The price for all the engine-powered convenience is, of course, pollution. While the emissions from any individual car tend to be low, the combined impact of millions of cars in cities like Los Angeles can be seen, smelled, even felt. Add trucks, aircraft, motorcycles, lawnmowers, snowmobiles, and powerboats to this pollution burden, and it's no wonder the air seems stale.

One major hindrance to designing cleaner-running engines is that the most essential task of the internal combustion engine—the burning of hydrocarbon fuels to release energy—is a highly complex and mysterious process. In an effort to understand it, Omar Knio, a research engineer at Johns Hopkins University, is using NCSA's SGI Origin2000 supercomputer to run intensive mathematical computations of hydrocarbon combustion. This basic research may ultimately enable scientists to predict the identities and concentrations of pollutants under various combustion conditions, thereby helping engineers design cleaner engines.

Access Online | Posted 11-5-2002