Laser Spark Plugs - more efficient ignition for conventional engines!

Hi, just saw this on Science Blogs

Laser sparks revolution in internal combustion engines

I guess this would be the next step after the pulse plugs that came out a few years ago that use a capacitor.

I'm for it. More efficient, cleaner, less wasted gas.

More complete combustion = more horsepower.

Although it would be neat to get compact, cheap and high peak power lasers, I don't think this will work too well. Even though the gas will burn more completely there will still be black carbon deposits over time. I suspect it will happen and not be hidden away just because of all the cases of loss of power and missfires after 1000km's and the jobs and products that will be needed to fix it. Lasers would work in a hydrogen burning engine as its not a hydrocarbon. While saving gas might be nice, I fear the replacement lenses/lasers would make up for it and all you would be saving is the environment. My vote is better batteries or a way to teleport energy directly from the sun.

If they want higher power plugs that last, they could just use a bit of tungsten for its very high melting point

Back in the 1980s a company invented a plasma igniter for diesels,

The small one would throw a jet of flame 3 inches long and sounded like a 22 going off.

In a diesel engine this would help ignite the diesel-air mix greatly reducing the carbon smoke and increasing the MPG and HP of the engine.

The fuel for the plasma igniter was propane and on a semi truck a 5 gal tank would last about 3000 miles.

The company put a number of these plasma systems on massive ships diesels but no auto or truck companies would touch the system.

These laser spark plug will disappear just like the plasma igniters.

If the car companies don't invent them they don't want them. i has to do with paying outside companies for the right to use the products.
The car companies work on it has to be invented by us or we don't want it.

if densno is on board it may go some ware thay are a huge part manufacture

Ford is one of the manufacturers developing this type of ignition. With the ever tightening MPG requirements car companies will be looking for every way possible to cheaply increase HP and MPG.

reply to post by chr0naut


I can see this working great for about 10,000 miles then after that soot from carbon deposits will cover your laser lens and the you get fail.

Why not not making them easily accesible and cleanable?? You know you dont always have to go out and buy new plugs you can polish them up most of the time.

They are using more than one Laser which concentrates the spark in the center of the airfuel mixture creating a better burn AND more precise timing which would naturally result in a better more thorough burn resulting in far fewer deposits.

Lasers, Taira explains, can focus their beams directly into the center of the mixture. Without quenching, the flame front expands more symmetrically and up to three times faster than those produced by spark plugs. Equally important, he says, lasers inject their energy within nanoseconds, compared with milliseconds for spark plugs. "Timing -- quick combustion -- is very important. The more precise the timing, the more efficient the combustion and the better the fuel economy," he says.

There is something to this. Since it is light based and considerably faster to generate,They can hit the fuel mixture with multiple pulses for that matter until all fuel/air mixture is completely burned !


Remember now, that the current coil based ignition system and the typical spark plug used in cars today was actually originally invented by Tesla .....long, long time ago.

Around the era of the Model T Ford which if you recall used a manual spark advance mechanism before Tesla's distributor and later the addition of vacuum advance rendered it obsolete.

reply to post by ANNED


It has more to do with the regulation on the auto industry.

The automobile industry is the most heavily regulated industry out there. Everything from the trunk lock/latch to the computerized control systems is regulated by the government. Pretty much, anything new on a car has to meet government standards or have legislation drafted to place regulations on it before it can be implemented.

Such a system as you are talking about falls so far outside existing regulations that the government would have to create a panel to determine what was 'safe' and allowable on vehicles.

That's why cars haven't changed much since the 90s. A car my uncle owned back in the 90s was more high-tech than today's cars - complete with a HUD and some interactive display systems (later determined to be too distracting for the average person who can't walk and chew gum at the same time, or drive while also being able to pay attention to numbers and meters projected in front of them). Cars now evolve at the speed of government, and the mortality rate of traffic incidents hasn't really changed despite all of these safety regulations.