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Thompson Lightweight Rotary-Yoke engine

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Sale Memorandum

Thompson Lightweight Rotary-Yoke engine


Ref.IH014

Location Re-locatable

Asking Price £ 150,000

Confidential offered for sale

Asking price includes:

Intellectual property rights to technology
Excellent growth and expansion opportunities
Developed by precision engineering business with trusted and respected name
Half the weight and smaller volume than a conventional engine
Post sale support, handover and training
Finance available to buy this business subject to status. All regulated business is passed to independent financial advisors who are regulated by the FSA

Business profile:

Developed by Thompson Engine Developments, a leading precision engineering business in the South of England, this highly innovative SI Rotary-Yoke engine has been designed and details specified using modern design tools. Costs of development to date, which has involved several stages of detailed research are estimated at £750,000.

This engine was originally designed for Formula 1 use in collaboration with a specialist engine builder. Four-stroke, in an eight cylinder, three litre format, this unit is designed to provide well over 800bhp (600KW) at 23000rpm in normally aspirated form. It does this within a unit design which is only half the weight and has a much smaller volume than a conventional engine layout – approximately half the volume/weight and 60% of the components of a conventional engine.

The engine incorporates a skirted disc valve with two ports running at one quarter engine speed enabling size and weight reductions. The skirt of the valve acts as a cylinder liner covering the full stroke of the piston. In detail each valve is driven from an integral gear on the crankshaft via a jockey pinion located in the engine block. Drive is picked up by a face gear on the bottom of the skirt with a valve itself rotating at one quarter engine speed. This valve has two opposing ports and rotates against a bearing face in the block. The bearing face is positively lubricated and is coated with a low friction, hard wearing coating. The valve itself is also coated. Combustion is initiated by two spark plugs for each cylinder, one for each of the two combustion chambers present within the cylinder. The bearing surface of the valve has been designed with guide channels and pad thrust bearings to uitlise the lubricating oil flow. The oil is fed through a central gallery, in which there is a retaining bolt, which restrains the valve along its axis. The oil feed is picked up by the rotary valve, which forces it, outwards radially in a centrifugal action. Most oil passes over the face of the disc as a cooling medium, while some is routed to the trust pads for lubrication purposes. The oil then passes through the crankcase scavenge chamber, where it is recovered back into the oil circulstion system, which cools the entire engine. The valves are machined from solid and then coated.

This environmentally friendly engine is compact by the choice of rotary valves and the use of a piston asembly utilising a ‘Scotch yoke’ mechanism, a basic design concept that has been in use from as far back as 1910. The concept can best be described as a twin-row horizontally opposed design, based around a four-cylinder module consisting of two cylinders above two cylinders. An important feature is that this basic unit can be multiplied lengthways to produce eight-, twelve- and sixteen- cylinder versions as desired or alternatively a single row two cylinder version by removing the two upper cylinders from the basic module. For the twin row variants, each row has its own crankshaft. These rows are counter – rotating and geared together giving an engine being in complete primary and secondary balance. The selction of a skirted disk valve with two ports running at one quarter engine speed has been made to accomodate size and weight reductions. The skirt of the valve acts as a cylinder liner covering the full stroke of the piston.

The cooling of the engine has recived particular attention – designed to be 100% oil cooled, although the engine could easily be conventionally water cooled in different applications. Passage of oil through the rotary valve provides a centrifugal pump effect, which boosts the system. The conventional gear pump feeds the oil to the centre feed crankshafts for lubrication purposes. The system is positively scavenged and a conventional oil/air separator employed for dry sump applications. There are two spark plugs per cylinder to acccomodate the twin combustion chambers in the valve. The engine is controlled by an adapted and developed engine management system and the spark plugs are of conventional design. Fuel is fed through an injector for each bank with a sequential electronic fuel injection system of conventional design.

Built to a fully instrumented research engine, this concept offers significant benefits including lower weight and lower emissions. As such this represents an excellent investment opportunity enabling an engineering business to secure the Intellectual Property rights to technology that is not only proven but of significant importance in a number of markets. As such it represents an almost unique investment possibility for an engineering business to secure a product of their own with on-going development potential.
Key strengths:

This design is a highly innovative and creative European design and has been given an Europ. With the rotary design researched to the full, all of the inherent advantages can be exploited to the full.

Through its use of rotary valves, the emissions of this engine are much lower than normal combustion engines making this design very useful in the fight against green house gases – particularly as more and more vehicles hit the road throughout the world. The rotary concept also appears to allow a lower than average combustion temperature. The design produces ultra low emissions on conventional fuels and near zero emissions on Hydrogen.

The compact design is particularly vibration free, with fewer components and therefore resource friendly, potentially more relaible and very cheap to manufacture.

Key opportunities:

This engine has been designed for reduced emissions and fuel efficiency rather than maximum power at high speed. The potential uses are many, providing as it does efficiency and emission advantages as well as being lightweight. Its high power to weight ratio (P/W) and small size makes this creative design highly relevant for the new niche market of hybrid cars when the engine is running on gasoline or LPG. This will bring reduced emission levels whilst providing a practical hybrid solution – and may well provide an ideal solution for urban transport until fuel cell technologies are brought into service.
Premises:

As this sale is limited to the Intellectual Property rights to the technology, there are no premises included in the sale of this business.
Financial profile:
All financial discussions will take place directly between the vendor and all interested parties under the auspices of Turner Butler.

The Asking Price of £150,000 is a fraction of the investment involved in developing the technology to its present form.
Employees:

There are no employees included in the sale of this business.
Handover and training:

Key personnel involved in the development of the technology will be available for a period of time, to be agreed, to ensure a smooth handover.
Reason for sale:

Not considered core to the main business offering of the company that developed the technology, the current Owner of the business has decided to pass the opportunity on to new Owners to realise its full potential and fully capitalise on the work that has been done to date.
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