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Hydrogen-based Rotary Engine?
Seabird99 writes: "I came across this article at one of my car related forums and thought that I'd pass it on here. I have always been intrigued by "alternative" technologies where they relate to artificial locomotion." For some reason Slashdot gets a lot of submissions of wacko energy concepts - power from nothing, power from sand, power from a black box, engines that get 500 miles to the gallon... Perhaps this is more of the same, but at least it's an interesting write-up.
And now . . . someone has to come up with a way to generate hydrogen en masse and deliver it to your nearest filling station. Not to mention store it and dispense it there.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Here's a little more info if you weant to do some research.
Tom.
Oh arse
This would be a boon to consumers, since fewer moving parts (no transmission are driveshaft) would likely mean fewer repairs.
Would automakers be for it? Most likely not. They make a substantial amount of money from repairs and maintenance. And to think of the outrage from auto-repair shops, cutting their business as well.
It's an excellent idea - less weight, much better fuel, fewer moving parts, etc. But there's a lot of opposition ahead.
there was an interesting site with something that truely looked interesting (ffrom the grainy RM streaming video hehe), but apparently he has been arrested (according to some yahoo! news article i cant find right now) for fraud or something like that :P
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Storage and transport of hydrogen isn't really the problem anymore. Years ago, there were already test with hydrogen tanks that contained alluminium particles, which bind the hydrogen, making it a lot safer to transport and store hydrogen. Safer actually then a tank of gasoline.
(I wouldn't be surprised if these tanks are already widely in use now)
The problem is ofcourse to generate large amounts of hydrogen.
Given the succes of recent tests with fusion reactors, who knows.. we might be using hydrogen to create hydrogen from water.
quite a big if, but who knows.
Mazda and General Motors have been testing rotory engines on pure hydrogen since the late 1960's. I certainly remember reading about this in "Popular Science" in the very early '70's. Real cutting edge, wacko stuff...
sPh
Yes, my stock 1996 Jeep Cherokee Sport runs on hydrogen. The special fuel has a little carbon bonded with it and some other stuff.
Been purchasing at Exxon and several other outlets that specialize in this revolutionary fuel. They are trying so hard to get the word out that if you purchase more than $5.00 of the stuff you get a discount on a car wash!
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
For some reason Slashdot gets a lot of submissions of wacko energy concepts - power from nothing, power from sand, power from a black box, engines that get 500 miles to the gallon...
./ gets these submissions. They fit right in with the 'News for Nerds' theme.
I don't think it's so odd the
Personally I've always associated the term 'Nerd' with all things mathematical and scientific. I think 'Geek' for all things computer and electrical (You can't even spell 'Geek' without EE.)
Sounds like there's a need for a specific category/icon.
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
this guy seems to have made a lot more money patenting strange and unique ways to work with a lot of different materials. (At least, it's a lot more than the people who waste their time posting to SlashDot make)..
Revolutions in design have rarely come out of corporations... considering this site is supposed to be Linux based, I thought I would see more support for anyone trying to solve the energy crisis outside of the regular channels, since it's highly unlikely it will come from the gas companies anytime soon.
ChuckyG
I have a rotary engine invention too. I have discussed it with people from several likely manufacturers = the verdict is - "We don't want any new technology, even if its better than what we've got - we've spent a lot of money on cenventional engines, and we are happy with them."
Ideas like twice the power to weight ratio and 10% of the moving parts are not of any interest to the likes of Ford, even if (as with my engine) you could stick with the existing fuels, and servicing skills.
Another interesting transmission system, loosely based on similar principles can be found here
"After graduating from Ohio State with a combined master's degree in physics, mathematics, astronomy..." "In 1948 he started his own company, Permaglass, and perfected the process of bending and tempering glass." "In 1969, McMaster merged Permaglass with Detroit-based Guardian Industries, forming what is today the third-largest glass company in the world. Two years later he started another company, Glasstech, which in the next 20 years would garner more than 700 glass-bending and -tempering patents. Today 80 percent of the world's automotive glass runs through Glasstech machines. In 1989, McMaster sold the company for $227 million." I think this guy knows a little more about what he is talking about than you give him credit for. Although his ideas may be radical and new on the horizon, he is more than a "quack" as you so eloquently put it. Looks as though he has been around the block just a FEW times, give what he says some more thought kiddo. Many other informed people may not necessarily agree with his ideas, but at least they have some thought to prove their opinion on.
