Gas-diesel engine combo under development It may be hard to
believe, but the beloved gasoline engine that powers more than
200 million cars across America every day didn’t get its status
because it’s the most efficient engine. Diesel engines can be
more than twice as efficient, but they spew soot and pollutants
into the air. Could researchers at the U.S. Department of
Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory engineer a union between
the two — combining the best of both? Steve Ciatti, a mechanical
engineer at Argonne, is heading a team to explore the
possibilities of a gasoline‐diesel engine. The result, so far,
is cleaner than a diesel engine and almost twice as efficient as
a typical gasoline‐powered engine. (To see how the engine works,
go to http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/News/2011/news110504_gas-
diesel.html.) The basic designs for both kinds of engines
actually date back to the 19th century. German engineer Nikolaus
Otto is credited with the gasoline‐fueled four‐stroke design
still used today, but Rudolf Die