Devize Barrel Engine: The Next Step in Combustion Technology

That thing was smoking like Willy Nelson 😂

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".

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! 😎👍💚🤙

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

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

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

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

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 !!!

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.

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. ❤

It’ll never pass government emissions requirements.

She's chooching more smoke than a locomotive 🤣

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Gotta get that oil consumption under control.

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