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Steam Hybrid Car from BMW
RMX writes "BMW is unveiling its turbosteamer hybrid engine, which uses the excess heat in the exhaust system and reclaims 80% of it by powering a steam engine that assists the gas engine. Overall, this gives a 15% more efficient engine; and significant additional performance (power and torque) with practically no downside. "This project resolves the apparent contradiction between consumption and emission reductions on one hand, and performance and agility on the other," commented Professor Burkhard Göschel. Are steam engines the future of environmental-friendly hybrid vehicles?"
...with practically no downside.
Additional moving parts, and servicability? How many modern garages know how to service a steam engine?
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Although the idea seems nice on the surface, how much more energy goes into refining the metal for the additional engine? How much weight is added? How much cost is added? Although many of these schemes seem beneficial, when evaluated over the lifespan of the product it may be a net zero or net loss from the existing technology. If people would stop buying new cars every two years, we would be better off than everyone buying the newest, latest greatest enviro-trendmobile constantly.
Will they call the Ohio model the Turbo Cleveland Steamer?
BMW has the ability to make Hydrogen-powered production cars, it is a shame that they have not caught on yet.
Current fuels will eventually go the way of the steam engine, or wait, maybe not the steam.
Interesting site: http://www.bmwworld.com/hydrogen/
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
If you take a look around at the current state of locomotion, you'll find that steam engines are largely a thing of the past.
What has taken their place? Diesel electric trains.
What's going to be the next big thing in American car engines? Diesel.
Forget steam, it's a toy. Diesel electric will run our cars into the next decades until the oil fields dry up.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Let's just hope this isn't comming from their Cleveland factory.
Quote from the company's press release about BMW's philosophy towards efficiency:
"A reduction in consumption amounting to a few percentage points over the entire model range exerts higher overall effects on the general population than high percentage points for a niche model."
Now the company just has to make BMWs available to the "general population"!
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Combined cycle power plants aren't exactly revolutionary. They're more efficient, but more expensive to buy and maintain.
Here are a few downsides off hand:
* More parts == higher maintenance (pumps, special catalytic convertor, etc)
*at least 24 ft of piping that may be impacted by even minor collisions
*Steam systems extra sensitive to corrosion from impurities in coolant.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Steam engines need to carry lots of water or provide a large cooler/radiator to condense the exhaust steam back to water for recycling. Bill Lear's plan to put "modern" steam engines into trucks and busses failed because he couldn't solve this problem. The article doesn't address this issue.
...I thought that idea ran out of steam decades ago...ba-da-boom!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If you're only getting a 15% boost in efficiency. Cars are only about 20% efficient and that's if you have a really efficient one. A 15% increase is like going from 15% overall efficient to 17%. This is just a kludge.
There's a much simpler and more effective solution... Go full electric drive hybrid. Decouple the engine from the drive.
Deleted
I wonder if they will offer a steam whistle as an option to replace the car's horn.
It certainly would get the attention of the person in front of you preening themselves in their rearview mirror!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
How many modern garages know how to service a steam engine?
I would think that BMW dealerships would be able to service BMW autos, no? Yes, I understand the rush to FP, but do you think maybe they'll have this covered by the time they go into production?
I am glad to see some innovation to the standard IC engine.
But I guess it's just easier to sit in your armchair and criticize real engineering...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
The trouble is when people buy new cars that are NOT environmentally friendly, those cars also continue to guzzle for as long as they're on the road. If the average vehicle coming off the assembly line were more efficient, then we'd be pushing out the older crap with newer, better stuff. But the average fuel economy of ALL manufactured vehicles has actually DROPPED since the 1990s: from Automobile and Light Truck Fuel Economy
What is the operating temperature of the engine compared to the environment? What pressure does the steam system operate at? Also, how much does this addition weigh? So I add 10 kW; how much of it is spent on hauling around a steam engine?
I'm waiting for one of these car companies to discover new uses for buggy whips in the powering of cars. A diesel-electric hybrid with buggy whip injection or some such. Then all those tales of the last buggy whip makers will have to be rewritten.
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...for a Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor add-on for my Delor..er...Nissan.
How you see the world is how the world sees you.
... a network of metal tracks to operate them on.
Anybody want a peanut?
Now all we need is to condense the output of the steam engine into water and give it to a horse who will help pull the car. That way you'll surely be 100% efficient!
Heh, anyway you slice it, this is pretty cool! I don't know if this is a profitable idea or not, but definitely cool. The real fun begins if they try to add an electric motor to the mix to further reduce fuel consumption.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Just for the record, Steam is not OLD, its still being used to this day in the form of a nuclear power plant. So everyone please stop saying Choo Choo and read this...
The uranium bundle acts as an extremely high-energy source of heat. It heats the water and turns it to steam. The steam drives a steam turbine, which spins a generator to produce power. In some reactors, the steam from the reactor goes through a secondary, intermediate heat exchanger to convert another loop of water to steam, which drives the turbine. The advantage to this design is that the radioactive water/steam never contacts the turbine. Also, in some reactors, the coolant fluid in contact with the reactor core is gas (carbon dioxide) or liquid metal (sodium, potassium); these types of reactors allow the core to be operated at higher temperatures. Read Howstuff Works here
Idiot or not, you're still an idiot.
15% WoW....stop the press.
This is cool and all, but the article measures 15% greater efficiency. Wouldn't something just as complex (say, a turbo) be able to be more efficient? I'm rather suprised there aren't production cars combining multiple technologies such as turbo, steam, and electric.
Solutions like this still have a few problems though. a) still using gas. b) short term solution. What happens when we run out of gas? c) much more complex and more moving parts. It could be argued that an engine that uses these technologies is just as complex as a non-gas solution.
This is nice and all, but with the advent of more efficient gas engines, oil companies will just raise prices so they are still profitable. An engine might be twice as efficient, but will it matter if gas is 6 dollars a gallon?
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I'm a bit skeptical that really make this practical, but it's an impressive idea; a combined cycle automobile-sized piston engine.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Hydrogen is not yet mature while petrol and steam engines are.
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I've been wondering how long it will be before we give up on gasoline/diesel engines and go with fuel cells. Granted, that may be many years away. Anyway, fuel cells generate a lot of excess heat during operation which could be used for generating steam as the BMW does. I think this is a step in the right direction. Despite advances made in recent years, automobile engines are still very inefficient and the focus should be on improving overall efficiency.
Ouch! The truth hurts!
Why aren't car engines designed like modern train engines? I believe most trains are propelled by elecric motors which are in turn powered by diesel engines, which turn generators.
Why doesn't this idea scale down to automobiles? Is it the continued dependence on fossil fuels / generation of greenhouse gases, or is there some point where the size/weight/power ratio no longer makes sense?
Coming from BMW, this sounds suspiciously like "how to be green when you are super rich". New forms of ultra-frugal but still capable engines are more likely to be perfected by the Japanese even if someone else comes up with the initial idea. The core problem is the notion that you need an SUV the size of a tank to take a couple of kids three miles to school, or that you'll be considered a loser unless you drive an executive-class limo with a huge engine and all the trimmings. It's not very likely the car companies will start back-pedalling on either of those.
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tournoun pas maï
You hydrogen people bother me. Hydrogen is not at all a solution to either the fossil supply or pollution problems. Producing and compressing the hydrogen takes a TREMENDOUS amount of energy that makes the overall scheme much less efficient than burning oil derivatives on-site. The issue isn't getting hydro fuel stations, it's getting the hydrogen without using tons of electricity.