Years ago, there was all this hoopla about the "Gill Carb." and the supposed conspiricy to keep it out of production. This was supposed to give a normal car over 400 mpg. Eventually, it was finally shut down when it was demonstrated that there simply is not that much thermal energy in a gallon of gas. I've been fortunate enough to see a lot of these alternative engine designs. Many of them are pretty innovative and downright ingenious. So far, though, you always seem to run into something that doesn't work as planned. Bottom line is that the 4-cycle piston engine is hard to beat in terms of practicality and Carnot efficiency. So, this guy is telling me that his motor will not require a drive train. That tells me the engine is high torque with a really flat curve, already I'm skeptical. Add in no lubrication and I must assume his rpm's are low. I won't dismiss his engine out of hand, but I'd need to see the design.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
It seems that everyone is completely missing the point of this new (and unproven as of yet) engine. The thing that makes it unique is NOT that the guy can theoretically run it on hydrogen and oxygen produced by electrolysing water. What makes it unique is the sheer simplicity of the engine.
As geeks and programmers, we all love to see someone come up with a truly elegant solution to a programming problem. When someone takes years of kludges and condenses them down into a few lines of clear, concise code, it is not only a thing of beauty and mastery, it is something to be desired.
What should strike people about this engine is that this somewhat eccentric but proven inventor has come up with a replacement module for that hideously kludgey block of code called the internal combustion engine. If pistons and rods and camshafts and all can be replaced with such a simple construct, isn't that a good idea? Now, of course, I'll stay in the "show me the code" mode until I actually see a working prototype, but if these guys think they can hash it out, I say more power to them.
He seems to have a good grasp of the issues, and makes a lot of sense. He also has quite a few things going for him, such as:
I think this needs watching.
"...At the end of the day"..."when everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself." RIP Layne Staley
But it should be noted this isn't anything new. The internal combustion engine is innefficient by nature. It takes a spherical force (an explosion), redirects that into a vector force (up and down in a straight line), redirects that into a circular force, which is redirected into another circular force, finally driving the car. Each of those redirections wastes energy. Moreover, the fact that you have carbon monoxide and other hydrocarbon emissions is a sign of innefficient combustion: complete combustion of a carbon molecule goes all the way to carbon dioxide. There are plenty of legitimate projects to find a better way. Ben Rosen, chairman of Compaq, has envisioned the automotive powertrain market becoming like microprocessors, with independent companies competing to supply the most efficient engine. His Rosen Motors produced a working prototype of a hybrid-electric motor; they've since been taken over but I forget by whom.
Of course, a serious problem is the huge combustion engine and gasoline infrastructure. Even a much better product is not going to take over overnight. The internal combustion infrastructure would keep the economics of conventional motors attractive for decades, barring a serious kink in the gasoline supply.
It is a myth, though, that the automotive manufacturers are blocking this kind of thing. They're all doing research of their own. There is nothing a manufacturer wants more than to obsolete their own product and give everyone a reason to buy the next big thing.
The other technology discussed here is photovoltaic (solar-electric) conversion of water to hydrogen for combustion. I think this is far more theoretical. Not that you can't very simply and reliably bang an electric current through water and get combustible hydrogen and oxygen. But from what I know (and I do have some knowledge on this subject) I seriously doubt whether existing photovoltaic cells are efficient enough to supply the power for even a very efficient automotive engine by splitting water. It should be noted that like anything else, this conversion of electrical power into chemical power represents a loss of efficiency, so the purpose for doing this is to get the benefit of a combustible fuel.
Direct solar cleavage of water to H and O is one of the holy grails of both hydrogen power and solar research; this photochemical process is at the heart of how plants utilize the energy of the sun and hence the source of most energy on earth including all fossil fuels. We aren't there yet. It can be done but it isn't sufficiently efficient to be practical. There are tons of novel catalytic techniques being experimented with, where rather than go through a photovoltaic cell (the conversion of sunlight to electricity of course represents another inefficiency), sunlight is used as the power source to directly, catalytically cleave water. I think within a few decades this kind of thing will start to make significant inroads, provided countries like Iceland and companies like Daimler Chrysler continue to pursue hydrogen research and a hydrogen energy economy.
