http://www.autoblog.com/2011/06/28/mazda-rumored-to-use-laser-ignition-for-next-gen-rotary/

http://m.motortrend.com/wot/we-hear-next-mazda-rotary-engine-to-employ-laser-ignition-91085.html


-Dan Gorsline.


Wankel Rotary Power


This is 2011 if it worked it would be here by now.
A laser with enough power is not inexpensive.

Paul Lamar

No doubt that lasers can be used to spark and the benefits of a distributed ignition within the chamber are obvious

Lasers are now made "dirt" cheap and are highly reliable (20 years continuous use). A small 2" wafer can be diced into 10,000 semiconductor lasers the size of a grain of salt. There is a 99.999% chance that this email arrived to everyone after passing several lasers and several EDFA (Optical Amplifiers driven by another laser) over fiber optics

The technical challenge is the keeping the lens into the chamber clean enough over time to keep working. Lasers need a translucent window / lens made from quartz or sapphire. These are also readily available and relatively cheap. The challenge is keeping the quartz window clean and free from soot build up over time. As soot and other combustion deposits builds up on the window/lens, it becomes opaque and unable to pass the laser light

Several companies are working on this including a division of DENSO (second largest global auto industry supplier) but it will be a long time, if ever, before we see it in production (PS I spent 16 years in the laser industry) Regards Simon Sab

What are the typical powers of a laser the size of a grain of salt?
Are there any fast laser optical isolators available?
Fast in the region of nanoseconds. Maybe the problem is not the laser but the optical transistor or detector come to think of it.

Paul Lamar

Using lasers for signal processing (fiber optics) is a proven, reliable technology. Signal processing lasers are in the milliwatts (6-200mw, low power) to watts (6W is considered high power). A laser powerful enough to ignite fuel would have to be several 10's or 100's of watts minimum I would think, two or three orders of magnitude larger. The larger the wattage the harder everything about the laser becomes.

I designed some power circuits for medical/surgical lasers at 30A/208V, 3 phase for about 8000 watts of delivered power for a single 'scapel' to cut through flesh (this was 20 years ago so I'm sure things have improved since then). I don't think you can get enough laser power into a combustion chamber to be effective with today's technology.

I would expect that the power required for the laser would be 10X-100X the minimum required for Paul's ignition system, just guessing.

Harold Lunt

The power consumed by my ignition is a function of RPM. At idle it will fire at about
one watt. At 8000 RPM it is about 12 watts. This is power input. The efficiency I am
guessing is about 90%.

Paul Lamar

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