The only thing hydrogen is good for is to reduce emissions from the vehicles themselves, but you only end up pushing the pollution to power generating stations, which we'll need a lot more of if the 'hydrogen economy' takes off.
The short-to-mid-term solution to the issues at hand is to produce engines that get much better mileage, like this hybrid, and to get Americans to give up their lust for uber-powerful cars. The long-term solution is effective mass-transportation, alternative energy sources (which hydrogen is not one of), and making dense walkable urban communities close to centers of commerce and industry part of western culture.
I think a good start would be to tax the crap out vehicles based on a pollution coefficient, banning light trucks (SUVs) from the high-speed lanes of highways, legislating a portion of the gas tax to fund mass-transit R&D and construction, leveraging heavy parking fees, raising the gas tax so gas costs $4/gallon, and legislation allowing for small diesel vehicles in the US (currently they are diffucult to produce, they get treated differently than gas vehicles).
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
...some are better than others, some are cleaner than others, but we will never get away from the upper Carnot efficiency - which in our atmosphere is right around 33% (a value we don't even come close to in practice).
The Ideal Gas Law, what a bitch!
This is a decent stop gap technology I suppose, but electricity is the way to go. Electric to mechanical energy efficiency approaching 85% (in practice!) Now if we can figure out how to minimize loss during transmission.... or how to generate the stuff ubquitously withut using a heat engine....
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Geez.
To complex? Compared to what? This is a BMW not some american car. Germans may suck as human beings but they know how to make cars. Cars that actually just bloody work instead of needing to be fixed every ten miles.
To heavy? Compared to what? A giant hydrogen fuel cell? Me thinks BWM engineers would have figured out that adding an old style steam engine as found on trains would not be very effective. Perhaps these engineers already thought of the fact that adding a few hundred kilograms would not make sense so the thing does not weigh a significant amount?
Same with expense. Anyway this is BMW, anything that adds performance (wich it does power performance) is good and they just sell it on their premium models first.
As for hydrogen. Well part of the hydrogen engines are still internal combustion engines and will therefore still produce heat. Same with every fuel source that is burned. This steam engine idea could be used whereever you have waste heat.
It is in itself nothing new, in fact it is extremely old. Steam engines themselves didn't just create some steam put it in a cylinder and then vent the steam. Big engines had up to 3 cylinders. 1st high presure, then a middle pressure to take the waste steam from number 1 and then a low pressure one to take the last bit of energy from the steam.
/. engineers. Pah.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Of course at this point this is just a concept system, it remains to see if it ever makes it into production.
My hope would be to see the steam engine addition connect to an electrical hybrid system, and that the main power source be a low-rev/high torque diesel engine. Do that with dynamic braking, etc. and you might just get an automobile engine that is say, 70% as efficient as the big diesel locomotive engines have been for what, 30 years?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Practically no downside? What, are you lost?
The downside is carrying the water - it's what - 8lb/gal? Thirty gallons will weigh about 240lbs - about half the weigh carrying capacity of the car.
Car companies shed blood in board rooms over this kind of weight - carrying that much extra weight drops fuel economy - remember???
Then there's the idea of having to keep refilling the water tank. The old steam engine trains used to have to refil about every 45 minutes. Who is going to be willing to mess with this?
I repeat - are you people nuts?
I always expected a sterling engine rather than steam in this sort of arrangement. It must be ease of implementation that has them going this way, but the temperature differential between exhaust and atmosphere would give you a good bit of sterling power. Oh well, the technology just isn't there yet I suppose.
Just look at this new-fangled horseless quadricycle, Smithers. Steam-powered! Oh, I've seen the seductress of steam come and go over the years, but no one yet has been able to tame her. When will they learn that these faddish larks are nothing to get their knickers in a bind over. Reminds me of that one young fool. What was his name again? Edison, I believe. Lazy good-for-nothing. Always contriving gadgets to avoid an honest day's labor. Now let's take this contraption for a test drive. Which lever do you suppose is the velocitator and which is the decceleratrix?
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
How about peltiers devices on the tailpipe?
-No moving parts
-lower cost
-higher reliability
Yes, you would need a few in series to drive up the voltage.
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Beamer Steamer -- Copyrighted and Trademarked and for sale for $1,000,000 USD.
As far as 'going back' to the steam age, aren't most poer plants (with the exception of hyfroelectric and wind) employ steam to drive thier generating dynamos?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
currently 50kg (as read in www.spiegel.de). looks nice, but doesn't really work with hybrids: so either/or.
Isn't the heat in the exhaust system used by the catalytic converter? Wouldn't cooling it down create dirtier exhaust?
I live where we go weeks below freezing, and days below 0 F. I park on the street with alternate side parking, so block heaters are out. How well do diesels start when they're cooled to 0 F?
There had been previous steam-powered cars -- at least three decades before Stanley -- but they seemed to be taking off at right around the same time people like Benz (in Germany) and Daimler (in France) were coming out with gas internal combustion models.
As far as the tradeoffs, Stanley's assessment is described this way by About.com:
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Well, I live where it stays below freezing for about half the year, and we get days below -40F, and I've started my Jetta TDI in -30F from a cold start. It just takes a couple minutes while everything warms up.
So long as you replace your glow-plugs periodically, they start fine, you just have to wait a few seconds while the plugs heat up. The only problem is that some biodiesel fuels start to soldify around that temparature, so unless you have a heater, you might have to stick with petroleum fuel in the winter months.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
We should be working on another power/engine source not reinventing wheel, but in this society it's very hard to start project that's outside of main technology.
Heat in the form of engine exhaust, and in the form of friction braking are two major areas of energy loss for a vehicle as well, but only recently has capturing this lost energy been a potentially desirable goal.
This BMW heat capture system seems like a great idea. Ford also has a regenerative braking system called Hydraulic Launch Assist which could capture much of the energy lost in braking as well. Electrics and hybrids already reclaim some of this energy by using it to generate electricity to charge the storage batteries.
It will be interesting to see if the ultra efficient cars of the future use any or all of these technologies.
sorry, allergies ;)
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That along with hydrogen, fuel cell cars, and Windows Vista.
280+ miles per gallon .
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http://www.canadiandriver.com/articles/gw/vw1litr
Pretty amazing .
A model made with less expensive materials would still exceed 100 mpg .
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
You have people using exhaust to spin a turbo charger to force in more air, and then using an intercooler to cool down the air that is too hot. You have a $3,000 setup and still add some resistance in to the exhaust system. So why not improve HP with forced air induction instead for 1/10th of the cost of a turbo charger/intercooler?
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
About 20 years ago, HotRod magazine had a feature article explaining how they reclaimed the lost energy, in the form of heat from the exhaust system, and "pre-heated" the incoming air-fuel mixture. They took a Pontiac Fiero, a small mid-engine car that was easy to work with, and put their proof-of-concept to the test. The only other thing they modified was putting in a stronger transaxel to deal with the increase in torque. The results, a car that got 200 horsepower, from a 2.0 liter engine, and 50 miles-per-gallon!! It's nothing new, but something definitely too late!!!!
Build in a Cappuccino machine and you'll get a run away hit...oops...need to order the coffee cup holder extra.