I don't see anything in the article, however, that suggest this motor could only run on hydrogen. So it may be a valid concept that it much closer to commercial reality.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Looking at it helps me understand the way it works. I don't know if this will ever come to fruition, but I sure hope it does. Even if it doesn't, he's a revolutionary thinker with a significant record of success, and deserves our praise and respect for that.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
Okay, so nobody's bothered to check up on google, yet. His web site includes a lot of more detailed information. Check it out, then let's discuss what's there, not just what's in the article.
Yes, the guy's a little, er, fringey -- one of his other projects is an antigravity machine. I'm not saying such a machine is impossible, just that I'd not expect anyone who's not, say, Stephen Hawking, to come up with one.
That bit of weirdness aside, what do people think about the engine itself?
First, the fuel. The article implies that it uses Hydrogen. We've discussed to death the problems with using straight hydrogen as a fuel, which ultimately (putting aside safety and infrastructure issues) comes down to energy density -- pound for pound (or liter for liter), Hydrogen gas just doesn't pack as much punch, specatcular disasters caught on tape notwithstanding, as gasoline. However, the page talks about using a mixture of Nitrous Oxide and Ammonia, ignited with a glowplug, not straight hydrogen. It does speak of a catalyzed reaction being researched to derive the fuels from solar power, air, and water.
Questions: Is it likely that such a catalytic reaction exists? If not, will it take more fossil- or nuclear-fuel energy to create, using other reactons, the needed amounts of nitrous and ammonia? Would that added cost be worth it to reduce fossil-fuel emissions from cars? (let's ignore issues of infrastructure for now...)
Next, there's the design of the engine itself. Basically, it appears that it's an angled plate in a cylinder, with the reactive explosion happening first on one side (causing the plate to rotate around the axis it's mounted on), then on the other. Nifty idea, simpler looking than the Wankel rotary engine, and MUCH simpler than the internal combustion engine.
Questions: Can such an engine really operate, with any fuel? Could you really run it at many different speeds, and if so, how would you manage that? (I'm not personally convinced that you could do without a transmission). Would the "chambers" formed by the rotating plate provide any compression for the fuel (a major requirement for traditional engines)?
Let's not dismiss this entirely, out of hand, as a wacko idea. Look at the web pages in detail, ignore his strong claims and "past performance", and just focus on the ideas presented. I'm intrigued, but don't know enough about chemistry or mechanical engineering to pass any kind of judgement (and I suspect most of the people here don't qualify, either.) Those who do qualify...what do you think?
david.
Hydrogen + oxygen burns to make pure water over a wide range of temperature and pressure. Dilute the oxygen and it takes more pressure. At some combinations of temperature and pressure, it'll also combine some oxygen with nitrogen and make stuff that isn't so clean.
At best, it's decades away from something practical for a car.
If/when this idea pans out and a working prototype is produced, all the companies that profit from the "noisy, dirty, inefficient contraption" that the internal combustion engine is will buy up all the rights to it and shelve the idea for all eternity. It seems utterly absurd that no truly novel engine advancements have reached us in the recent past. Many of them certainly are impractical. But with all the people doing research all over the world, some must have come up with something. And then enter in the companies who make the poor grad student inventor rich as long as (s)he keeps it quiet. Voila! No innovation.
So, is the guy a real inventor, or a hopeless crackpot dreamer, or somewhere inbetween?
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Have a look at this engine called Quasi-Turbine. www.quasiturbine.com, site's in french but has few pics and flics of the engine.
Hydrogen, on the other hand, has a boiling point of 20 K at atmospheric pressure (a bone chilling -423 degrees F)! So tanks would need some serious insulation in addition to handling high pressure. Due to its smaller molecules, it also leaks easier than LNG.
The best way to store hydrogen is probably in a hydrogen-rich compound like methanol, which is liquid at ambient conditions. My research group, among many others, is studying ways to efficiently convert methanol to hydrogen + carbon dioxide + water at the point of use. This would allow us to fuel our cars, RV's, or cell phones with convenient methanol and then run hydrogen fuel cells.
Don't worry about the carbon dioxide from that reaction. The methanol would presumably come from biomass or nuclear/solar-powered synthesis that consumes carbon dioxide. The carbon is just a carrier for the hydrogen, and there is no net CO2 pollution.
