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Fuel Efficient Engines

Consumer Products | Industrial Improvements

Microgravity + Fire = Fuel-Efficient Engines? It's true! More accurately, it is most likely to be true in the near future, thanks to research on combustion combustion that is happening on the International Space Station. The vast majority of cars, planes, trains, tractors, boats, and rockets run on internal combustion engines. Combustion is a chemical reaction (burning!) that the engines convert to power. In the microgravity of the ISS, scientists are able to study combustion in an environment that helps them better understand how fuels burn. What the research is teaching them is sure to translate to designing engines to be more fuel efficient with gasoline as well as alternative fuels. How long will it be until cars average 88 miles per gallon?

It seems like many people pay attention to fuel efficiency only when gas prices are high! However, no matter what the price for gasoline is on Earth, the scientists on the ISS are focused on fuel efficiency. Actually, they are really focused on fluid physics and combustion science. One of the outcomes of that focus is sure to be greater fuel efficiency for internal combustion engines.

Fluids perform differently in microgravity conditions than fluids do on Earth. (Fluids are liquids AND gases — gases are technically considered fluids because they flow.) Understanding how fluids react in a microgravity environment will lead to better designs for systems like fuel tanks and fuel lines that can deliver and utilize an engine's fuel more efficiently. But it all begins with understanding fluids in relation to combustion.

Combustion (when things burn!) is a key element of many critical technologies we use every day, such as producing electric power, heating our homes, and fueling most of our vehicles. When gravity is present, it's much more difficult to study combustion since the burning process produces gases with really high heat and low density.

And so … that means what exactly?! Okay, what that means is that on Earth the heated gas molecules move a lot and move rapidly since they're not very dense. Gravity further complicates the study of combustion because some of the molecules that result from the burning process are heavier than others, so gravity causes them to separate and the more-dense ones "settle" at the bottom, so to speak. That's not the case in microgravity!

So it's probably no surprise that in the Destiny module onboard the ISS, scientists work with a state-of-the-art research facility — it's essentially an incredibly complex piece of equipment called the Fluids and Combustion Facility (FCF). As the name implies, the FCF allows scientists to study how fluids and combustion both behave in microgravity. In fact, the FCF has two "racks" — one for fluids and one for combustion. Not only is the combination of these two elements into one facility unique (and cost effective!), but it is a big reason why developing more fuel efficient engines is likely to be an outcome of the ongoing research.

The fluid physics research focuses on complex fluids that consist of different types of molecules and/or substances that are more sensitive to changes like heating and cooling. (Did you know that shaving cream is an example of a complex fluid? When you press the nozzle it flows like a fluid, but the foam appears to be a solid.) Researchers on the ISS study complex fluids to better understand how they might be used to develop power and propulsion.

Using the combustion rack, researchers can study solid fuel and gaseous fuel — key components of power and propulsion! The FCF includes five cameras to monitor and record the combustion experiments that happen within its 100-liter (26.4 gallons) combustion chamber. Along with heat and light, combustion produces gas, so the FCF either safely expels or recycles the gas byproducts produced in the combustion chamber. That means that the FCF can monitor the burning process to help determine how to maximize the energy (heat and light) it produces, AND it can tackle how best to recycle the gas byproducts.

Think about how that could make life better on Earth! Right now, internal combustion engines release the gas carbon dioxide into the air. What if that could be recycled? Not only would it eliminate (or at least decrease) a pollutant in our environment, but it could be converted to an additional source for power. So now you know why the FCF on the ISS is so C-O-O-L and why it's likely to help us benefit from more fuel-efficient engines on Earth!