CEI was founded in1977 by Michael Ward, Ph.D., Harvard University. He worked to find a solution to lean burn that addressed fuel efficiency and emissions. What made lean burn so compelling is that it offered a way out of the high cost and complexity needed for fuel efficiency. To paraphrase the Boston Globe, while others “chased flashier technologies”, Michael pursued the more challenging but the less costly technology: the lean burn engine.

In 2000, CEI built a prototype lean burn engine, the world’s first low-cost, 2-valve, high efficiency engine, enhanced by the CEI Ignition. Typical engines run at ratios of 15 to 1 air-fuel ratio (AFR) while CEI’s engine ran, according to the Globe, “comfortably at ratios of 30 to 1", reducing “CO2 emissions, considered the leading cause of global warming”. It increased fuel efficiency by 30%, same as the diesel, without the diesel’s weight, cost, and complexity. It is backed by four patents granted in 2007 and three patent applications filed in 2009. 

In 2007, the U.S. passed tough fuel economy standards. The $40,000 Electrical Vehicle (plug-in hybrid), is promoted by G.M. as a solution to our over-dependence on foreign oil.  The EV is also promoted as a viable alterative to the $10,000 lean burn gasoline car. Few people would buy the EV unless it is heavily subsidized. Oil prices are high because the high efficiency, lean burn engine is a well kept secret. Car makers have been able to suppress lean burn for years, which made it very difficult for people to stay involved in lean burn, except for Michael for whom lean burn and fuel efficiency was a life goal. A few people provided support: Bob Lefevre, Elaine, Chuck, Kosta.

    Fuel efficiency remained a priority for 30 years. Chrysler reported in Design News that CEI appeared to have “the enabling technology for the lean burn engines of the future”. Four years later, the Globe, the SAE, and DN reported on our success. See “Lean Burn Lives”. The leanest achieved before was 28 to 1, reported by the Economist, which introduced lean-burn as “the Holy Grail of car engineers”. In 2000, CEI smashed the lean burn barrier by burning a homogeneous mixture of 33 to 1 AFR.  Chrysler and Honda, the first to pursue lean burn in the mid 70's, made the most efficient and powerful engines 25 years later, similar to the 2-valve, 2-plug engine without its lean burn capability. The Honda Fit is a powerful 4-cylinder engine with an efficiency of the diesel. The Chrysler Hemi set records in efficiency and power for the V-8.

Automotive News has written that “Combining gasoline engines and electric motors ... is the most ineffective and expensive method of cutting CO2 emissions”. Converting biomass-to-fuel assumes expensive oil, and “clean” coal remains a myth. A fuel that is plentiful in the U.S. is natural gas. The U.S. could meet its energy needs by heating its homes with natural gas and supplementing it with solar, and by using gasoline from low-cost oil and supplementing it with ethanol for greater power, and using on-board hydrogen production enhanced by lean burn for greater efficiency, and using wind power to supply our ever growing electrical needs.

  $5,000 is estimated as needed to replace the standard engine with a diesel/hybrid to meet new CAFE standards.  Coupling the Ward/May 4-stroke and the Uniflow/Gnome 2-stroke engine with the CEI ignition can be the short-term and intermediate-term lean burn technologies. Hybrids and EVs costing $20,000 to $40,000, versus a high efficiency, lean burn gasoline powered car can cost as little as $10,000. The “greens” believe that their only choice is the diesel/hybrid and EVs, and Detroit still believes that lean burn cannot be solved.

A detailed design of a low-cost, squish-flow engine with simple-to-make vertical valves and spark plugs was completed in 2009. Called the “Ward/May Lean Burn Engine”, it is a squish-flow, 2-valve, 2-plug engine, and is the first 4-stroke engine to maximize fuel efficiency.  It can be built in one year. Like the May Fireball, it is a lean-burn, fast-burn, high compression engine with 40% gain in fuel efficiency, proved on a VW Dasher by Michael May 30 years ago. We solved the remaining problems of the Fireball to become an easy-to-manufacture, low cost, high efficiency, lean burn engine. In the form of a 2-stroke Inverted Cross Scavenged engine with an in-cylinder fuel injector, it will be the final solution to the Lean Burn Engine. In the form of a 2-stroke ICS engine, it looks superficially like the Fiat 500 two-cylinder engine but is a much more powerful and efficient, with many other advantages, e.g. 2-valves instead of four, a single overhead cam, etc.