AlpineR
One poster mentioned aluminum particles..wrong, it is stored ny binding it to hydrides.Problem is simply this;a car would use such large amounts of H2 that it would be difficult to store that quantity in a car and still have reasonable power to weight ratios. In the case of hydrides I worked at Texas Instruments on Project Illinois which was a HBr-H2 fuel cell stack, which used photelectric polysilicon to drive the reaction. We used H2 bound to hydrides; but then it was a fixed installation. I'm not really sure I'd be keen on having to have a 1000lbs of h2-hydride under my feet,and if I ddid that the it would get me any substantial distance, as I beleive the efficency is lower than that for gas. Nice try,but it won't work. BTW Project Illinois was killed by some oil companies, (Gulf was one) which didn't like the idea of a HBR fuel cell. The idea there was to have a large stack shared between 4 houses,and the consumers would sell electricity back tothe power companies. Sadly, the photoelectric section never exceeded 12-14%, effectively relegating the project to the bone heap of great ideas that were not efficient enough to be realized. We were able to get to the 10KW stack size however.
For those interested here (english ver) is an interesting engine I saw on tv a year or two ago. Unlike the story above they have working protypes, most that I've seen (on the site and tv) are just the engine but they also have tried using it in things (chainsaw for one).
-Torawk
They can be more efficient than piston engines, and unfortunately research on rotary diesels seems to have stalled years ago, but there's many advantages over pistons for engines that aren't required to change RPM often, such as generators.
I used to have an Arctic Cat snowmobile with a Wankel engine when I was much younger. We couldn't find anybody to service it when it started to die, but it was fun to take it apart, it's extremely different from the tiny chainsaw two-strokes and four-stroke lawnmower engines I had torn down before.
AC's cheerfully ignored
Many brilliant scientists throughout history have been labelled as "quacks" or "kooks" at one point or another. I'm willing to give the McMaster engine a chance, it's better than having to rely on volitile middle-east politics to "regulate" the gas supply.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
They've got some more info on the engine (including a neat little animated pic of the theoretical engine in operation).
He revolutionized glass. Why couldn't he apply the same non-linear thinking to his first project, add modern materials, and make it work?
Woot w00t w007.
... I always felt that a closed-cycle gas turbine (Rover experimented with one in the 50s) combined with CVT (Continuously Variable transmission - eg DAF variomatic, Uno Selecta) would be a good way forward.
Gas turbines are effecient (insert something clever to do with thermodynamics here)and can run on anything from coal-dust to hydrogen. The problem is - IIRC - that they only really work well within a narrow range of speed so coupling them to either conventional (stick-shift) or auto transmissions never really worked. Coupling to CVT should allow the engine to always spin at an efficient speed. Piston engined cars with CVT get good gas mileage - but people don't like the fact that the engine note stays the same as they accelerate.
It would run good on hydrogen (should be very little H2O2 in the exhaust burning like that), but I still don't have a solution to producing and storing H2.
This sig made only from recycled ASCII
Even after reading the article, is that we'll never hear anything about this again. Dude does have impressive credentials though. Time will tell...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It's the ultimate intersection between conspiracy theories and nerd-dom. OF COURSE they come pouring in. ;-)
You make a very good point and it is perhaps a damning issue. One reason to burn hydrogen (or any hydrocarbon fuel) in pure O2 or an enriched O2 oxidizer is to avoid emmissions problems, specifically the production of NOx. His engine running on hydrogen will no doubt have a very hot flame. N2 in air starts to come apart above 1000 C and when the atomic nitrogen cools down, it will become NOx in some trace amounts. This is one of the fundamental issues in combustion design...reaching high efficiencies without raising the temperature and producing NOx.
Burning pure hydrogen/oxygen will allow much high combustion temperatures without NOx production and will produce more power (no N2 to dilute the combustion process), but it is not clear that carrying the oxygen along is worthwhile. The mass of the O2 would be eight times greater than that of the necessary H2.
And I said "a lot of brilliant people have been labelled "quacks" throughout their careers", not "a lot of quacks turned out to be not-quite crazy after-all"... there is a difference.
Using methanol sounds great to me, generate it from biomass, even from side products of crops - the inedible bits from corn for example. It can be made to burn _relatively_ cleanly already - although I'm sure this can be approved over time.
However, a lot of articles have been popping up in New Scientist essentially calling Methanol a demon fuel. It takes more energy to produce than it generates. By the time you use fertilizers, transport the stuff to the processing plant, run the plant, transport it to the pumps you've used more of the stuff than you can produce!
This sounds like Oil industry propoganda, but its getting a lot of column inches! anyone know anything?????
