Lasers set to replace spark plugs in car engines
22nd April 2011
The spark plug is the limiting factor on how “lean” – how low in fuel – the mixture can be: in order to ignite a leaner mixture the spark must be hotter, and past a certain point this destroys the electrodes.
But designers would like to make leaner-running engines as this would improve fuel economy and cut down on emissions.
Lasers would potentially offer hotter ignition, and they have other advantages too. The timing of ignition would be more precise than with sparkplugs – on the very brief timescales over which cylinder mixtures change, the exact point at which a plug will spark is quite unpredictable.