Just cause this is right up my ally and I can talk about it a bit, I add a fairly carefully worded reply. The military has had many engines throughout history that ran on multiple fuels primarily diesel engines. Running on JP fuels and diesel are their main sources. Also better for transport as our armed forces do for obvious reasons. Gasoline being limited in many cases particularly in many other countries. There have been many engines through out it's history that have run on different fuels.
Without getting into much, our current prototype is a motorcycle, (the initial prototype was a car) an old 1981 air cooled 550 Yamaha that runs on any available (commercial) fuel. It runs at as lean as 22:1+ for cruise and 16:1 under boost. Any richer on any type of fuel creates detonation. Yes, running lean does not. Because we're an R&D company I wont get into specifics and there are a lot actually. Understanding hydrocarbon based fuels and their supplemental chemistry is a must. Understanding ICE, spark or compression, is secondary. Utilizing real science throughout the realm of application goes without saying. Knowing a butt load of math is priceless. The stock engine in the bike running with the designed system runs very clean and even NOx is significantly reduced. Which is a particular problem in ultra lean spark ignition engines.
The system extracts the internal chemical energy of the fuel, making more efficient use of the fuel first. (that was rather poorly said actually)The bike runs on a stock ignition module and timing is at it's set parameter for gasoline as it was originally designed for. This has taken about 5 years to get to this point. What took the longest was to have cold start utilizing heavy fuels like diesel. Yes temperatures are significant and everything is controlled via inputs from many areas referencing temperature. mechman600 you'll have fun in your experiments, gaining knowledge is fun!
