When we say Complete Burn, we mean that all of the fuel is being turned into carbon dioxide.  While no one is ready to get excited about CO2 anymore, it is the desired product of combustion and it is not deadly like carbon monoxide and the various nitrous oxides that spew forth from tail pipes and power plants as a result of improper combustion.  We breathe carbon dioxide every day, it's pleasant.  Carbon monoxide, on the other hand, we only breathe right before we die of carbon monoxide poisoning.

A new type of combustion chamber created by researchers at Georgia Tech. has reduced the amount of CO and NOX gasses created by combustion to below anything seen in tradtional combustion (> 10ppm and > 1ppm respectively.)  The new chamber might almost be called emissionless, if it weren't for all that pesky CO2 that it's still emitting. 

 

This ultra-low emission combustion chamber alters one simple precept of combustion.  Instead of mixing the fuel and the air before injecting them into the chamber, it injects the fuel and the air separately.  The flow of air and fuel into the chamber can be directed and altered in order to ensure a more complete and proper burn of the fuel.  The design is much more simple than other high-tech emissions reducing chambers and it could be cost effective for anything from power plants to household water heaters. 

We can also go ahead and add this to innovations that will be making flight more environmentally friendly as putting one of these in an single airplane engine could prevent literally tons of nitrogen oxides from being released into the environment.

 

 Via Georgia Tech.  Spotted at Hugg