what does it make you think of a
campfire maybe a candlelit dinner
how about spontaneous combustion for
many people like myself combustion means
power it’s a source of power and I don’t
mean the type of power stop by dictators
or politicians
I mean horse power the rate of doing
work getting from point A to point B now
a popular way of getting from point A to
point B is with your car right most of
the cars on the road today
use combustion internal combustion and
the engine that powers your car now
internal combustion has been around for
a long time since about the 1790s
Nicholas Otto and others developed the
basis of the internal combustion in the
1860s and 1870s Oh about a hundred fifty
years ago now internal combustion has
come a long way since then not only does
it have the potential to go further I
would argue that it needs to go further
and that we should want it to go further
now whether we like it or not internal
combustion will be in our lives for the
next 30 to 40 years it just will be so
here’s an idea why don’t we keep
improving it one of the most immediate
ways that we can go green is by
advancing the internal combustion engine
now I know the idea of going green with
internal combustion probably sounds
outrageous to many of you and I get that
recent events like the dieselgate
scandal don’t help this mindset at all
pop culture and the media have many of
us believing we’re already on the cusp
of a post fossil fuel society but it’s
actually much further away than you
might think
check this out in 2008 when a gallon of
gasoline was about $4 President Obama
set a goal of putting 1 million electric
vehicles on the road by the end of 2015
but actually only about 400,000 electric
vehicles were sold in that time frame
why not more why weren’t consumers
flocking to electric vehicles
well the answer is actually pretty
straightforward fuel prices came way
down electric vehicles tend to cost more
they have a limited range and there’s
usually a limited availability of
charging stations in fact the Department
of Energy projects that in 2040 about 99
percent of new cars sold in the US will
still use internal combustion so think
about that for a second in 25 years most
of the cars on the road in the US will
still use internal combustion engine now
Prius and Tesla have become household
names and why wouldn’t they they’re
green
but remember Prius uses what’s known as
a hybrid engine which is a combination
of an electric motor and an internal
combustion engine
now Tesla and other electric vehicles
they are in fact fully electric the cars
themselves produce zero emissions in
zero greenhouse gases but here’s the
thing to think about it’s not just about
the car there are a lot of other issues
that have to be considered or should be
considered when we think about total
emissions from a vehicle today I’m just
gonna focus on one of those and that’s
the energy sources for electricity where
does the electricity that powers your
electric vehicle come from in 2015 about
two-thirds of electricity in the US came
from fossil fuels well guess what in
1985 about two-thirds of electricity in
the US also came from fossil fuels
now we’ve definitely made a positive
transition from coal to natural gas in
that time frame and that’s great but the
fact is on a percentage basis the amount
of fossil fuels used to create
electricity in the US has remained
unchanged for the last 30 years
another example is China in China about
75 percent of their electricity comes
from fossil fuels specifically coal is
the majority but then you have a country
like Norway in Norway very little fossil
fuels are used to create electricity
about 90 percent of their electricity
comes from hydroelectric power which is
power derived from the potential energy
of dammed water so in Norway for example
electric vehicles do in fact produce
zero or near zero emissions because
fossil fuels don’t really come into the
play so it is possible but the problem
is that zero emissions vehicles green
cars that are truly green only make up a
very small portion of the cars on the
road today to go green we must keep
improving the internal combustion engine
so you’re probably wondering why am I so
confident that we can do more with the
internal combustion engine well look at
how far we’ve come as an example let’s
take carbon dioxide carbon dioxide is
one of the major sources of greenhouse
gases carbon dioxide along with water
vapour is also a product of complete
combustion so the more fuel-efficient
your car is the less fuel you need to
get from point A to point B and the less
carbon dioxide you’ll produce now we’ve
made significant strides and fuel
efficiency since the onset of internal
combustion cars today are about twice as
fuel-efficient as they were in 1975 in
the last 10 years we’ve improved our
fuel economy by about 25 percent and we
will continue to improve it by another
50% in order to keep up with federal
regulations in addition harmful
emissions like nitrous nitrogen oxides
and particulate matter or soot are at
historic lows now how we’ve been able to
do this how how have we been able to
reduce emissions and improve fuel
economy we’ve done this by innovating so
in order to talk about how we innovate
with internal combustion engines let’s
first review how an internal combustion
engine works so in most modern engines
fuel is injected directly into the
combustion chamber it evaporates mixes
with air its ignited forms a high