It is good that BMW is looking for steamy ways to increase efficiency. If they add an Easy Bake Oven you could cook while you drive and save a bit more from your home energy bill.
Quasiturbine see: http://www.gizmag.com/go/3501/1/
I lost my sig...
"Are you referring to the strength limitation (which is why you currently only see them in smaller, lighter vehicles) or something completely different?"
I thought this had been largely overcome (assumed) when I read about the Lexus hybrid SUV (RX400?) with a CVT.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
"I would think that BMW dealerships would be able to service BMW autos, no? "
You would think they could service their existing gasoline engine cars too,, but that's often not the case.
In the price of water...
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Presumably that's pronounced with a hard G?
Turbosteamer -- sounds like a vacuum cleaner to me, or maybe one of those irons that you use to take the wrinkles out of your shirts.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
This is an efficency tuning exercise to get higher gas mileage into the fleet of private cars as each generation of cars turns over. I like that as a mean of relative energy use reduction much better than the sledge hammer of higher gasoline taxes. It is interesting to me that higher gas taxes are often advocated here by people who consider themselves liberal. I am a liberal and I recognize that higher gas taxes are extremely regressive. They will greatly hurt those least able to afford them. The people you will be kicking out of their cars with higher taxes are the bus boys, the day care workers, landscape laborers, and even school teachers. These folks will be sitting at bus stops while the BMW drivers whip by in their private cars because a little extra tax does not mean a whole lot to them.
to see the day /. went all 0.
Anyone who knows the name, is guilty just the same!
The car industry is one of the few where the whole idea of recycling instead of throwing away is actually put into practice.
You must be an extremely lax owner if you BMW does not last you ten years or more.
As for reducing the overall number of cars. Well this steam engine could also be fitted to things like busses and trucks and trains (not everywhere is electrified). Personal transport is not unique in having engines radiating waste heat.
I wonder if this steam engine is actually part of the cooling system. After all if it takes heat away from the engine there would be no need for the normal water based cooling system? So you get power by replacing a system that until now only consumed it. (Pure speculation on my part)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
and here i thought steampunk was set in the past. or is this the opposite of steampunk? somebody go find Gibson, we need a new genre name.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Digg, two days late. /. this is not a race...quality of comments and moderated post's on /. is far more valuable than volume of stories flogged on Digg.
After contemplating both Digg and
Many cars heat the passengers by using the excess heat drawn away from the engine.
So I expect that the added efficiency in such a situation would be closer to 0%
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Sure, the dealership will know how to service it, but that wasn't what I was referring to by "garages".
Maintenance is included is the sale price of BMWs, most owners will never need to visit a 3rd party garage. For the few people who do tend to hang on to cars beyond (extended-)maintenance periods (I tend to go beyond 100K miles), well, given that we're referring to BMW owners the dealership price is probably not an issue and/or by that time the technology won't be so new and some 3rd parties may be able to deal with it. I admit I'm a little skeptical about the later, given the former a sizeable non-dealer market may never really develop. There will be the occasional 3rd party specialty shop (a buddy has one specializing in "German" cars).
On the face of it the idea of a hybrid car is pretty cool but the economics don't bear out. Cities are buying hybrids for their municipal fleets and they're discovering that higher upfront costs more than offset any lifetime fuel savings, even at current high prices. It's a great marketing gimmick that puts fatter margins in the car mfg industry but with questionable (economic) returns. If your concerns are more ecological, yes, smaller engines put out less pollution.
The Tango car, follow the links in the story, is the more interesting one.
It's all electric, charges fast, goes 0-60 in four seconds and has a top speed of 150 MPH.
Great little commuter car.
Cogito Ergo Sum
with a broken "non-essential" function is to just pull the steam engine out and have a perfectly normal BMW that gets worse milage ;-) That's how it will most likely end up
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Uh, where do you get your Carnot calculations from? Carnot efficiency is 1-(Tc/Th). Our atmosphere is usually in the range of 300 Kelvin. If the maximum efficiency is 33%, then you are saying that the maximum temperature we can burn our fuel at is 450 K, not far above the boiling point of water at 1 atm pressure (373 K). WTF? There exist real, running engines with efficiencies above 50%.
Also, Carnot efficiency has nothing to do with the ideal gas law. It applies equally well as a maximum to other equations of state (Van derWaals, magnetic, etc).
If you learned thermo in college I'd ask for your money back.
This idea isnt new, doing it in a potentially production car is.
35+ years go we did a paper exercise in a thermodynamics class to evaluate the potential efficincy of a Rankine cycle (steam) engine running off waste heat from an internal combustion engine. IIRC, we got efficency numbers about like what BMW is claiming.
One weakness is that the systems aren't very efficent at low power, such as stop and go traffic or slow driving. There just isn't enough waste heat in the cooling system to do anything useful until you start making a reasonable amount of horsepower.
Some ships and stationary power plant use steam engines (usually steam turbines) that run off waste heat from gas turbine engines to boost efficency. Celebrity's Millenium Class cruise ships are one example.
Wow, you have 'Troll' in your name, you copy/pasted a well known apple troll, barely making any changes, and you still got serious replies. Well done, sir, I applaud you. May trolling success follow you unto the ends of the earth.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I hardly think 15% is revolutionary. While it's nice to see them do something, they are a decade behind on hybrid technology. In Japan, Toyota is on their 3rd generation of hybrid/electric engine. If you want to see the future of hybrids, check out what they are doing.
I have a soft spot for Sterling engines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_engine) and though that they might have a place in waste-heat recovery applications. Cars might be a bit of challenge do to the nature of the free-moving piston (anyone know of research in this area?), but I through that a CRT-heat or CPU-heat powered piston with a magnet moving inside a fixed coil would be a nifty way to generate a few extra Watts...maybe enough to charge my cell-phone or trickle charge a couple AA batteries.......
...use the rest of the exhaust to rocket-propel the car!
Q: What's the difference between a porcupine and a turbosteamer?
A: The porcupine has the pricks on the outside.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
I think BMW had a good idea there, but maybe there is an easier way?
In the "Deutsches Museum" for technology in Munich, there is an old plane engine on display that has a turbocharger which is coupled to the crankshaft. The idea is taking the excess energy from the turbine in the exhaust and using it to increase the motor's power.
The description claims a 15-20% better efficiency than conventional engines, essentially the same as BMW claimed for its concept. And I suspect the additional mechanics might be way smaller and cheaper than the extra steam engine.
C - the footgun of programming languages
...would make this uneconomic. Sure it adds power, but power to weight is the most important for cars that are used to MOVE people. You not only need the steam engine but also a supply of water to convert to steam. Water is not light. Also you would probably need a pure / filtered form of water or have to decalcify your engine every 3K miles. Has anyone stopped and compared the cost of bottled water (per gallon) at a gas stations compared to the cost of gas/petrol/desil (per gallon)
It's only a closed system with respect to the water. The heat comes from burning gasoline, which is not reused, and has to be periodically added to this "closed" system.
In your sailboat / fan example, consider what is turning the fan, and how long that fan will run unattended.
Maybe he likes not having a car payment. I drive an 89 toyota truck and a 92 corolla and I know I have enough cash in my savings account to buy your house and the car you'll be making payments on for 84 months. So, STFU. k thx bye.
"Loose" = "not tight".
:-(
D'Oh!
How would this steam automobile compare to say, a steam train... which I could also afford!