And a hydrogen engine is hardly novel; converting a gasoline engine to hydrogen is fairly trivial. Maybe he has a better design than other hydrogen engines; maybe not.,
The problem that has plagued hydrogen engines for a very long time is the issue of carrying the hydrogen around in the car in a matter that can survive a collision. It' nasty stuff. It goes *BOOM* very easily. Solve *this* problem and there's a whole row of hydrogen engines already ready to produce . . .
hawk
The math for fuel economy is as follows: other than pure hydrogen, methane (CH4)(you know, natural gas -- most qty's derived from "dead dino dinner" aka antediluvian vegetation) at around 22,000 btu lb. LHV ["low heating value"], gasolines come in at about 20,500 btu/lb, diesel and jet fuels about 18,800 or so. [IIRC without the book in front of me.]
Using gasoline as the example fuel, you get about 6-1/2 lbs per gallon, or about 130K BTU. 1 HP = 2547 btu, so 135K/2547 equals about 50hp per gallon used per hour. Now then, my little subcompact gets about 35 mpg at that speed on the freeway, at around 12 hp in cruise gear. This particualr engine was rated about 25% thermally efficient under lab conditions. So even if my little car could get a 100% efficient engine (not possible in the real world), the max would be about 140 mpg.
Now then, pure hyrogen is pound for pound about three times more powerful as a fuel, but by the time you get the storage problems resolved, so far you've either added so much weight or drag, you've negated the fuel advantage.
Of course, if we were all flying around in low-drag H2 powered and lifted personal airships -- the weight component would go away. ;-)
Finally, as has been noted in comments posted to other threads, H2 isn't an easy commodity to come by -- don't forget that 2000 sq. ft of solar panels will cost about the same as a medium size new car, or enough to buy fuel for my little car and a 35 mile round trip for somewhere around the next 20 years...
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Aviation types (of which I, as a pilot, am one) have an unreasoning, almost supersticious fear of hydrogen dating back to the Hindenberg disaster. Unreasoning because it is uncritical ... the hindenberg was painted with a metallic grey/silver compound which, it turns out, was basically rocket fuel. Yes, the derigable was painted with rocket fuel, which was ignited by a spark (probably a result of a static electrical discharg). The rocket fuel "exploded", while the hydrogen burned more slowly.
Indeed, your statement:
Hydrogen gas just doesn't pack as much punch, specatcular disasters caught on tape notwithstanding, as gasoline
catches a part of this truth, though more in passing, namely that a tank of hydrogen is less explosive than a tank of gasoline. Meaning, as you say, that there is less energy / volume in hydrogen gas than there is in petroleum liquid (gasoline). Two approaches to this problem are, as implied in this article and the designer's web page, a more effecient engine or, alternatively, an innovative use of chemistry to allow a hydrogen-rich compound to exist as a more dense liquid/solid at room temperature without binding the hydrogen so tightly as to make it useless as a source of energy.
Hydrogen is safer to store, transport, and use than gasoline, by virtue of the very fact that it packs less energy per unit than gasoline. Safety fears are really just that, fears, based on a widely debunked perception that dramatic explosions such as the hindenberg were a result of hydrogen, when in fact it was a result of painting the damn ship with a compound now used as rocket fuel, a compound much more combustible than hydrogen by orders of magnitude. That debunking aside, there remains the perception that hydrogen is this dangerously explosive gas, when in fact it burns too slowly to even explode with the same intensity that a 1972 Ford Pinto's gas tank would when rear-ended.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The problem is ofcourse to generate large amounts of hydrogen.
Given the succes of recent tests with fusion reactors, who knows.
Why wait for fusion?
Hydrogen is just a way of transporting energy that you've generated elsewhere. Use a fission plant or a fossil fuel power plant or a solar array or a hydroelectric dam or any other conventional power plant to generate the power you produce the hydrogen with. This lets you handle pollution and energy-source switchover at a handful of power plants instead of having to re-tool a hundred million cars when you discover the Miracle Fuel (tm).
Thats like the fox carb supposed to get 200mph and was "supprssed" by the big oil companies. Well now you can get them mail order, they don't get no 200 MPH either. They are popular with racers, who don't want to get into fuel injection which is still more effiecent.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Except like all 'advances' it's actually a balance advantages and disadvantages, for example rotary engines rev higher, have higher wear and higher fuel consumption.
http://www.monito.com/wankel/advantages.html
Remember the Hindenburg?
