Pulse Plugs - 20,000X More Powerful Than Spark Plugs. Greater Horsepower, Fuel Efficiency, Torque.

How Pulse Plugs Work – By Releasing Energy Stored From the Ignition System in a Pulse Circuit

How They Work

For 100 years, ignition technology has been dominated by spark plugs (see history of spark plugs). Pulse plugs are a radical departure from spark plugs. Their physical dimensions are the same as spark plugs because they have to interface with the engine and ignition system just like spark plugs. But this is where the similarity ends.
Pulse plugs incorporate a pulse circuit, which stores incoming electrical energy from the ignition system and releases the stored energy in a powerful pulse of power. Instead of 50 watts of peak power typical of all spark plugs, pulse plugs deliver up to 1 million watts of peak power. So where does the pulse plug get its incredible power?

When the ignition signal is sent to a traditional spark plug, it begins to ionize the spark gap. This means that the voltage builds in the gap until a spark can be formed. During this ionization phase, which lasts about 5 millionths of a second, the incoming voltage (which has nowhere to go) heats up ignition components including the spark plug. This is wasted energy. When the ignition voltage overcomes the resistance in the spark gap, the spark is created with an initial discharge of approximately 50 watts. Once created, the spark resides between the electrodes at very low power for over a period of 30 millionths of a second.
What is different about a pulse plug is that instead of heating ignition parts during the ionization phase, this energy is stored in the integral circuit inside the pulse plug. When the ignition power overcomes the resistance in the spark gap, the pulse circuit discharges all of its accumulated power - 1 million watts - in 2 billionths of a second!
A simple way to think about pulse plugs is that they are similar to a camera flash, whereas spark plugs are more like a flashlight. A camera flash is exponentially brighter than a flashlight even though they both may use the same battery.
Tests at an independent laboratory demonstrate how Pulstar™ pulse plugs burn fuel more efficiently than spark plugs. In this high-speed video (shot at 68,000 frames per second), you can actually see the ignition plume of Pulstar™ growing at more than twice the speed of the spark plug. Pulstar™ generates a much larger spark than spark plugs, which reduces overall burn time and burns the fuel more completely. Once created, the spark dissipates over a period of 30 millionths of a second.

With increased cylinder pressure, the pistons are pushed down with more force, which, in turn, generates more torque in the crankshaft, more liveliness to the throttle and more power to the wheels.
Of course, if you don't use this torque to go faster, the engine does its work with less effort resulting in better fuel economy.
Another way that Pulstar™ improves efficiency is by reducing cycle-to-cycle variation. Cycle-to-cycle variation occurs in every engine to some degree and is caused by the dynamics of combustion, load, fuel quality, mixture of air to fuel and many other combustion variables. These variables can cause the spark plug to generate a weak spark and in the worst case, a misfire. This variability in ignition timing robs all spark ignited, internal combustion engines of up to 10% of their efficiency.
The powerful spark of Pulstar™ ignites fuel more precisely, which can reduce cycle-to-cycle variation by up to 50%. This is an important contribution to improving fuel economy.

did you see the price tag? $25 each. they used to say the slit fires where the best because of the split alternated electrode surface area. but they didnt say that after a 1,000 miles that gap would become filled with sludge and it performed worse than a regular plug.

with such small components, i wonder how they would stand against rough driving, bouncing, the occasional hard hit on a pot hole, cold/heat expansion and contraction, premature electrode wear? .

i didnt have time to read the article, maybe this is already addressed there.

I think they say the plugs are expected to last as long as normal plugs.

I don't get any carbon buildup in my engine and my oil stays clean for almost a year. Whatever plugs I use will last a very long time.

$25/plug for now. They did get quite an investment from some group so when moving more into the marketplace, I expect they could come to under $10 each in the next 1 year or so or more. Just need the volume.

Hi all.
I bought the pulstar sparkplugs for my toyota yaris. They arrived today and I decided to test them out on a waterjet engine so that I can compare the spark from pulstar plug to an ordinary spark plug. So far I have not seen any visible difference in the spark appearence. I mean, shouln't the pulstar spark be brighter and more powerfull? Here's some pictures:





That on the left is the pulstar spark plug and on the right is an ordinary spark plug. Do you see any difference? I tested this out on an ordinary waterjet ignition system and also on an MSD system. On the MSD system both sparks were brighter, but the brightness of both sparks seemed similar. I could not tell any difference. I already emailed the seller about this and if it should be so.
So far it does not seem to be a smart investment
I wont install these sparkplugs in my car till the end of this week, before my magnet fuel saver test is going on now and so far the ceramic magnets seem to work great
I will keep you updated.