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
it will work when the diesel engine is hot. So after a cold start it will take maybe ten kilometers before the diesel engine temperature is high enough to produce steam - which makes the system unsuitable for short trips.
OTOH: it will be a nice extra for long haul trucks.
There has been a recent development in fuel technology which is to inject hydrogen into the fuel air mix which has been shown to greatly improve fuel efficiency and is relatively simple to implement by using the cars electricity to create the hydrogen while driving.
One of the side effects of this is that the exhaust is cool... which would make this steam engine reclamation engine kind of moot at best.
Having an engine to recapture lost heat energy that can be eliminated by a much simpler approach to engine efficiency of the main engine seems like a bad move on BMW's part.
Why didn't I think of that! A few solar panels on a power plant roof will equal a million barrels of oil a day.
Oh. Hey, look over there! Something shiny!
I agree with you in general. I have to point out though that centralizing power generation makes it much easier to control pollution than trying to control millions of individual vehicles. Highly efficient power generation and pollution control technologies can be put in place that would be technically impossible or too expensive to do if spread out.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Does this mean a car that gets automatic repairs and upgrades all delivered through Steam?
"Overall, this gives a 15% more efficient engine;"
Hmmm... sounds incredible. Is it really that great or it's just hot air?
w00t
what happens when it is -30? or just below freezing?
what happens to the water in the car?
how well would this work if was so cold? you can't use ethlyglcal to stop it from freezing? can't use salt leave deposits? alcohal maybe?
I read a good article by Mark Fischetti called "Why not a 40mpg SUV?" in the November 2002 issue of Technology Review that mentioned a lot of next generation car technology that is really interesting. The public just doesn't hear about it because car companies don't want to change their ways. Of interest to me, particularly, was a constantly variable transmission that had many, many, little gears and would shift automatically, significantly increasing gas milage. This tech isn't new... in fact, the patent for it is EXPIRING! Just goes to show what we are capable in terms of improved car technology, and how little industry will there is to implement these changes.
I've always wondered why the exhaust heat was never put to better use. All that heat going out the back is wasted energy. The catalytic converter alone gets very hot. At the very least I figured it could be used for electricity generation so I think this is an idea that couldn't have come soon enough and I hope it gets used industry wide. I wonder why they chose water though. I would have expected them to use something with a lower boiling point and lower specific heat, like alcohol. Granted water is about as safe a substance as you can possibly get.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The source article makes several non-consistent claims about what it is that this steam engine increases by 15%, implying that it is either a) the total power of the engine, b) the total kinetic energy output of the engine, or c) the efficiency of the engine, or are they talking about d) the efficiency of the whole car as a system? If it's a, b, or c, then the calculation doesn't take into consideration the added weight of the steam engine, which can't possibly be negligible, and I would guess would increase the car's mass by more than 15%, in which case this whole thing is a big expensive nothing.
why cant the steam be used to vaporize the petroleum. in the vapor state as opposed to the atomized mixture will explode more and burn less.
only the vapor can be exploded, in the mixture state only the vapor evaporating from the surface area of each atomized particle gets exploded, everything else is burned.
that means the piston is being pushed, not heated, with the potential energy.
Ah, the old 20 minutes to copy a 17 meg file troll, how I've missed you. This is nearly as good as the Slashdot/OSS orgy troll, the Eric Raymond raping CmdrTaco troll and the recent spate of semi-Christian trolls.
Nice to see this one netted you two real responses.
If they wanted to reclaim waste heat, it seems like they should have gone with a Stirling engine. Maybe they would have had trouble finding a 'cold side' with enough of a delta? Anyone else have any insights?
The used cars don't get crushed as soon as the first owner is done with them, they go onto the used market and hopefully allow less enviro-trendy people, who just want a new car, to replace the old gas-guzzler they'd been driving.
You're assuming the new owner doesn't have to drop a few k on new batteries. If a used car is going to take many thousands to make right, how well will it do in the used market?
From that standpoint this new "Snobby Steamer" is better as there are not lots of nasty batteries that eventually wear out.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Funny, I can say the CVT in my Ford Five Hundred does NOT suck. It's a 3700 lb 4-door sedan that get's at least 26 mpg on the highway and no less than 24 mpg in town.
Durability shouldn't be an issue as Ford says they completed over 4 million miles of torture testing, using their 4.6 liter V8 as the mule engine... I've done 15K in the first 4 months of ownership and am all smiles.
Performance is very good for a car this size with a relatively small engine (3.0L V6).
CVT makes perfect sense, I'd love a tiny turbodiesel in place of the gasser, I can see that combo exceeding 30 mpg in real world driving.
Compare a car motor with a hypothetic algorithm to perform a database search. At some point there is a huge list that has to be scanned manually.
Then some guy says: "Hey! We could put a binary tree and search the list in logarithmic time!".
I imagine you could say something like: "Are you nuts? That's just reinventing the wheel, and the whole program would be more difficult to maintain".
this little steam add-on is nothing but an optimization of an abandoned part of the "algorithm". If it works, it won't only save some gasoline, but it will also contribute to mitigate global warming.
One more thing. In the future, don't be surprised if the poorest countries still use combustion engines instead of expensive hydrogen cells. A little help in the form of a steam booster wouldn't harm them either.
I got a question for all you engineers. The physics wonk in me likes the idea of a all steam car. Does anyone know why-other than $$$, greed, and the salivating possibility of reaming consumers- America can't transition over to all steam? So far it has less problems than a combustion car. Less parts-but the only steam car I saw was one from the Model-T era.
The Ford Nucleon!
Of course, if it was engineered anything like the Pinto....
I can't speak of the efficiency but from a straightforward adoption concept, it seems like a Peltier system would be more appropriate as they are incredibly light weight heat->electricity conversion devices. The reduced weight could offset the Peltier's lower kW/$ ratio.
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
Curtis-Wright did something similar with the turbo-compound engines, where exhaust turbines were coupled to the crankshaft - got about 20% more power for a given fuel consumption - and allowed the DC-7C and L-1649's to go from New York to London/Paris nonstop.
All this sounds like is a more complicated version of turbocompounding.d eer_2002/session8/2002_deer_hopmann.pdf
http://www.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/
That Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was a vision of the future?
Heat is a major waste product from combustion, so recapturing energy from heat is a good way to try to improve efficiency. Another waste product is sound -- perhaps next we'll be converting engine roar to electricity for a further boost?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hey! This is slashdot - where are the lame jokes about Steam?
E.g., "That's all well, but can it download Counterstrike?"
In a serial hybrid you need an electric motor that can produce all the power (horsepower/motion) you need to move your vehicle. Then you need a generator large enough to make that much electricity. The gas engine which is the source of all the energy doesn't change in side appreciably.
Making these things larger increases your material costs. But more importantly, it makes your vehicle heavier. This is a problem, even for a hybrid. It takes more energy to accelerate a heavier vehicle. Yeah, you do have regenerative braking, but given that you'll be recovering more energy under braking, you need a larger battery pack too. That adds even more (significant) material cost and weight. Finally, the more energy you expend, the more you lose to friction and heat.
So, in a vehicle like a car, the lighter parallel hybrid system seems to be the way to go. In a vehicle like a train, you actually need the weight to give the locomotive enough traction to accelerate the train.