A BRIEF BIO OF DR. WARD AND SYNOPSIS OF CEI

Michael Archimedes was born in Kampala, Uganda of Greek parents; went to Greece, and then to England for high school; received the Bachelors and Masters in Physics in the U.S., and the Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Harvard University in 1976. In 1973, the U.S. had the first oil embargo, and became aware of energy efficiency. Michael learned about lean burn from Dr. Fred Kern, a recent graduate of the Combustion Lab of MIT. In 1977, at the time of Jimmy Carter, a commitment was made to meet the challenges of fuel efficiency. We applied to the fossil fuels utilization program of the Energy Department, and with the help and positive interest of our representative Paul Tsongas, we formed CEI and subsequently were funded for a three year program to find a solution to lean burn.

Without elaborating, we solved lean burn by burning mixtures of 32 to 1 air-fuel ratio, considered well beyond the lean flammability limit, and were awarded “Best Paper of the Year” in 1980 for that work.  But going from a laboratory rig, to a working engine, was not practical.  For three decades not three years, Michael persisted, and despite difficult odds, succeeded. In the end, a practical, low-cost solution to lean burn was found, similar to Ford’s work on the PROCO in 1978, but much simpler. Yet lean burn remains a question in the auto industry’s mind despite witnesses and articles written in the Globe and Design News. When governments and industries abandon a technology as unrealizable, then there is a natural resistance to its acceptance.

In 2004, CEI could no longer support the quest for lean burn. Federal Mogul formed a relationship with CEI which lasted until early 2007, when the Head of Technology left FM. In 2007 to 2008, Diamond formed a relationship with Dr. Ward, but it ended in 2008 when Michael had a second stroke, despite his making a major breakthrough in coil design in 2008, which he filed as a patent in 2009, with a royalty free license granted to CEI should a patent issue. The CEI Board and Elaine Ward supported the effort in part of 2009.

The 4-stroke Ward/May engine was created in 2008 and patented by Michael in 2009. The 2-stroke ICS engine with dual halo-disc plugs and an in-cylinder electronic fuel injector was created and patented by Michael in 2009, as the final solution to the Lean Burn Engine with the highest efficiency, lowest emissions, and the engine with the highest power density.

CONCLUSION

The tragedy today is the direction car makers are taking, e.g. 4-valves instead of 2-valves, and overly complex and expensive technologies, such as hybrids, fuel cells, and HCCI systems. Car makers too often find themselves caught up in the all too familiar “stay the course”, blind to lean burn and unable to make the better choice when it avails itself to them. It is my goal to show the advantage of our patented technologies to car makers, especially to car makers of 2-valve, 2-plug engines, e.g. Chrysler, Honda, Ford and Nissan. While diesels are useful in truck engines, the far better choice for cars is the lean burn engine for its simplicity, low cost, light weight, low emissions, and high power and high efficiency.

Fuel efficiency has come to its own, not only because of the desire to be more efficient, but because we stand to do irreparable damage to our world through global warming. The rapid melting of glaciers and polar ice-caps, and the natural loss of refrigeration that they can provide to cool the tropics, is becoming so serious a problem that we need to act now if we are going  to solve the problems of overheating of our planet and the flooding of the our coastal regions. Such are the places of my early childhood, Kenya and Uganda, which sit on the equator, and my parents homes, the islands of Samos and Crete.  I have committed over 30 years of work researching, developing, and understanding the complexities of fuel economy and vehicle costs, and have achieved a level of clarity that can only help us master these difficult challenges.