Ford Finds A Way To Keep The Internal Combustion Engine Around For Even Longer

While other automakers abandon ICE development, Ford is more committed than ever to building clean combustion engines.

CarBuzz has discovered that Ford has filed a new patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office detailing how combustion engines could be made more efficient by bleeding the vapors captured by the positive crankcase ventilation (PCV) system (or any similar evaporative emissions system) into a precombustion chamber. Something similar already happens in most modern engines, but sometimes the charcoal canister capturing these emissions cannot purge them back into the intake fast enough, so it vents them back into the atmosphere.

The Ford patent makes consideration for a method of adjusting the flow of unspent ventilated crankcase vapors and other emissions delivered from the canister, preventing these emissions from escaping into the air and wasting their remaining potential energy.

A broken or jammed valve in the PCV system can lead to over-pressurization of the system, and once the integrity of the storage canister is compromised, these emissions escape into the atmosphere. Ford’s idea reduces strain on the system, extending longevity, but that’s not the main benefit.

When the system functions normally, these vapors would simply be collected and sometimes fed back into the intake somewhere, and this does not take full advantage of the potential energy that lies therein because this fuel is simply remixed with more fuel and air.

Ford’s idea is better because it would channel these vapors into a pre-chamber, and as Porsche has shown, pre-chamber ignition can unlock plenty of hidden performance. Ensuring a cleaner burn also increases efficiency, as Mazda has proven, as does the reduced buildup of carbon deposits on the intake and exhaust valves.

There are several benefits to this design, including cleaner tailpipe emissions, lower fuel consumption, increased performance, and lower maintenance. All of these advantages sound like good reasons to introduce this technology in the next Mustang facelift, the next F-150 update, or any other revised combustion car, but there may be issues.

The first stumbling block is added complexity, which is followed very closely by the drawback of increased manufacturing costs. If these are non-issues, the tech could still remain in the conceptual phase because other ideas prove to be even better at harnessing performance or increasing efficiency.

Either way, it’s clear that the Blue Oval will explore better combustion engines for as long as possible.