Of course there are vehicles between cars and trains, like buses and semi-trailers. It'll be interesting to see which vehicles work better with which systems.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Let's say current combustion engine is 30% efficient.
...
By 15% more efficient they mean that new turbosteam engine is 45% efficient ?
OR. The mean that it is 35.25% efficient (30% + 0.15*30%) ?????
It's quite wast different. Knowing how manufacturers tend to explain their products in more positive light I would bet that they mean the turbosteamer is 35.25% efficient
The R 3350 TC put "blow down" exhaust turbines in the exhaust system, and it coupled those turbines to the main power shaft with automobile-style automatic transmissions.
The problem with turbo-compounding a car is that turbo-compounding works just great on airplanes that run on constant, high power settings, but a car cruises at very low power compared to the power needed to accelerate the car. The dominant loss in your car at highway cruise is engine friction, and going to fewer, smaller cylinders helps with highway mileage at the expense of pickup.
For example, the Ford Five Hundred and Freestyle use a small 6 cylinder to power a big car, and they use either a 6-speed or a continuous-variable transmission to have that engine turn over very few revs on the highway while allowing the motor to rev for pickup. The result is a car the size of a Crown Vic that gets better gas mileage than a Taurus (although owner gas mileage reports on these cars are all over the map -- they may be victims of the "hybrid" effect of suffering badly from lead-foot drivers). The result is also a car that every last auto columnist has been bitching, moaning, and whining is "badly underpowered" and "revs something fierce to accelerate" (I guess the Iraq war, ANWR, peak oil, etc. are of not concern to the writers shilling for cars). On the other hand, the Five Hundred is a big boat that gets great gas mileage if you drive it very gingerly, and I imagine Ford has the older-generation demographic sewn up with that car.
Anyway, one approach to hybrid gas mileage is a small engine geared tall with some kind of power booster -- simply improving the thermo efficiency of the cycle at part load won't do much because the add on power from the turbo-compound/steam engine/etc isn't needed at low load.
The steam engine could be a power booster -- you could have a boiler that could store enough steam to get a little boost. Problem is that while you could undersize the boiler, you couldn't undersize the condensor. If you are trying to get 3 litre power from a 1.5 litre engine, you have to make up fully half the peak engine power with the steam engine, and you are back to Doble/Bill Lear.
What about the condensor? Apart from the fact that it is a lot of plumbing that needs to not leak, you could say that it is no different than an auto engine radiator. The problem is that an auto engine radiator doesn't pass most of the heat -- most of the heat rejection is through the exhaust and only some heat leaks through the cylinder walls to be rejected by the radiator. A steam engine condensor has to reject all of the thermodynamic cycle heat at very low temperature differences -- unless you want to go open cycle like a Stanley or like a railroad steam locomotive.
Gas guzzling beemer, eh?
BMWs are, typically, pretty efficient for what they are. My 325i gets a very real 30 mpg on the highway, and even manages about 17 mpg in-town with my maniacal driving, which is about the same as a new Honda Accord V6's EPA rating.
Not amazing performance, but certainly not within the range of any "gas guzzler" description any more than the aforementioned Honda. Besides, the BMW has 5 big, fat, energy-sucking performance tires (a real spare!), a set of tools, and a cast-iron block, not to mention being rear-drive.
Further, it is 10 years old, with 149,000 miles on the engine
Remember, gas is -expensive- in Europe. The cars are designed accordingly.
Kid-proof tablet..
You can not increase the pressure of a gas without increasing the temperature of the gas.
I find that interesting. Take a can of compressed air. What comes out? cold air... If you hold some cans of compressed air upside down they'll even squirt very cold liquid. Cold enough to cause injury.
"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." --Pericles
Already saw this yesterday on Digg. They are fast becoming the new, improved version of slashdot.
Ok, stupid question here. No one is claiming this reduces emissions right? This uses the heat energy, but the "bad" thing about exhaust emissions are the gases released...and those gases are still released, just at a lower temperature.
www.wisdomproject.net The open source think tank.
I was wondering, is it possible to make a manual (stick shift) hybrid car? I've not heard of such a thing. Is there any talk of it being done? Is there any interest among consumers?
I drove automatic for about 6 or 7 years until I got my first manual almost a year and a half ago. Driving is so much more fun and engaging now. I might be interested in getting a hybrid someday, but probably not if I can't get it in stick.
Speaking as a man who used to own a 1995 VW Golf, I have to take issue with you on this.
Germans made a car that in theory was reliable and well-built and efficient. In fact it was continually breaking down, costly to fix, had exterior parts falling off every summer when the adhesive softened, and rarely got more than 25 miles to the gallon out of a gutless 2 liter engine. Also, the seats were uncomfortable, and my ignition switch assembly caught fire while I was driving one day.
The 2006 VWs may be better, but my sister-in-law bought a 2004 Jetta, new, and it was totalled when the electric seat heater caught fire.
BMW, on the other hand, is fine. I have fond memories of my Dad's 1984 318i, and wish I still had it.
-- Jeff Paulsen
Less serious material
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I've spent the past 15 minutes looking around for something that suggests itself to be a nice browsable index of results with no good effect. Everything you'd think would be good isn't.
It's a very poorly designed website.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I have an older Popular Mechanic's magazine (1950's era) which had the cover story of a hydraulic powered truck, in which a free-piston IC engine (think of something like a tube with a piston stuck in it, with inlet/exhaust valves and sparkplugs at the ends, the piston riding on a rod that poked out each end) drove a dual-sided hydraulic pump, the pressure of which was directed by hoses and pipes to a rotary hydraulic motor which turned the wheels. Kinda neat (could be kinda dangerous, too, in the event of a hydraulic leak in the wrong spot).
The idea of a similar IC engine, with the piston (somehow) being a magnet or energized coil of some sort acting as an electric generator as it passed through other coils (the electricity which could then be used in a hybrid system to power hub-motors or the like to turn the wheels of the vehicle) has always been something I have wanted to build, but I don't have the shop or time to do it. I suppose a steam-engine could also be built this way. The efficiencies you would gain over a regular IC engine could be quite large, because you eliminate a ton of moving parts that are found in a common IC engine. I would also imagine you might be able to adopt a passive exhaust/intake system like in a 2-stroke engine, or something like is found in a pee-wee glow-plug engine used in radio-control - this would eliminate the need for complex intake/exhaust valving (although, I would imagine instead electronic controlled valves with fuel injection would work OK, too).
Such a hybrid engine would be very interesting to see built - I can imagine that it could be scaled-down fairly small to power small loads as well, like a laptop or such. It might also make for small and quiet (quieter than a Honda? Maybe) emergency power generators, too...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Sorry but that's not true. Under light loads, turbocharged engines get almost identical gas mileage. The only restriction in most turbocharged cars is REALLY the turbine blades... after that its pretty much free-flow (except for a cat or two of course).
Today's more common GT turbos are VERY efficient compared to the older turbos that cars from the 90s would run.
Saab needs to spend its R&D dollars on building more reliable cars; not re-engineering some technology that allows them only a few small benefits.
Lots of links on this page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/message/1477 0
The supercharger is NOWHERE NEAR as efficient as a turbocharger. Depending on what kind of blower being used, it can be even worse. They totally kill the gas mileage too. Even under light load the engine is still having to turn the supercharger.
