Devize Barrel Engine: The Next Step in Combustion Technology 

Opposing pistons is not remotely unique. It has been used several times in the past. Problem is emiisions are bad unless you spend a lot of effort because it is usually a two stroke

That thing was smoking like Willy Nelson 😂

Far from new, this engine configuration was invented by Anthony Michell who patented it in 1917.

What fuel was used during this filming? I don't think the emissions billowing from exhaust would win my stamp of approval.

As with all these new engines the devil is in the detail. Won’t hold my breath.

The barrel engine is a very old idea.

There is an engine that was developed in the 1930s and was certified as an aircraft engine but was overtaken by WWII and never mass produced. It was picked up by Dynacam Company in the late 80s-90s and updated with new metallurgy and technology and was tested in aircraft and Buses and the literature I saw was quite positive. It is like the Barrel engine in profile but instead of the pistons connected to the crankshaft at each end and the combustion chamber in the middle, it was a double headed piston with the solid connecting rod riding a swash plate in the middle so the combustion chambers were at each end and the cylinder heads had rotating valves driven by the each end of the crankshaft. It was a 12 cylinder combustion ends with six double headed pistons sliding back and forth parallel to the crankshaft. The profile was small on the initial Aircraft engine with a weight about 150 lbs and diameter of about 18 inches including piping etc. It produced about 235 HP at 1800 RPM and could idle at about 100 RPM, with good fuel efficiency. They tried to mass market it but the bid engine producers tried to buy them out and when they refused they were essentially run out of business. I don't know what happened to the company product after that. The Big guys and the Venture Capitalists essentiall ruined them. Another victim of "The System".

It’ll never pass government emissions requirements.

I see friction everywhere inside that thing. Driving4Answers had this idea on a video awhile back. Not a winner, if memory serves

Same as the Duke engine. Big fanfare a few years ago then silence. Same goes for the opposable piston engine that VW were supposedly investing in a few years ago. Crickets. Regards from South Africa

Smokes more than a Wankle with burned apex seals. FAIL!

She's chooching more smoke than a locomotive 🤣

There are plenty of revolutionary designs for ICE's, and some of them have a lot of promise. But the biggest problem is one they all share - getting a major manufacturer to adopt them and install them in their offerings to the market. The major manufacturers have vast engineering departments full of people with a vested interest in keeping anything they didn't invent away from consideration by management. There is no way they are going to assess someone else's design and recommend it to the marketing department for the simple reason that management would say, "If we are using someone else's design, why do we need our own engineers?" As a result, we are all stuck with the same old reciprocating piston engines being eternally modified and complicated, and ever more expensive to maintain and repair.

Wikipedia has an interesting article 'Axial (Barrel) engine', very old. Besides the classical book by J K Setright 'Some unusual engines', Douglas Self Site Technology Museum has lots of Info.

Gotta get that oil consumption under control.

Hybrids still have internal combustion engines.

Love the smoke. Love 2 strokes. Love the reliability of 4 strokes Love the power, simplicity and low cost of electric motors though.

Seems to operate similar to old Hough marine steering pump.

Immediate application in military smoke screen production!

*Let's Develop the Water Implosion Engine* I have Experience in this Technology!

This will never fly because it's still essentially a glorified 2 stroke engine. So you're always dealing part of the exhaust charge staying in the cylinders, and part of the intake charge getting out (except with direct fuel injection). At any rate, they can't meet emissions, no matter how you slice it. This combined with excessive complexity, and lubrication and cooling problems make it a no-brainer to look into something else. The Deltic Corporation had a locomotive-sized opposed piston diesel in the 40's and 50's, and while they made good power, they were very dirty and had high maintenance costs. They were finally retired in the 1960's for cleaner burning standard 4 stroke diesels.

I love the Home Depot copper plumbing pipes and Greta will be thrilled with that clean exhaust.

At the end of the day, the first product of this engine will be heat like every other internal combustion engine. Rotational torque is a side effect. This is why internal combustion is dying.

So, it's an opposed piston sleeve ported two stroke.....hence all the smoke, two strokes do have an impressive power to weight ratio but emissions have always been a problem

It's just the same as a airconditioning pump they just put two together an added fule inbetween

A very smokey engine, A duke engine that make you puke on fumes.

Nothing that is efficient smokes like that😂😂😂

This engine still has reciprocating mass, I know of a rotary working prototype (not a wankel rotary) having massive torque at low RPM, 90 degree firing sequence, only 5 moving parts, very simple design, easy to manufacture, just needs recognition !!!

Is similar to a Spanish engine Called Inengine.

3:10 I’m thinking emissions may be an issue. 🤣

Like an automotive air conditioning compressor... for the last 75 years... Combined with the 100 year old design of the Fairbanks Morse Diesel...

this thing is hilarious! The Napier Deltic lives on!