Are you speaking of the McMaster engine, or the quasi-turbine (they are two separate designs)? If it is the former, please provide a link - if it is the latter, then I am wondering this too, but I have to investigate further...
BTW - wasn't the Wankle engine's combustion chamber cardoid shaped, not peanut shaped?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Forget what I posted - I found the site.
The wobbly plate does not spin - there is a stationary vane on one side fitted into slots on the cones. The plate appears to wobble because it is fired on one side of where the plate and the cone and the stationary vane come together. As the explosion expands and progresses, it causes the plate to move and wobble. I am not sure how this gets the sphere spinning, though, unless just by frictional contact and through various motion vectors the sphere moves.
I would still think all of this would need severe lubrication and tight tolerances...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Announcer: (Eric Idle) Are you embarrassed easily? I am. But it's nothing to worry about, it's all part of growing up and being British. This course is designed to eliminate embarrassment, to enable you to talk freely about rude objects, to look at awkward and embarrassing things and to point at people's privates. The course has been designed by Dr. Carl Gruber of the 'Institute of Going a Bit Red' in Helsinki. Here he himself introduces the course.
Dr Gruber: (Michael Palin) Hello my name is Carl Gruber. Thank you for inviting me into your home. My method is the result of six years work here at the institute in which subjects were exposed to simulated embarrassment predicaments over a prolonged fart, period, time (sound of him farting). Sorry. Lesson one, Words. Do any of these words (farts) embarrass you?
Assistant: (John Cleese) Shoe, megaphone, grunties.
Dr Gruber: Now lets go on to something ruder.
Assistant: Wankle rotary engine.
...
My apologies to Monty Python
It uses a steel belt, composed of what appears to be a lot of parts (supposedly high-strength parts). In a go-cart, similar systems are used, but use a funky shaped "v" belt (it isn't a true V shape).
I do have to say if that belt did break, it would probably be a mess...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Actually, one of the complaints about standard metal-belt CVT's was they couldn't handle more than the output of the Honda Civic HX coupe (I drive one myself and believe me, the acceleration feel is very different than that of regular automatic transmissions because you don't feel the engine changing RPM's as the car accelerates).
However, Audi has overcome this problem with their Multitronic system, which uses a heavy-duty drive-chain belt instead of a metal-link belt. This means the Audi CVT can withstand up to 230 bhp easily; in fact, Multitronic is standard on front-wheel drive US-market Audi A4's fitted with the 1.8-liter L4 turbocharged engine and the 3.0-liter V6 engine.
I have read a lot of posts here regarding this engine, and I am not absolutely certain that everybody understands how this engine is supposed to work. To be honest, I am not completely certain on how it works, but from looking at the animations and descriptions, I want to attempt to explain it, in the interest of furthering discussion.
I have to admit, the fascinating thing is the fact that it is so simple - so simple that it looks like it could almost be homebrewed in a garage, provided the builder has sufficient machining skills and tools (ie, a metal lathe and mill would be an absolute necessity, as well as a wire-feed welder, among other tools).
Anyway, here is my explanation:
1. The engine is composed primarily of 6 parts: A shaft (1) which is fitted through a sphere (2) and two opposing, on either sides of the sphere, conical ends (3,4), a metal vane (5) which is slotted between the cones, and thus doesn't move - parallel to the shaft/sphere assembly, and perpendicular to the metal vane. Finally, there is the wobbly plate (6), which is fitted around the sphere, and has flattened ends that are up against the metal vane. This plate bisects the sphere, forming two independent combustion chambers. However, it is not attached to the sphere, it does not rotate, and it is not attached to the vane. It merely "slides" against these parts.
2. Now, imagine the metal vane lying at an angle. At the point where one end is touching the cone, and the vane, there is a fuel inlet and a glow plug. Fuel is admitted, and the glow-plug ignites the fuel.
3. As the fuel combusts, it expands, pushing against the plate and the vane, as it races around the chamber, which looks like a expanding wrapped wedge around the sphere. This expansion causes the plate the nutate (wobble) - but not rotate - around ("around" is not a good word, as it implies that the plate is rotating - I must stress that it does not rotate) the sphere. This opens up the chamber, and as the plate slides around the sphere (*), it rotates the sphere 180 degrees, which is connected to the shaft, which turns the shaft 180 degrees.