Superchargers have no advantages that can't be done by a properly sized turbocharger (powerbands come to mind); and the turbocharger has a whole ton of advantages a supercharger could only dream about. Only downsides are that its a little more complicated to install (very easy if you know what you're doing) and superchargers have smaller packaging (which tosses them in with the argument for FWD cars!).
Of course it reduces emissions.
If you use steam power to assist a gas powered engine by 50%, thereby reducing the amount of gas required to maintain the same levels of output by 50%, you reduce the emissions 50%.
The next step with Gas/Electric Hybrids is the ability to plug it in.
A Prius can be modified to allow this.
Saab is working on a plugin Hybrid.
Once people have plugin hybrids, then they will have a choice of never going to the pump, and instead plugging it in at night: perhaps operating at a cost of less than a penny a mile. (At current gas prices, Hybrids operate at 4-5 cents a mile).
Since much cheaper, regularly plugging in would become more common. The gas part of the hybrid would be for emergency or long trips (with no place to plug in).
Once many people are using these plugin hybrids, there would be a large demand for 'plugin' stations. So more plugin stations would become available.
At some point, plugin stations would be as common as gas stations. At this point, people never use the gas engine in the hybrid.
Once the need for the gas engine starts to diminish, a car manufacturer will release there "hybrid", minus the gas engine...a pure elctric car. (which would be much less complex than the hybrid, obviously)
"gas-guzzling"... does your 3.0L engine get 23.5 MPG on mostly city driving?
Everyone gets excited about some new technology until they have to pay for it. My guess is nobody is going to give a rip about a 15% efficiency increase when they find out how much it adds to the cost of the car. IMHO, the reason hybrid cars are popular is because people percieve them as being on the path to eliminating our dependence to gasoline, especially foreign oil. Adding a steam engine to your car doesn't come across as a radical step in that direction.
If most people were really interested in paying more upfront to reduce their dependence on oil and gas then every house would be built with heat-pumps instead of furnaces. Also, every house in a sunny climate would have solar panels on it. The problem is that many people prefer to think short-term and until gasoline is more than $6/gallon and natural gas is more than $3/therm, it's going to be more attractive to maintain our current energy habits.
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
I had a 2000 VW Golf and have personally experienced the disintegrating interior trim and the broken window regulators... I also had a boost hose from the turbo pop off (really killed performance) and problems with the sunroof.
...does it run Linux?
Anyone who's taken second semester Physics (or a thermo) class can tell you that you're *always* better off producing less waste heat than trying to use the heat you have. The conversion from heat to mechanical (or any other) energy is horribly inefficient compared to other energy form conversions. The future obviously isn't in harvesting waste energy, but in producing less of it--you get 100% efficiency from saving energy, so you only pay the form conversion cost once (from chemical, etc. to mechanical).
"Fight for lost causes. You may discover they weren't."
That's great they're using exhaust gasses to power this, but what about other wasted engine heat that is normally dissipated through the radiator?
It's very intriguing to see this technology. I've heard before that steam engines could easily have powered the cars we drive today, except that oil companies forced them into oblivion. I've also heard that turbines could have made it into mainstream cars as well, if Indy 500 officials would have allowed the turbine cars to keep racing. It seems pretty silly to outlaw a car from the world's greatest race because it's unfairly fast. Oh well.
The thing that bothered me about this article though was the note at the end: we won't see this for at least 10 years! That seems like way more time than is necessary to bring something like this to market.
I say this over and over:
The batteries for the Prius cost about $1500 to replace now, and have been getting cheaper every year the car's been available. They're warranted for 8 years/100k miles, and designed to last the lifetime of the car. Toyota has tested them to over 200k miles with no deterioration in vehicle performance. (it's Toyota's test, so you can take it with a grain of salt) You're not supposed to ever have to replace them, although there will always be vehicles with failures, just like there are cars that need entire new engines or transmissions. As of the last time I saw an article about it, Toyota had not replaced *any* Prius batteries, and the car has been available for five or six years.
The batteries are not terribly large *or* nasty. The pack weighs about 120 lbs. (about as much as 2 or 3 normal car batteries) and are fully recycled by Toyota (down to the casing and wires). There's a phone number printed on the battery pack, and Toyota pays a bounty to encourage recycling instead of disposal. Their recycling process is refined, as it has been in place since the launch of the Rav4 EV in the 90s.
One downside to these systems would be during the winter in the northern states. Most of the engine's heat would be lost to the cold so I'm not sure how much gain there would be. With smaller cars on really cold days there isn't even enough excess heat to heat the interior of the car let alone produce steam.
No text
This is because in order to handle (without blowing head gaskets or detonation) the increased charge density provided by forced induction, they must use a lower static compression ratio. Lower compression ratio generally equals less efficient combustion.
Tell that to the hundreds of people with turbocharged 10:1 (or higher) honda engines. It requires more careful ignition management and fuel control, all possible with modern electronics. In fact, it is not uncommon for engines to maintain their existing fuel effficiency or even get better MPG after turbocharging than before, provided your foot doesn't make extensive use of the new power.
..don't panic
It will work when the exhaust gasses are hot. Which is right after startup, or the engine wouldn't be running.
I've got the forerunner of this transmission in my Jaguar, and I *LOVE* it. And it's driven with the 4.0L V8 engine that they tested it with. It does make a lot of sense, and imagine - me in my 4500lb 4 door (stretched, it's a Vanden Plas) luxury sedan with a 4.0 V8... getting 28mpg on the freeway. That from the SAME YEAR Taurus with the 3.0 V6, that only got 15mpg on the freeway! :P That just shows you the difference...
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
TFA says, More than 80 percent of the heat energy contained in the exhaust gases is recycled using this technology.
That's a poorly-explained statistic. A lot of people are going to think they mean, "80% of the heat energy that would have gone out the tailpipe is instead converted to mechanical energy," and that's just not possible.
The Carnot Limit gives the maximum theoretical efficiency for conversion of heat energy to mechanical energy. And the very best real-world heat engines are lucky to approach 50% of the Carnot Limit.
Well, the Carnot Limit by itself is less than 80%. Then cut that at least in half because we're using a real-world engine. Bottom line is, nowhere near 80% of the exhaust heat is getting utilized.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Looks like we finally have a challenger for "break my windows" :)
these new steam engine Beemers will come with a dedicated midget crew to shovel in the coal =)
Pour 2-3oz of acetone and 4-5oz of water for every 10gal of oil you add. BEFORE you refill. Acheives the same result. Side benifit is it cleans the engine. This trick works especially well on old car engines. As there is a lot of carbon buildup to be cleaned with steam. You can get around 5-35% improvement depending on how dirty your engine is.
Great scott! This is heavy.
The main problem with the Insight's much-vaunted mileage superiority is that it only holds half as many passengers as a Prius. Since it doesn't get double the mileage, well, you do the math.
A unicycle gets better gas mileage than either. Does it do the same job? No.
But anyway, you can pretty much assume that anything anyone from GM says about anything other than "there's no replacement for displacement" (the GM mantra) is pure FUD.
"I think you are confusing fuel and engine form. Diesel is just a fuel, it doesn't dictate the engine type."