There have been many variants to this theme over the last 50 years or so and no one has gon into full scale production because a crankshaft dose it better than any other system . If they were so good why have none of the major manufacturers taken the barrel up, and you can bet that some of them have built there own to evaluate the system

Mine ran on detonation. Regular crank engines can't handle that much force and result in knocking and pinging. Much more power is captured in non- tangical piston rods, no side loads. Very cool, thanks, Chris! 😎👍💚🤙

Hard to beat the Commer TS3. Don't think this does. Interesting though!

GREAT

A lot of smoke.

It needs a compressor to push air into the cylinders and cooling is possible but not easy. There is a similar concept in development called Innengine.

I see all of these new marvel engines as a way to replace the low compression opposed aircraft engines in piston operating airplanes. Currently these engines require 100 octane leaded fuel to prevent detonation. Detonation in aircraft engines is fatal, destroying the engine so fast the pilot can't overcome it. A light weight power plant that can operate on any fuel available is a Godsend for aviation.

Interesting, it's like opposed piston and rotary combined into one. let's see it run with hydrgogen. It's also interesting that multiple companies are working on the same design. Patents are often the death of a new technology, so it's nice to see that doesn't seem to be an obstacle here... yet I wonder what is preventing someone from trying to patent it? is it an old design? has someone published something to keep it from being patented? There are more questions to ask I think.

'...minimising friction as the forces...cancel out.'? No, it's not friction that's minimised, it's imbalance. You should have consulted an engineer...

Yeah...needs mixture adjustments...or something. Way dirty

I work in hydraulic engineering for 30 years and barrel like this is nothing new. All hydraulic axial piston pumps and motors work this way

Unusual engines aren't generally liked, (remember the Wankel), while I know little about it, I fear it could have a high wear rate, poor fuel consumption, poor emissions, & be costly to service.🤔

I somehow don't think Noel Duke would appreciate your over-laying and inter-mingling his Z-axis engine rotary engine with the VERY different 'DEVIZE Barrel engine'. ... and I would know; Noel is a personal friend of mine. Barrel-type axial engine's have been re-cycled over, and over and they have NOTHING new to offer. All fail because using a cam plate to translate reciprocating loads over the long-term life of a typical automotive engine is a non-starter. From your accent you are obviously South African so why not look in your own backyard? The Van Loewy (my memory may be faulty on the exact spelling of the name) is a far more interesting axial engine from the 1980/90's. It used patented universal joint to articulate the piston-rod/wobble-plate connection such that it eliminated the figure-of-8 oscillation and resolved the motion to a pure straight-line motion. superior to any cam-type axial engine! How about it?

It is not a new concept dating back to the swashplate engines from a "wobble plate" to replace the crankshaft designed by Anthony Mitchell in 1917

Nope. Even if it were clean, it isn’t anywhere near the >95% efficiency of today’s pure electric motors. As batteries improve EVs will take over. Gas will be relegated to museums and hobbyists.

Barrel engines have been around for years. The one field where they would have had a real chance was in aviation. Compact. Light weight. High power density. Every design considered failed. Every single one.

What a load of rubbish. As mentioned by others, opposing pistons are no new thing and of course it is a 2 stroke but this wasn't mentioned. Notoriously inefficient and polluting. Lucky we have electronics controlling the fuel injection and spark timing along with cylinder de-activation to try to mitigate this problem. Problem is these same systems also improve economy and emissions levels in already cleaner 4 strokes. Projected horsepower figures? WTF? Haven't tested it yet after more than quarter of a century of wasted research and development? Give us the projected emission numbers. Possibly the most useless, over-engineered, oversold and underperforming device of all time.

Impracticable, To many universal joints parts transmitting the power.

And just from the cut away in the thumbnail I can point out the most important problem, too many moving parts! K.I.S.S.

No matter what anyone says, EVs are the future car that is now. China will force their competitors to invest in EVs. Range improves almost every month, and prices are definitely getting better. It's just history repeating itself when gas vehicles over took the horse and buggy.

I think a 10 piston version with the swash plates mounted static and the PTO derived from the rotating mass might be something to consider because burning oil isn't advantageous.

Regarding Anthony Michell: indeed, there is plenty of documentation to show that he invented this engine (termed an axial engine in his nomenclature) in the first half of the 20th century in its basic principles, including a version with opposing pistons working on single combustion chambers.

I see the dying structure inside. The flat wobble plate generates sine piston moving pattern that makes low efficiency and unable to survive.

You show animation of a 5 cylinder radial engine. Theirs seems like they changed the swashplate from having sockets over each rod to something different. There will be wear issues with that. Radial engines have been around for at least 100 years. This is a small version of one and if they have a way to control emissions, maybe they have something.

Looks like it would be nearly impossible to keep the internal friction points properly oiled....

