Mazda is no stranger to baffling car experts with an out-of-the-box engine design, and its latest patent continues this trend of innovation with interesting results.
Their new six-stroke engine design is called a "fuel reforming system," according to CarBuzz, which engineers created to recover carbon from gasoline. By separating hydrogen and carbon in fuel, the engine can burn just the hydrogen, making a car that runs on carbon-neutral energy.
Mazda accomplishes this feat through an engine design that expands on a typical four-stroke engine's process. In a standard engine, the first cycle pulls air in as a piston moves down, while fuel is added. In the second cycle, the piston compresses the air and fuel, allowing the spark plug to ignite and push the mixture back down in the third cycle.
The difference between the new engine and a standard gas-powered engine comes in the fourth cycle. Instead of pushing the exhaust out the tailpipe as the piston moves back up, the six-stroke engine goes for a recompression stroke, where the exhaust air passes through a different valve and into a decomposer.
The system then squirts gasoline on the exhaust air, and the mixture enters a reformer that causes a reaction to capture and store the carbon. The remaining air — sans carbon — returns to the cylinder in the fifth cycle and pushes it out the exhaust pipe in the last cycle.
The technology Mazda is presenting is a rare combustion engine-powered alternative for a climate-conscious car in an industry where electric vehicles are gaining substantial ground. While the extraction of fossil fuels for gasoline still plays a role in the rapid overheating of our planet, the innovative approach to reducing vehicle pollution effectively addresses concerns about carbon exhaust.
The six-stroke engine design comes with caveats. The carbon storage aspect of the system, for example, would require very regular maintenance to remove the extracted carbon from the storage tank. The efficiency of this strategy has been called into question without carbon factoring into the fuel capabilities.
In comparison, the EV industry faced similar hurdles when the technology was first introduced — and still sees concerns about battery manufacturing's environmental impact. Similarly, an imperfect system like Mazda's new engine design can be a critical step forward in making cars better for the planet.
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