Edit:
I looked closely on the pulstar plugs schematic. I know that they are not showing everything that is inside that plug, but for what I can see, it looks very much like a small Tesla coil. We have our primary coil (red one) around the secondary coil (the green one) that is wound on a ferrite core. Based of what I know about electric discharges in engine from various sources, their claims could be true.

I received an answer from the pulstar plug engineers:
I guess I will have to test it on my car to see any benefits

Don’t feel bad. I purchased a set of these plugs also…about 2 months ago. I did the same thing you did and expected to see a BIG difference. I only purchased 2 thank goodness. I wanted to see how it worked and take one apart and do tests on the other. I then was going to buy 5 more for my car but from what I see…it is all Photo shop. They might be using some sort of light filter on the pictures. I even tried to increase the voltage over a normal system buy using a coil I have made for other tests…with no difference.

Karl

I don't see what effect a high pressure environment could have on the spark .... Especially if its just ambient air.....
But it would be real easy to test their claims if you build a small vacuum/pressure chamber. And you definetly have the mechanical ability!

Karl and Jetijs,

How much did you both pay? Are they still in the $25 range each?

Have either of you tried to make a Firestorm Plug like Robert Krupas?
You definitely have the skills to do it.

Aaron, I paid about 100$ for 4 spark plugs + 37$ shipping. That is much! I wont build any pressure chambers or anything like that, instead I will test if and how much the torque and fuel economy I can get using those spark plugs in a small 1KW diesel generator. This will be much easier.
Aaron, who is Robert Krupas? Any links?
Karl, did you make any other tests than only a visual spark comparison?
Thanks,
Jetijs

Hi Jetijs,

Robert Kurpa's Firestorm Plugs

Yes, even Smokey Yunick (spelling??) confirmed it when he was alive.

Ok, I guess I could make a pressure chamber form plexiglass. I do not have access to nitrogen gas, but I do have some argon gas tanks. I think that the main purpose for an inert gas in certain pressure in those pressure tanks, is because the gas allows the spark plugs to ionize the surrounding space better and thus make the spark brighter. I can test this with argon and see what the difference is. If there wont be any visual difference, I will make some tests with the diesel generator. If this also wont provide any positive results, then we can clearly say, that those pulstar plugs are worth nothing and there is no point in spending money on them.
Thanks.

I thought about machining a pressure chamber but my thoughts are that the pressure in an engine gets over 1000 PSI during the combustion process. I think that the air is only about 150 PSI before the fuel is burned/combusted. Air is a dielectric and the higher the pressure the smaller the spark! At least that is what I was told in university. That is why we use vacuum to increase the spark in a gap. In a vacuum tube, electron flows easily as there is no gas to inhibit the flow. In my aircraft we pressurize the magnetos, if we did not when flying at high altitude the magnetos would ark internally causing catastrophic failure. My final thought on the pressure is this…high compression engines use higher voltage and closer spark gaps to overcome the gas dielectric.

I did not notice any difference in the color of the spark…or type of spark. So I don’t think that this spark plug was anything special. I truly was disappointed in what I saw…as it did not look like it was the X amount that they promised in the brochure. I did not feel that making a pressure chamber at that time was worth it… Jetijs let me know if you are going to machine a chamber…I don’t have the tap to thread one.

I just thought of a simple test…I have seen spark plug testers in the past.

Autolite Aviation Spark Plug Cleaner and Tester from Aircraft Spruce

I even use to own one of these things…lol. But I sold it not that long ago. Most airports have them as you need to test the spark plugs every 100 hrs on an aircraft. The only problem is I don’t live near an airport anymore. I will think about where to find one of these machines.

It would be interesting to see if the spark is better under pressure than an ordinary plug.

I paid 25$ each also and about 30$ shipping.