The main problem with that it's way too much metal on metal it's going to require substantial oil pressure and oil Cooling and let alone the fact it has very little capacity for cooling so why it's running on a stand by itself it's not going to have to cool itself they're going to have to build a whole another motor to even withstand the temperatures of pulling a car and cooling itself on hot asphalt let alone you're going to have to run dual oil filter setup because micro particles is just going to eat that motor alive

Its rubbish thats wby manufacture fail

Actually this design was used to power torpedos sometime in the mid twentieth century, then revived again in the eighties to power light aircraft called Dynacam. Don’t think it ever really took off though….no pun intended! Great idea and just needs $$$$ to make it reliable and, more important……AFFORDABLE!

Where’s the blower? Opposed piston engines are inherently two stroke engines with forced induction. This video does not mention it. I think it’s on the side of the barrel engine but is explicitly not mentioned.

It's not a new step in combustion technology it doesn't matter how you arrange the cylinders the same thermodynamic rules apply, it ain't new it ain't special and it don't comply with any emissions regs

It looks interesting but he offers very little technical information on it. Like what is the deal on the engine balance and is it a 2 stroke or a 4 stroke, or something else? It also looks like he was showing two different engine technologies. The one without a crankshaft and the one with opposing pistons looks like two different engines.

All these engine have the same problem , they burn fuel , electric has varstly more touch , is even smaller and lighter , and fewer moving parts , and works right now , by the time problems are sorted for these ice engines , eletric will have sorted there,s , leaving ice out in the cold

Id like to see hydrogen run vehicle.

Obsolete. New combustion tech has the potential to make EVs obsolete, but NOT this tech.

So that new next step innovation has been under development for 31 years and it's still not in production. Then it will never be.

Either poor combustion or large loss lubrication system.

That voice-over is AI? That smoking engine doesn't look good 😮

Saw another YT on this said only gives useful power at high RPM so eats fuel when it it is slow RPM

Lovely grinding action. How long before it wears out?

One of many reason to replace bought and paid for governments

I had 6 pistons on each side opposite running on a swash plate. 6 pistons fired at once, 3 on each side. I utilized the Burke stroke... better than two stroke engines. Very powerful clean energy. ❤

If it’s got to go up and down before it goes round and round there’s more work to be done……

The engine is a Mosquito Fogger too!!🦟🦟☁️☁️ 😂😂

From the exhaust vision it looks like a very dirty engine.

The guys running it in the garage with barebones exhaust, though?

I think Bristol , UK , made them in the fifties for buses.

Opposed-piston engines always have cooling issues, with many failed efforts done before. The only successful opposed piston design was a German diesel two-stroke used in a number of aircraft during WW II, with excellent fuel consumption, but like most diesels of the period, lots of toxic emissions. The piston deactivation technique has been used in Cadillac V8 engines, but the dynamic adjustment of fuel feed, valve shutoff, and timing is a challenge to retain engine effectiveness and actually reduce fuel consumption. The friction associated with the heavy swashplate also works against engine durability.

Albert Harvey Rotary Engines

Piston engines will never die. Just needs water

Another stock market vaporware engine. If there's no cylinder head why did the animation clearly depict a cylinder head with spark plugs. I'm guessing it's supposed to use piston ports for gas flow in and out of the engine. That's probably why there is an external blower. These can create oil control issues. Based on the cloud of smoke coming from the exhaust, 'Houston we have a problem'. Junk.

In terms of efficiency, internal combustion engines are all thermodynamic heat engines, which limits them to about 40% maximum efficiency with the materials available to us. Electric power trains are not thermodynamically limited, and are routinely 90%+ efficient. IC is fundamentally inferior in this respect.

Too many moving parts to break!

Also known as Scalzo engine

That's a lot of smoke, to little to late

0:10 you must be behind the times.

There's that weird no moving parts one where the heat and light generate electricity.

So it's a mosquito fogger?!

looks like an a/c compressor...

No one noticed when the tech, sitting with laptop, cleared the smoke.

I only care about the BSFC. If it's not higher than a conventional ICE, it's not good.

I love internal combustion engines too, their interesting, cleverly designed, make great noises and are fun to drive. I also like steam engines for all of the same reasons. However, when Tesla proved conclusively that BEVs are practical, even with their first generation vehicles, it was only a matter of time before ICE went the same way are ECE (steam engines). The end to end efficiency of Steam Engines tops out at a few percent when you factor in mining for coal. It's double digits for ICE and at least three times better if you use batteries and electric motors. It's not just about end to end efficiency though, it's about end to end complexity. Drilling, processing and transporting oil is hideously energy hungry compared to electricity production. When it comes to the power train, BEVs are so simple, like a child's toy compared to ICE. There's simply no way back now we've got this far.

a waste of time indeed

Is it a 2 stroke ?.???

How can I test one in my car?

Looks like it smokes

Nothing new here.

Great intro. Not

Ac compressor