Submersible Robot Diesel Recycles Its Exhaust

An Anonymous Coward writes: "This might be a good weekend topic to kick around. Trends in Japan has a short article on an undersea robot that uses a contained diesel. 'The engine itself is a completely closed system that needs no intake of air to run and chemically processes exhaust gas inside the robot. On-board devices reinfuse the exhaust with oxygen after removing its carbon dioxide and reuse the gas in the fuel mixture. The seawater is kept clean, as no gas is released.' Any /.'s working with this tech? Can it be applied to low emission vehicles?"

Comments

Re:Very nice.

[dublin]

If I understand turbo correctly, all it does is take some of the pressure from the exhaust gas and uses that to force more air into the intake, consuming more fuel but also providing more power.

Correct. A turbocharger (technically, they're called turbosuperchargers, the nomenclature you'll find in older literature) simply captures kinetic energy and heat energy (via gas expansion) from the hot exhaust gasses and uses that energy to stuff more air into the engine's intake. This results in a denser fuel/air charge and volumetric efficiency of over 100%. Plain old superchargers do the same thing, but are driven directly by the engine rather than by the exhaust. Now that they can be made cheaply, superchargers are gaining in popularity (check out some of Mercedes new motors) since they avoid the "turbo lag problem, and also provide a cooler intake charge (the centrifugal compressors in most turbos put a lot of paddle wheel work into the air.)

As an aside, high performance normally aspirated engines (no turbo or supercharger) can also exceed 100% volumetric efficiency, but not by a whole lot. A good turbocharger or supercharger system does *amazing* things to the performance and efficiency of a car, and if you take good care of them (use really good oil and change it religiously), they aren't a significant maintenance problem.

I'm always surprised that we don't have more multidisciplinary hackers here on /. that are also capable of mech hacking. It's a different, but very similar art.

You into rim jobs?

[Blaede]

So in other words, you like getting your ASSHOLE licked? Since you like a tongue probing the inner circumference of your ASSHOLE, who knows what else you like inserted there?