Sandpoint company’s ignition
system may pave ways to boost mileage, lower costs
By SCOTT
REEVES
Staff writer
 SANDPOINT - Potatoes and water may power the car
of the future.
SmartPlugs Corp.
is developing a new ignition system that can run on aquanol - a mixture of 70 percent
ethanol made from agricultural products such as potatoes and 30 percent water - or just
about any other fuel. The SmartPlug has the potential to boost mileage, cut fuel cost and
sharply reduce smog.
"Catalytic
converters gave us cleaner air, but reduce engine performance and mileage," said Mark
Cherry, inventor of the SmartPlug. "The SmartPlug takes the catalytic process out of
the tail pipe and places it in the engine. This technique will give us cleaner air and
restore performance."
It
sounds like science fiction, but the company has secured four international patents and
has another pending. The technology has won federal grants from the National Science
Foundation, Department of Defense and NASA.
SmartPlugs
is about to seek a round of venture capital financing to fund commercialization of the
product. Then comes a public relations campaign to introduce the technology to the
industry and the general public in an effort to build interest in the company.
In the future, the Sandpoint company may launch an IPO, license the
technology to manufacturers or become an acquisition target for a major player in the
automotive sector.
"The technology is feasible," said Judi Steciak, an associate
professor of engineering at the University of Idaho. "The SmartPlug technology works
now. It permits small, low compression engines to operate efficiently on fuels like
kerosene and diesel. But you never have a problem boxed because there's always something
you don't expect. You can always find a way to do it better - you're never finished
refining the process."
If the company's technology is
successful and accepted by major manufacturers, it has the potential to change the
economy, end the nation's dependence on oil from the Middle East, alter politics and clean up the
environment.
"This could change everything," said Gary Paquin, chief executive
officer of SmartPlugs.
Size Of Market
There are an estimated 500 million
internal combustion engines in the world. The new technology may have wide application,
including cars, trucks, motorcycles, airplanes, boats, farm equipment and home gardening
tools such as tillers and lawn mowers.
In short, the device has the potential to tap a multi-billion dollar market.
"The device will allow any internal combustion engine to burn
alternative fuels," said Paquin. "Small engines can't now burn alternative fuels
or diesel because they don't have the needed compression. The SmartPlug will burn diesel,
kerosene or jet fuel in any small engine. We've come up with the first new technology for
an internal combustion engine's ignition process in more than 100 years."
The SmartPlug will burn many types of alternative fuel, including
non-petroleum, clean-burning dilute alcohol. The combustion process all but eliminates
particulate matter and reduces pollution.
Smog is again increasing in California, the nation's most populous state.
This suggests that current technology has reached its limit in reducing emissions and
can't keep up with an ever-increasing number of vehicles being driven more miles.
New Technology
Jean Joseph Lenoir, a Belgian,
invented the spark plug in 1860. The first patented spark plug included platinum
electrodes - the same technology used today.
The SmartPlug is entirely different because it's a self-contained ignition
system. The plug has a pre-chamber with a catalytic heating element. This is where
ignition starts.
The SmartPlug is elegant in its crisp simplicity and can be retrofitted into
existing cars. Unlike traditional ignition systems, the SmartPlug doesn't need a
distributor, coil, points or moving parts. This allows it to burn a range of fuels without
modification to the existing engine.
A minute amount of fuel and air enters the SmartPlug and is ignited by a
small glow plug, or heated wire. This is similar to a diesel engine. However, unlike a
diesel, the SmartPlug doesn't require high compression for the glow plug to ignite the
fuel.
"Prior to the development of the SmartPlug, it was impossible to burn a
water-based fuel in a car because the spark couldn't ignite all the fuel in the
chamber," Paquin said. "The result was water in the combustion chamber. There's
a four-inch flame that comes out of the end of the plug that burns everything so
completely that we could almost put windshield washer fluid in the fuel tank and crank the
engine."