Karl

Karl,
that spark plug tester seems nice, it's a shame you do not have one anymore It would answer our questions. I always thought that the less pressure, the higher the resistance through the spark gap. And the more pressure, the less resistance. I assumed this because what is a spark? A spark is a plasma, that conducts electricity. But this plasma appears only when the atoms between the high voltage source and the ground (spark gap) are ionized so far, that they start to conduct electricity and a spark appears. So, if we have a vacuum in the spark gap, there are no atoms to ionize in order to get the electricity to flow. But if we have a high pressure gas between the electrodes, there is much more atoms there to ionize. I may be wrong, so please someone correct me
Thanks,
Jetijs

Today I got my hands on a 3kW generator. I made a custom fuel measuring glass with marks for every 50 grams of fuel. Then I connected this new fuel tank to the generator. I loaded the generator with a 600w load and measured what time does it take to consume 250ml of fuel. I did this several times to get an average result. Then I replaced the original spark plug with the pulstar pulse plug and made these tests again. Each test was about 15 minutes long and I three tests for each spark plug. Then I calculated the average seconds and the difference percentage. Pulstar spark plug could tahe the load about 2% longer than the original spark plug. This might be due to the fact that the original spark plug is a cheap one and has smaller spark gap spacing thus smaller spark, that may not ignite the gas mixture on some pulses. After all, 2% is about 15 seconds of time. I will make some more tests tomorrow with longer cycles and bigger load on the generator. Also I will try a high quality iridium spark plug from a water jet engine. Then we will see if those pulstar spark plugs really do what they claim, or are they just a scam.







On the last picture the right spark plug is the original generator spark plug. The other is the pulstar plug.
Thank you,
Jetijs.

Hi all.
I have done some long tests. The pulstar spark plug seems to do some good afterall. At first I tried to load the generator with a 600w load, this mada a difference in economy of 2% in favor to pulstar spark plug. Then I increased the load to 800w and the difference reached 2.8%. Then I loaded the generator with all I had - 1900W. This made a fuel economy of 3.85%.
Then I made a test with an iridium spark plug, this one has an /\ shaped electrode made of iridium. This material deals with heat and burning up better, also the /\ shape makes it difficult for some impurities to stick between the spark gap. This made only 1.3% more economy compared to the standard spark plug. I also tried the standard spark plug and a ceramic magnet array around the fuel line. The magnets gave 1.5% fuel economy. So I figured that magnets + pulstar plugs should give 3.85+1.5=5.35% economy. But this setup gave only a slight improvement compared to pulstar plugs alone - 4.25% economy.
I did some math, if I use these spark plugs on my car, I have to drive at least 15000 kilometers till these spark plugs pays themselves off. Who knows what their condition will be after that. That makes me believe, that this is not a smart investment at all.
I will make some more tests and keep you updated.
Here are some pictures of the iridium spark plug and my generator load:





Thanks,
Jetijs

Aaron, do the Firestorm plugs use a standard ignition coil, or MSD or something fancy.

The plugs themselves look of fairly simple construction.
Thanks!

Can we even buy Firestorm? I did asearch and can't find anyone who makes or sells them

To my understanding, the Firestorm need an enhanced ignition. I don't know if that means a higher voltage coil, capacitive discharge like CDI or what.

I think the plugs have no resistor in them.

The original prototypes were made by a jeweler.

Krupa look at used plugs and saw they liked to wear down into a half sphere shape so he thought "why not just make them like that to begin with." So he enlarged the head on the electrode stem and put wire loops on the ground side so equidistant spacing from the mushroom head annode. Therefore they can't misfire like other plugs. If the residual ionization in one area is too high for spark to jump, it simply jumps elsewhere...no misfire.

Krupa is one of the developers of the split fire plug so he didn't come out of nowhere.

I chatted with him a few times online and he is pretty quiet and doesn't say much.

Bosch tested 0% gap growth over their testing on these plugs...basically will never wear out...virtually no emissions from the tailpipe.

14.7:1 is always claimed to be the idea mixture...that is ONLY with a simple spark, but when using plasma bursts, you can release a lot more energy from a lot leaner mixture. 20:1, 40:1 and even just for show and not necessarily practical 100:1 was demonstrated.

I personally think these plugs or duplicates of the concept are what will make water powered engines practical as these plugs split water on contact. Even if people don't have high liters per minute water gas production, these plugs will let an engine run on it...in my opinion.

To think of it, I don't have the engineering skills, tools or experience of a lot of you here, but perhaps a non-fouler can be the base of one...insulate center annode from the non-fouler stick it through and weld on the loops...back side, some connector to stick plug wire too. I don't know if it would be as simple as this but maybe makes it easier than making from scratch?