4. Once the combustion is started, of course the fuel inlet is closed. When the combustion is completed, the plate is now lying at the opposite angle. An exhaust port is opened (I would imagine the opening and closing of exhaust and inlet ports to be accomplished by solenoid valves of some sort), and the inlet port on the other side is opened to cause the other side to fire, to rotate the shaft 180 degrees more, while simultaneously pushing the exhaust out (by action of the plate) on the opposite side.
5. The cycle repeats.
(*) - Notice how many parts are sliding against each other? I can't understand how this thing is supposed to run dry - ie, no lubricant - unless the fuel is to provide the lubrication of some sort. All that friction will get it damn hot if it isn't lubricated and cooled in some manner.
Furthermore, I am not certain how the plate, rubbing up and acting on the sphere (nutating "around") spins the sphere, unless is it by some strange vector motions being imparted by friction.
The interesting thing about this, though - is if that is the case, if the motor shaft is somehow stalled for whatever reason, the engine shouldn't die - it should only become hotter than normal, which may or may not be a good feature.
---
I hope this explanation helps - I hope it is right, I am pretty certain it is. Please discuss below, and comment on it - I would be pleased to know what others think...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Engine designers keep trying to use various pump geometries as engines, but the problems are different. Modern engine design is about combustion management, not just fluid flow.
That's what the Hindenburg [nlhs.com] used for lift, right? That's 7,062,100 cubic feet of Hydrogen gas right there.
.09 g/L while gasoline is 740 g/L. The Hindenburg filled with the same mass of gasoline would therefore be 24 cubic meters. However, H2 has about 3 times the energy density so for purposes of combustion, that much H2 could be represented by 72 m^3 of gasoline. This is equivalent to 270,000 gallons. It's a lot of gas, but not quite a mind-boggling amount.
200,000 cubic meters of hydrogen at 1 atmosphere and room temperature is all that much. At STP, H2 is
Dyolf Knip
Ya', if you push a rotary into detonation then you do indeed run into reliablity "issues". However if you do not abuse it and stay within it's design it runs just fine for MANY miles. How many 1st gen RX7 do you see on the road? How about on the track? SCCA has an entire racing series dedicated to the little buggers! They're not perfect, they lack torque, but kripes they spin to 8K easily and if correctly geared make for a really wild ride. I worry that mine will blow but it just keeps going and I AM outside it's original design parameters :-) I worry that my other vehicles will blow too for that matter (lol). A shame they didn't turbo this new one - 10K redline is cool and all but imagine the difference it was forced induction!
Perhaps a little experience is in order for the original poster or he's abused one - been bitten - and is just upset about it? At least they don't cost a mint to replace, I could build two rotaries for what one decently built V8 runs...
Heh, and if you look at the animations of this new guy's engine it's obviously not a Wankel. I DO wonder where the heck the exhaust goes though. He claims no exhaust but I find that a bit hard to believe. In addition, if it's got anywhere near the temps that a Wankel has, due to the way it dumps damn near straight out of the cylinder, then the exhaust is going to be pretty hot. I'd like to see\hear one of those running. Wankels are pretty darned LOUD (exhaust) too!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
A coworker has a Mazda RX-7, and yes, he just blew a seal in it. However, he had over 200,000 miles on the engine, and much of that is high-speed driving on race tracks (well, as high speed as you can get in an RX-7, anyway...) The "problem" with the seals on the Wankel that you mention are note one of sealing, but rather stem from the fact that the surface area of the combustion area is so large that much oil is constantly being burned off, causing the pollution. The MRE is supposed to run without lubrication along these surfaces.
This engine might be even easier to seal than a normal Wankel. On the Wankel, you have nine separate seals in place on each rotor (one at each apex and one on each arc on each side of the rotor.) The seals meet at odd angles at the corners, and must be carefully manufactured and aligned to achieve a good seal.
The nutation plate in the McMasters engine has a single surface that requires sealing. The challenge with this seal is that the nutation plate changes its angle of contact throughout the cycle. Perhaps a round edge, or two rings, or other mechanism will be found.
McMasters is off-the-wall enought that he might try something completely different here. A ceramic cylinder, or seal, perhaps. He might even figure out a way to dynamically squeeze the cylinder walls to provide a seal from the outside, for all we know. He's proven himself a genius time and again, and if such a seal can be developed, I'm quite confident that he's the guy who can do it.
John
John
A chariot pulled by zebras? I'd name mine "Phil".
