Super-Efficient Engines

Using the Atkinson-Diesel Cycle

Ernest Rogers

April, 2008

I am now planning to undertake the construction of an engine that may achieve 60%
efficiency. For comparison, most of today’s engines are from 20% to 40% efficient. A
hybrid car with a 60% efficient engine could easily achieve 100 mpg for its fuel economy,
or “mileage.” In view of urgent world problems with global climate change and fuel
shortages, this kind of automobile efficiency is urgently needed.

Optimism for reaching this goal of 100 miles per gallon (or 2.35 liters per 100 km)
is grounded in basic thermodynamic theory and application of a new engine construction,
which in part is describable as the Atkinson-Diesel cycle. I will show how examining this
new engine cycle can lead to engines of superior efficiency. Much can be learned about
practical engines by studying ideal engine cycles. The new engine cycle is a combination
of the Atkinson cycle, having unequal expansion and compression, and the true Diesel
cycle, for which constant pressure is maintained during fuel combustion. The Atkinson-
Diesel cycle will be analyzed as the equivalent ideal closed cycle, operating on an “ideal
gas” having fixed properties.

In 1882, James Atkinson conceived the idea of allowing the combustion gas in an
internal combustion engine to expand to near-atmospheric pressure by arranging for the
piston to travel outward beyond the distance it had moved during the compression stroke.
The further expansion would clearly result in an engine of superior efficiency.

Rudolph Diesel received a patent in1892 for his new compression-ignition engine.
His concept combined two ingenious elements: using the temperature derived from
compression to ignite the fuel charge, and also of controlling the injection and burning of
fuel in such a fashion that a constant high pressure occurs in the engine cylinders.
Constant-pressure burning is perfect for high-compression engines that operate at very high
combustion pressure since the highest engine efficiency is obtained with the least stress on
the engine structure.

It seems that no one imagined combining the two concepts at the time. The
combination, the Atkinson-Diesel cycle engine, should be developed today because of its
potential to achieve very high efficiency. Still, the analysis of this engine as an ideal cycle
is not known to be available. A comparatively simple formula for the efficiency of the
ideal Atkinson-Diesel engine will be derived here.

Consider an engine cycle pictured in Figure 1 below; the processes start at Point 1
and go around the diagram to points 2, 3, 4, 5, and back to 1 again:
Figure 1. PV Diagram for Atkinson Diesel Cycle

Step 1-2: Gas is compressed, with little or no heat transfer, from a low pressure P1 and
volume V1 to a much higher pressure P2 and volume V2.

Step 2-3: Heat Q23 is added to the gas, by injection of a small amount of fuel directly into
the cylinder. The mass of fuel is small, and assume for the analysis that the added mass can
be neglected. As heat is added, the gas is allowed to expand to a greater volume, V3. The
fuel addition is done in a way that keeps the gas at a constant pressure, P3 = P2, as it
expands. (This is the essential feature of the Diesel cycle.)

Step 3-4: After fuel cut-off (end of heat addition), the gas continues to expand to a low
pressure P4 and volume V4. This step involves relatively little heat going into or out of the
gas, and here the expansion is modeled as being adiabatic (zero heat transfer), as is the
compression in Step 1-2. The volume V4 is substantially greater than the initial volume, V1.
(This is the Atkinson cycle feature.)

Step 4-5: Heat Q45 is rejected while holding the gas at constant volume, V5 = V4. This
cooling lowers the gas pressure to the value at the beginning of the cycle, P5 = P1. For the
analysis, the quantity of the gas and its thermal properties will remain unchanged. (In the
real engine, this step involves exhausting of burned gas.)

Step 5-1: The gas returns to its initial state by further removal of heat Q51, at constant
pressure P1. (In the real engine, the cylinder is filled with a new charge of air.)

With this last step, a fairly simple closed thermodynamic cycle has been defined.
Admittedly, it is possibly too simple. The assumption that one goes from point 5 to point 1
at constant pressure and with no work is unrealistic, not correctly allowing for the fact that
the discharge and recharge pressures are probably different, and that work will have to be
done. But, our intention is to look at an “ideal” cycle, and what could be more ideal than
the assumptions of the last two steps? All of the steps are taken to be very slow and
reversible, including the “blowdown” of exhaust that actually occurs in Step 4-5.

The justification for calculating the maximum “ideal” efficiency of an engine cycle
is that it allows us to learn how a real engine’s efficiency may be affected by the operating
parameters of the engine. And the ideal cycle efficiency allows a simple way to compare
the engine to other traditional cycles for which the ideal efficiency is also known.

The calculation will begin by stating the definition of engine efficiency: the ratio of
work produced divided by the heat input to the engine. Remember that W = QIN -QOUT .

Heat is input only in the constant-pressure Step 2-3. For an ideal gas with constant
properties:

Heat is removed in a combination of a constant-volume Step 4-5 and a constant-pressure

Step 5-1:

With these substitutions, the efficiency becomes:

The temperatures will be eliminated from the equation by a series of substitutions,

involving some cycle definitions, and by use of ideal gas laws. Here are some definitions:

The compression ratio: rC = V1/V2

The expansion ratio: rE = V4/V2
The Atkinson ratio: A = V4/V1 = rE / rC = T5/T1
The cutoff ratio: β = V3/V2= T3/T2
The specific heat ratio: k = CP/CV

And β / rE = V3/V4
The ideal gas law gives the following relationships between temperatures and volumes for
adiabatic compression and expansion:

Now, the following substitutions can be made for temperatures in the efficiency expression:

Substituting and simplifying,

To summarize, this formula gives the efficiency of an ideal Atkinson-Diesel cycle

engine in terms of—

A, the Atkinson ratio—the cylinder volume at the end of expansion (exhaust

valve opening) divided by the cylinder volume at the start of compression
β, the cutoff ratio—the cylinder volume at the end of combustion divided
by the volume at top-dead-center
k, the specific heat ratio: A good value for efficiency estimates is k = 1.32
and rC, the compression ratio—the cylinder volume at the beginning of compression
(valves closed) divided by the volume at top-dead-center.
The expansion ratio, rE, has its part in the formula too, since ArC = rE.

An Atkinson-Diesel engine can offer a substantial boost of efficiency over a normal

diesel engine. The graph below in Figure 2 shows how “ideal” engine efficiency increases
with Atkinson ratio, for a compression ratio of rC = 20 and cutoff ratio β = 1.2. For A =
1.2, there is an efficiency gain of 4 percentage points over an engine with A = 0.9.

FIG. 2. The ideal efficiency of the Atkinson-Diesel cycle increases as the

Atkinson ratio A is increased.

This graph shows the performance for an engine with no friction and no heat loss. The
“brake efficiency” of an engine including friction and heat losses can be estimated by
multiplying formula numbers by 0.85. This is only a rough estimate because losses can
vary a lot depending on the details of the engine design.

Ernest Rogers