A couple years ago, my girlfriend at the time was driving home from a party in LA when she realized she was almost out of gas. So she pulls her beat up toyota camry into the nearest station to fill up. As she gets out to pump, she notices that not only does this station sell diesel, but its 20 cents cheaper then the cheapest unleaded! Thinking herself quite clever, she starts to fill up with diesel only to have her attempt foiled when the diesel nozzle won't fit into the gas recepticle(ive always wanted to use that word...). Never one to give up at the first sign of difficulty, she decided to adapt and overcome by either finding or buying a funnel that would fit into the tank, thus ignoring all indications that the nozzle and gas were NOT designed for the car she was driving. 20 minutes later I was awoken by her puzzled and distressed call for help and had to go pick her up and arange for her car to be towed to a local garage for an overhaul.
Im sure she will be the first to tell you that ENGINE TYPE DICTATES THE FUEL!!
I know a fellow who is now retired from the life of a mechanic (back issues) and went into IT instead.
We talked about this very sort of issue and he gave much the same response as the parent of my reply, except he pointed out it is getting more and more expensive for garages to have all the tools and machines they need to service the vehicles. This is helping to drive those $50-60-70-80/hr. mechanic rates up and up. Also, it is effectively acting as a barrier to individuals working on their cars at home, and thus conserving money. It forces you into the hands of the dealership, squeezes out the small non-dealership garage (or really reduces the range of work they can do lacking the tools, because each manufacturer is doing things a bit differently requiring different tools).
Everyone rails on on slashdot about corporate actions in the computer world, yet in the automotive world, we love the things that are forcing the little local guy out of business or the do it yourselfer.
And car designs don't progress in a better-and-better direction only. I had a friend who had to pay $530 to replace the back third brake light on his explorer. Those LCD strips are expensive, and the installation method was positively retarded - not accessible from outside by removing the lens, but instead from inside requiring the removal of the inside panel on the door, a much more costly and involved process.
Torx screws and bolts are one example. Robertson is probably a superior design. Even Phillips heads, as much as they had flaws, were a well known quantity. Along came Torx. Anyone working at home needed to buy some new sockets and screw drivers to fit. But wait! A lot of cars weren't totally Torx, so you couldn't get rid of your Phillips and bladed screw drivers.... no. You just needed another set. And they're pretty bad for distintegrating like the Phillips screws do (not as bad, but still not good) when they get stuck and you have to give them a good twist. Why was this change made? Was there a burning need for a new screw? Nope. It made it easier for machine assembly. That's it.
So, we see something that made things better for the corporation (easier machine assembly) and harder for the do-it-yourselfer and more expensive for him and for the small garage. And this was a good thing?
Similarly, these hybrid vehicles and all the new emission testing comes with a cost to the garages that is non-trivial. It isn't just training new staff, its buying and supporting new machinery and finding space to house it. And in the case of hybrids, developing multi-layered expertise. Don't tell me a two engine car is easier to troubleshoot than a single engine car... that defies logic. So, certainly, this system is more complex, hence inherently more failure prone, and also therefore more expensive to service and maintain.
Oh wait, the BMW dealer can help you! But just get ready for the wallet-ectomy.
And I'm sure we'll never have problems with any of these hybrids in tough northern winters either. Nor will we have increased risks from all the extra water being dumped out onto the roads (this is a guess, but they do seem to spit out more water vapour, which seems to end up in cold northern weather directly on the roads, in the city this translates to ice + rush hour).
So, internal combusion... it may be on its way out. But certainly, as it goes and is replaced by hybrids, this comes at a variety of not so obvious costs.
And I know a firefighter who attends crash scenes. After the things he's seen, he'll never buy a little car and that goes double for these golf-carts on wheels. They look lovely after a nice car accident... for scrap. As do their occupants, for the organ banks. Add to which, in places like Ontario, you need weight to crush down road slush and ice ridges to give you a stable, safe driving environment. You also need weight and a reasonable sideways cross section to give you wind stability. The little golf-cart style smart cars have neither. They blow all over with the wind
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
People don't understand why Toyota is investing so much money in Hybrid Synergy Drive. They look at the efficency gains and say, "This doesn't make economic sense".
Unlike Honda's IMA, HSD is the future of the transmission. Don't get me wrong - IMA is a great technology that boosts performance and reduces consumption, but it is a small step from the conventional design of a vehicle.
HSD is the future of the transmission because it is less complex. HSD has fewer gears and fewer mechanical components than either an automatic or a manual transmission.
HSD replaces the following components:
- Auto Transmission / Clutch + Gearbox
- Starter Motor
- Alternator
- Power steering pump and valves
HSD has a conventional gas engine (using Otto or Miller cycle), a power split device (A simple planetary gearset), two motor/generators (MG1 and MG2), an electronic power steering motor and AC compressor, a battery, and an electronic control system.
HSD is described as a continuously-variable transmission system, but unlike most CVT systems, HSD doesn't use a cone and a belt and doesn't use hydraulics.
The Prius is one of the most reliable vehicles on the road (and the most reliable vehicle in its class), according to Consumer Reports. This is because the vehicle has replaced mechanical components with electronic components.
In the long run, electronic components will drop in price at a faster rate than mechanical components. Hoses, valves, and precision machining is going to be almost as expensive as it is today in 10 years. The expensive components in HSD (primarily the battery and inverter) are going to be dramatically cheaper.
Toyota is serious about hybrid technology because, in the long run, HSD is cheaper than a conventional transmission.
If it isn't big, powerful, and LOUD, it must be bad. Bad worse ( P ) Pronunciation Key (bd) adj. Comparative of bad1., ill. More inferior, as in quality, condition, or effect. The Ghey. Being further from a standard; European or specifically French. Efficient or more conservative in use; likely to cause one to be P0W3D.
Even the Sun goes down.
batteries lasting the lifetime of the car has a _lot_ to do with Depth of Discharge (DoD). Battery chemistry has a lot to do with how low you can discharge a battery before you start to lose performance. For example, you don't want to discharge a lead-acid battery past 20% (even a "deep-discharge" PbA), or the capacity goes to shit real quick. Nickel-metal Hydride batteries don't like to be discharged past 50%, iirc. Hence, the Prius computer starts the engine whenever it detects that the battery level is less than a certain level - 60% or 80%, i think.
Lithium Ion batteries don't like to be fully charged (this is why some apple i-pod batteries only last a year before their performance craps out - people consistently plug 'em in until they're fully charged), not really sure on the specifics of Nickel-Cadmium, other than that the guy I met with a nickel-cadmium Electric Dodge Caravan said that he doesn't have any problems with discharging it all the way. Usual precaution about overcharging appliecs to NiCd, PbA, and LiIon...
The plug-in-hybrid project replaces the battery pack with a bigger one, and has electronics to tell the Toyota computer that it's consistently 90% full, until it gets down to a certain level. This allows for more electric-only city miles.
AC Propulsion's tZero now has a lithium-ion battery pack, which is good for 300+ miles. It originally had a cheap lead-acid pack, which was good for up to 100 miles/trip. I think they had 15,000 or 20,000 miles on it when they switched to the new battery pack.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
I'm going to accept your reference figures without checking them.
Energy in a gallon of gas: 131 megajoules
Energy to melt a metric ton of steel: 377 kilowatt hours
conversion factor: 3.6 megajoules per kilowatt hour
So 377 * 3.6 gives 1357.2 megajoules to melt a metric ton of steel.
In other words, it would take over 10 gallons of gasoline to melt one metric ton of steel, not 1 gallon to melt 36 metric tons of steel.