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Following your example to its logical conclusion, the solution would be to make methanol production more fun.
Makin' babies has got to be one of the least efficient things that people do, but it sure does set those pleasure centers a'jangling.
If electricity is produced by electrons is morality produced by morons?
The McMaster Motor website, describes the engine running on nitrous oxide and ammonia (essentially hydrogen and oxygen, with a bit of nitrogen thrown in to make things easier and safer to handle = 3 N20 + 2 NH3 = 3 H20 + 4 N2 + kaboom ).
Added bonus: Nice little animations to show how the combustion system works.
Studies like this are fairly artificial since they often simplify the situation and make some questionable basic assumptions. For example, in the late 80s I remember reading a study that proved that a farm which relied on sunlight, the labor of the farmer and his animals and no other external energy input was not self sustainable. Which leads one to wonder, how did we manage to not only survive, but proliferate in the days before fossil fuel?
In any case, the best answer may be a hybrid coal/methanol system as reported in this recent paper. They claim to be able to reduce coal usage by 2.6 million tons and reduce CO2 emmissions by 2.15 million tons while producing 15.4 billion kWh of electricity.
If electricity is produced by electrons is morality produced by morons?
For those of you who are into paper stuff, there was a very complete article on this in Business 2.0 last week. Well written, and also talks a lot about McMaster's history.
The seal problem is actually easier than I thought.
After more carefully looking at a different animation of an operating engine on the McMaster web site, I see that the outer path described by the nutating disk defines a sphere, not a cylinder. (Duh!) The point of tangency where the disk edge contacts the spherical inside of the motor remains at a constant 90 degrees. Therefore, the seal travels an almost flat surface on the inside of the containing sphere, and can therefore be more like a conventional piston ring.
Now, if there is an oil-delivery system travelling through the axle and disk and out the edge (between two seals) then I agree with the original poster that oil that will be burned.
Unfortunately, I'm long since removed from my organic chemistry days, so I can't answer how the ammonia and/or nitrous oxide compounds might react to the tramp oil on the sphere's wall. It almost certainly will cause most of the pollution problems with this engine, either by causing undesirable reactions with the pre-ignition fuel components (preventing them from achieving 100% combustion) or by simply being burned and the waste being exhausted.
Whatever the results, it's much more likely to be eco-friendly than the good-old-fashioned hydrocarbons we burn today. Certainly the fuels he describes will combust more cleanly.
John
John
Gasoline vapor is explosive, but it's fairly tough to get enough vapor in one place to cause a big explosion. Liquid gasoline is merely very, very flammable. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want to be exposed to large quantities of either in the presence of an ignition source, but it would be harder than it sounds to make a building-buster "bomb" out of gasoline.
I think it really depends on if the government wants to encourage or discourage this engine from succeeding. If they want it to fail, they'll say "the fuel's too dangerous for all you potential TERRORISTS," and conveniently ignore the fact that about ten dollars worth of readily available over-the-counter consumer products in use today could provide a building-levelling bomb with just the smallest amount of imagination (and an incredibly large amount of evil.) And no, I don't want to encourage a "how-to" in this thread, so I'm not describing these products or methods.
John
John
Car engines don't spin backwards when in reverse, rotation direction is all handled by the gearbox of the vehicle. If for some odd reason you did want to spin the main rotor shaft the opposite direction you reverse the piston firing order and blamo you've got a counter rotational spin on the main shaft.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
At least from the animations.
Look at it this way. A normal combustion engine has three phases. Compression, explosion, expansion. Essentialy the expanding gasses force the piston down. You go from log volume+high density to high volume+low density. This is even true of a Wankel or "rotary" engine. It that case, a triangular shaped piston revolves inside an oval shaped piston. Essentially a lobe-type pump. Each face of the piston rotates to the long end of the cylinder with the greater area to the narrow end of the piston with the smaller area.
If the Volume of the "cylinder" remains constant, what will force exhaust gasses out? If the area remains constant the piston will endure enormous force with each explosion instead of a gradual pressure increase.
Now, if you forced the disc areas to either side of the "nutator" piston in on each stroke you might have somthing. Of course you would then have three moving parts. Albeit still fewer parts(rings, cams, pushrods,etc.
I get the feeling that someone got stuck on a particular design concept. To use a coding analogiy, it looks like someone is trying to patch some bad code with a kludge.
Food for thought though.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power