Old engine may give big petrol savings

Press, 14 November 1977, Page 4

Old engine may give big petrol savings

By VICTOR K. McLHENY, of the "New York Times” (through NZPA). New York A 35-year-old engine design, tested for many years in cars and army jeeps, is receiving new attention today from both the United States Government and its industrial developers as a promising means of both economising on fuel and controlling air pollution. The engine's backers say that if most American cars used such engines, the nation’s oil demand would be lower by 20 per cent, more than 2.5 million barrels a day, than the level of demand if the nation persists in its plan to require most vehicles to run on lead-free gasoline.

The so-called direct-in-jection, stratified charge engine designed by the oil company, Texaco in Beacon, New York, and built in recent years by White Engines of Canton, Ohio, can run on many types of fuel, including conventional gasoline, diesel, kerosene, methanol, and mixtures of these. A complete conversion of the nation’s fleet of

more than 120 million vehicles to any new engine could not be accomplished before the late 1980 s at the earliest. This is because of long car lifetimes and the years it would take to establish new engine factories producing, typically, 500,000 units a year.

In spite of this, the Texaco design is being tested in post office trucks in Washington, D.C., and Salt Lake City, in a comparison with conventional diesels and gasoline engines. It is also being studied by the Energy Research and Development Administration because of a more immediate environmental problem.

The more stringent nit-rogeh-oxide emission regulations for 1981 model cars, recently passed by Congress, would require a so-called three-w'ay catalytic converter to remove nitrogen oxides as well as hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide from exhaust gases.

The fuel-saving Texaco-designed motor, called the L-163-S in the army version built by White Engines, is expected to meet the nitrogen oxide standards without a catalyst, thus avoid-

ing the complex three-way device.

“With army work now shelved for the present, the company is building versions of the motor that could power air compressors, fork-lift trucks, or electric welders,” said Mr John Mayo, White’s vicepresident for sales. Texaco’s projections of large savings in crude-oil demand from use of its direct-injection stratified charge engine were based on studies by Mr William T. Tierney of its Beacon Research Centre and others, reported in 1975 and 1976.

These studies compared what the crude oil demands of the 1972 vehicle fleet would have been if it had been using various fuels exclusively. Among the fuels were a gas turbine fuel and a 96-octane leaded fuel, assigned a relative efficiency of 1.0, a 91-octane lead-free fuel with an assumed efficiency of 0.93, and two fuels with efficiencies of 1.3 diesel and a mixture of hydrocarbons with boiling points over a wide range between 100 and 650 degrees Fahrenheit.

The last fuel is the one best adapted to Texaco’s engine design.