The SmartPlug requires as little as six watts to warm up and requires no
electricity when the engine is running. Unlike a traditional spark plug, once the
SmartPlug ignites the engine and the engine warms up, the power supply for the plug is no
longer required.
The SmartPlug could eliminate the need for leaded aircraft fuel without
sacrificing performance. In addition, the improved ignition system would eliminate the
need for a magneto, a chief cause of small plane crashes.
Future Oil Production
Some analysts believe the world
has reached "peak oil" - the point in an oil field's life when the amount of oil
already pumped exceeds reserves still in the ground.
As production of a field declines, it costs more to extract an ever-shrinking
amount of oil. New fields must constantly be developed to meet increasing demand. The
world's largest reserves are in the politically unstable Middle East although new fields in Russia and Asia look promising.
Rising oil prices could knock some
emerging nations out of the world economy. However, SmartPlug's new technology may permit
the commercial development of cheaper, clean fuels and eliminate the world's dependence on
Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran.
Hydrogen remains a dream. For the
immediate future, it will require more fossil fuel to get the hydrogen in a usable form
than it would to run a vehicle with a conventional engine fueled with gasoline or diesel.
Fuel cells or batteries have limited range and require lengthy recharge
cycles. Typically, the electricity needed to recharge a battery is generated at a coal- or
natural gas-fired plant, eliminating any significant energy savings.
Brazil uses increased amounts of ethanol
and may be an energy pioneer, Paquin said.
Still, ethanol requires large
government subsidies and the discovery of significant oil reserves off Brazil's coast should make traditional fuels
cheaper.
The SmartPlug may change the energy
equation.
The new technology will allow ethanol producers to expand their production by
eliminating the current three-step distillation process, Paquin said.
If so, this will lower the cost, reduce or eliminate the need for subsidies
and make ethanol more competitive with traditional fuels.
If successful in Brazil, the simplified distillation process
and SmartPlug technology could be introduced in the Philippines and Asia with special emphasis on Japan.
"One Fuel Forward"
The U.S. Department of Defense has
determined that future fighting forces will move forward with equipment powered by a
single fuel.
The current mix of gasoline, diesel, jet and other types of fuel creates a
logistical nightmare.
SmartPlugs plans to work the the Defense Department and General Services
Administration and promote its technology as a clean, simple way to burn the range of
fuels now in use. In the future, a single fuel could be substituted using the company's
technology, cutting cost and improving efficiency.
"We can demonstrate that converting existing gasoline engines to jet
fuel would be much cheaper than replacing the entire stock of gasoline engines with
equipment that burns a heavy fuel," Paquin said. "Benefits include lower entry
cost compared with designing a new engine, lighter weight for portable emergency equipment
such as generators and elimination of environmental concerns."
Paquin's background is technology and finance. He joined IBM out of college
in 1973 and worked eight years for Big Blue. He launched his first start-up company in Minneapolis and installed automation systems in
law offices. He next launched an insurance agency software company with his brother, Tony,
in Phoenix and moved it to Coeur d'Alene in 1991. He sold it to a major company
and next launched a dot-com, Medinex Systems, but left the company in 2000 when the
Internet bubble was about to burst and he couldn't secure a second round of venture
capital funding.
"SmartPlugs is a well-kept
secret," Paquin said. "In the next six months or so, we hope to let the world
know what we're doing."
Cherry studied mechanical engineering at San Diego State University and several other schools.
He said the idea for the SmartPlug
came to him in a flash, but he and others have worked years to perfect it.
"I'm sure there are many refinements ahead of us before we all have the
product under the hood of our cars," he said. "The idea of powering engines with
ethanol has intrigued many people. I think our slogan could be 'Don't drink it - drive
it!' "
|
The SmartPlug,
developed by a company in Sandpoint, is a self-contained ignition system that can burn
just about any type of fuel in low compression engines, including a mixture of ethanol and
water.