One of EcoMotors main projects is the OPOC two-stroke engine.
OPOC stands for Opposed Piston and Opposed Cylinder, and it has two cylinders and four pistons. Higher engine speeds have been produced through using outboard pistons in the place of cylinder heads, with each piston travelling half the distance needed to complete a full stroke. There is even an electronic turbocharger with overboost system.
It seems that Bill Gates has been investing in various alternative energy companies, although this particular investment is a curious choice. The money will be used to complete engineering and testing on the OPOC and who knows, maybe we’ll see this in a motorcycle design sometime soon.
Source | TheKneeslider
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reaktor_2004
15 Jul 2010 - 11:59 - #1The boxer engine is very useful for automotives that need big torque, but I think that in motorcycle (not BMW) there are no reason to use it: no force, no fuel economy :(
TPapp
16 Jul 2010 - 19:28 - #2It’s sad that modern 2-stroke technology is being completely ignored by the mainstream manufacturers and environmentalists as well. With oil and fuel injection and improved metallurgy and exhaust systems a modern 2-stroke is more efficient and cleaner than a 4-stroke. Not to mention it takes less raw materials to manufacture a 2-stroke.
manousos
27 Sep 2010 - 14:29 - #3There are better Opposed Piston engines than OPOC.
The PatOP engine, at http://www.pattakon.com/pattakonPatOP.htm is the single crankshaft version of the OPRE engine.
With a basic module having one only cylinder and two only pistons, the PatOP is better balanced than the OPOC engine of EcoMotors and provides some 20% additional time for the efficient injection and combustion of the fuel (at high revs the additional time enables higher peak power, at medium-low revs the additional time enables better efficiency and lower emissions).
The PatOP engine has constantly zero total force on the main bearings of the crankshaft (the connecting rods of the two opposed pistons remain constantly parallel, have normal size and are heavily loaded only in tension, i.e. they are pulling-rods).
The PatOP engine intergrades a “volumetric”, piston-type scavenging-pump that enables a flat torque curve in a wide rev range.
The PatOP engine takes the thrust loads away from the hot cylinder walls and away from the ports, enabling far lower lubricant consumption and better lubrication, just like the giant cross-head Sulzer engines; because the PatOP is a cross-head engine, yet a short one (for 80mm bore and 64+64=128mm stroke, the PatOP is only 500mm long).
Manousos Pattakos