temperature flame which increases the
pressure in the combustion chamber and
does work on the piston now it sounds
pretty straightforward right well
actually it’s not so I’ll start with the
bad news the bad news is that an
internal combustion engine is actually
one of the most complicated engineering
problems out there
it relies on turbulent flow fuel
injection fuel properties feel chemistry
an ignition system and combustion
chamber design
there are literally hundreds of
parameters that can be tweaked in an
engine to come up with an optimal
configuration but the greenest engine
which is our goal is the soft moon
combination and we need to find it we
need to find the recipe of design
parameters that allow us to go as green
as possible with internal combustion now
finding that it’s not easy how can we
possibly build and test engines out of
all combinations of parameters we can’t
so that’s the bad news
but I’m not going to suggest we improve
something talked about how hard it is
and then not offer suggestions to
improve it the good news is is there is
an optimal recipe out there there’s a
set of design parameters that does allow
us to go as green as possible with
internal combustion engines and we have
the tools to help us get there without
having to build hundreds thousands or
even millions of designs we have really
big computers we have software that runs
on these computers that allows us to
test engine concepts before we build
them and we have optimization software
that allows us to run a reduced set of
designs in order to find an optimum now
these tools along with experiments have
helped us meet emissions and fuel
economy mandates throughout federal
regulation history now the engine keeps
improving partly because consumers want
to fill up their tanks less often but
also because the federal regulations are
forcing engine makers to find solutions
in order to keep selling cars now one
approach that helps us improve
combustion engines and has helped us is
actually based on the theories of
natural selection to find an optimum in
nature how do organisms improve and
adapt to their surroundings they evolve
nature can actually teach us how to save
itself a great example of this is the
peppered moth so before the Industrial
Revolution typically the peppered moth
was light with dark spots and this
served as great camouflage against
predators only about 2% of the
population was dark after the Industrial
Revolution started
was pollution that actually darkened
surfaces on which moths rested causing
the lighter moths to be eaten and the
darker wants to survive the moth
population evolved based on a change in
its environment so for internal
combustion engines concern for the
planet and also federal regulations
represent a change literally in its
environment now we can either allow
engines to evolve to this environment
more organically through trial and error
or we can directly use the principles of
evolution to help us get there quicker
this is the premise of a genetic
algorithm a genetic algorithm is a
procedure that runs on the computer that
allows you to optimize a problem that
has a lot of different parameters in it
so to see kind of how this works let’s
go back to our moths so you start with a
population of designs or in this case a
set of peppered moths each with very
traits in this case number of spots now
remember after the Industrial Revolution
a moths chance of survival was directly
proportional to how dark it was the lot
lighter Moss would be eaten and the
darker ones would survive so we start
with this population of moths we mix the
traits to form a new generation we
select survivors to parent the following
generation and we keep doing this over a
number of generations until the optimal
design or the darkest moth is found now
we can do this with engines and we have
done it but there’s a lot more work to
be done the computer software that we
can use to simulate these engines before
building them is really good but far
from perfect under a lot of conditions
and it takes a long time to run so for
an example think about an engine running
at 2,000 rpm one engine revolution takes
about a tenth of a second but to run
that same engine revolution on the
computer can take up to 24 hours so
computer methods and speeds both need to
improve significantly to get us better
answers quicker but it’s worth the
effort it’s an important piece to allow
us to go greener with internal
combustion engines now there tends to be
an us-versus-them mentality when it
comes to
energy sources for transportation
diehard environmentalists tend to preach
the impending doom of the internal
combustion engine in favor of a full
electrification of vehicles a fleet of
cars that gets zero emissions now I
would invite them to reevaluate their
current thinking not because I disagree
but because I think there’s a middle
ground that helps us get to a better
solution we shouldn’t take our eyes off
of short-term issues for long term gains
especially when the short term directly
feeds into the long term we can do both
we can push both even multiple
strategies forward solar wind
hydroelectric nuclear these are all
viable energy options they all need more
research they’re all individual pieces
of a bigger puzzle so yeah let’s keep
hugging trees but why not also start
hugging engines one of the most
immediate ways we can go green is by
improving the internal combustion engine
thank you [Applause]