Did you see what you did here? You converted the energy in gasoline to BTU, then you converted the energy in a kwh to BTU, and you found that a gallon of gasoline has about 36 kwh, and you threw out the figure for the energy to melt a metric ton of steel. Ergo, your result was wrong by a factor of 377, since it takes 377 kwh to melt a metric ton of steel.
In any case, this is an irrelevant number. Making steel is more energy-expensive than just melting steel. Steel is not a naturally occurring substance (at least not in significant quantities).
The industry rule of thumb is that it takes about as much energy to build a car as the car consumes in fuel. This is a very rough number, but illustrative. You do have to seriously consider the energy costs of adding components to a car when you want energy savings.
This just seems like a good place to put this b/c of all the discussion about diesel. Do a little research and you'll see that Diesel designed his name-sake engine to run on a myriad of fuels! Diesel is not necessarily fossil fuel... it is just that the petrol industry is entrenched and fossil fuel is/was abundant. If you really wanted to you could tune a diesel to run Crisco, butter, Vaseline, beeswax, olive oil, lard, soybean oil, Chapstick, whatever. (in fact, Diesel did make the things run on lotsa different stuff)
Today's cars are pretty sophisticated with multiple micros, data buses, and highly controlled engines including nested control loops.
Mechanics who deal with these autos might very well surprise you with their level of technical expertise and ability to quickly learn new technologies. The independent small town shop I use is owned by an old Navy mechanic and his son and I have been very impressed with their abilities (and I'm a degreed Mech E).
Just because they are covered in grease and grime doesn't mean they're not quite smart at what they do. Many spend a significant amount of time in some very good training on a regular basis. Don't discount these guys so quickly. I have no doubt these guys and many like them could master BMW's steam engine rapidly.
Before you go telling me of this or that stupid mechanic, think of your own industry/profession ant tell me everyone in it is an ace.
If the steam engine is using exhaust heat, it is going to be very bulky for its power output. Rankine cycle efficiency drops precipitously as temperature and pressure decrease, as does the density of the water vapor, meaning that the steam engine/turbine is larger yet produces less power.
Why not dump the internal combustion engine and run the car off a steam turbine? (such a system will be less bulky, complex, and more energy efficient)
My guess is that this system is not practical. A condensing steam engine/turbine must be employed unless you wish to use a water tower every few hundred miles like the steam trains of old and condensing steam engines are both bulky and high maintainance. The entire heat exhaust (as much as about 1MW) must be passed through the radiator, and the inside of the radiator must be kept a vacuum around 150 mbar (assuming turbine exhaust of 50C). If a turbine is used, the car must be able to handle applying torque on a vibration-sensitive machine that is spinning around 15,000-30,000 rpm. Steam turbines require maintainance, particularly replacing turbine blades. Steam engines must be taken apart, overhauled, and have the cylinders rebored every few thousand to ten thousand hours of operation or so much like an ICE (though ICEs are cheap enough that people generally just junk the motor at that point). Since turbines and steam engines are expensive pieces of equipment with service lives of up to 100 years (judging by industrial equipment, autos might be different), the car owner either will be wasting expensive machinery or be stuck with a decades or century old but still functional car.
I think there's a reason steam turbines/engines (mostly turbines due to manufacturing cost and efficiency) are mostly used in power plants, factories, ships, and tanks and NOT consumer appliances.
Lastly, even immobile steam engines are very expensive. They run around $5/watt of capacity, and this does not include the boiler, condensor, or pumps. Turbines are only cost competitive above around 25kW of power output and are still quite pricey until you reach the MW range.
While putting the output of the steam system onto the crankshaft makes for an easy upgrade, you can do better.
The crank is the wrong place to put it. Unlike otto and diesel cycles engines (which have no low-end torque and die if you stall them), steam engines have LOTS of low-end torque.
So a better use for it might be to couple the turbine to a modified tranny, giving it its own path to the wheels and its own set of gear ratios. Then it can provide an efficient assist for accelleration from stop, as well as recover the waste heat.
The gain might not be worth it. (Certainly not now, since it would make the efficiency upgrade more expensive and that upgrade is a VERY productive thing.) But it's something to examine for the next major redesign of the power train.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Jet engines (AKA 'gas turbine') run on diesel fuel fine. The only reason kerosene became the standard for jet fuel was because there was a excess supply of the stuff in both the UK & the 3rd Riech during WWII as it was a by-product in the manufacture of petrol & other fuels. Incidently the reverse is true too, deisel engines run fine on kerasene too.
BTW a huge proportion of the large steam engines made during the 20th century were designed for the burning of fuel oil (look at the Royal Navy's reason for owning Anglo-Persian cum BP). Other than the tax excise fuel oil & diesel are basically one & the same. During WWII for instance the Sherman tanks supplied to the USMC had diesel engines so that they could be fueled up using the same fuel oil the USN used.
Incidently I've seen both 2 stroke & 4 stroke diesel engines too.
Fact is, regardless of the way the term was used when Mr Diesel invented his engine (languages evolve), today 'diesel' defines a type of fuel (fuel oil adulterated with a little kerosene) not a engine type. There are compression ignited engines that have been expressedly designed for other fuels you know, while there are turbo-prop & 4 stroke engines that have been expressedly designed for diesel fuel too.
So I guess this means Ben Dunn was right all along.
After an accident you may as well scrap it as junk and buy a whole new car if there's much damage at all because it will cost so much to repair. Take a long hard read on this page Short Circuit ->
http://www.newpath4.com/enginewow.htm and
http://www.newpath4.com/icyhot7.htm for starters.
I took Dr. Hertzberg's & Dr. Harold Boese's air-powered engines, completed their designs into a powerhouse "sonofusion" engine that could easily stop this garbage combustion engine.
I wonder where BMW got their idea from in the first place? Perhaps there was an independent inventor who wrote how he was looking to make that engine when he decided to stop work and fix the LN2000 instead? hehehehe Oh well, I've been drawing a disability check since 1989, no sense getting Royalties now.
However, it amazes me that they went to so much troublet secure21.htm
in light of my having made 2 fusion engine designs already...
The LN2000 was the first in 2003; this year I went a great deal further than that >
http://www.newpath4.com/millenialdawnpowerandligh
by making a dual waterwheel device that sets up a "dry stream" of metal balls in place of a stream of water. This engine is going to make a hybrid without a gasoline engine. That's right, a fully-electric engine. Too bad they didn't do the right thing and send me a check, so I had to inform the U.S. Government that I'm being kept drawing their disability check & fully paid Medicare premium (ala State of Virginia) of their not paying me.
You don't know about my engines then.
I've gone beyond efficient to achieve plaid >
See the links on this page for the answer to efficient engines >
http://www.newpath4.com/WorldwideClimateEngineMsg
The first engine uses several principles. The sonic crushing boom from compressed liquid air entering a steam-filled cylinder creates a condition called sonofusion. The supercold liquid air droplets causes the steam-expanded H2O molecules to collapse into single-molecule (individual) ice crystals. That collapse is so hard & fast it's like black holes collapsing ahead of the expanding liquid air faster than the liquid air is expanding. Overall, inside the cylinder is transformed into a sudden VACUUM that scrams the h^ell out of the way of the instantaneous KA-WHOOM from the liquid air going from 4,361 psi to Full Expansion in an Instant of Time (time-exponential magnification of horsepower). hahaha
I don't think it gets much more efficient than that.
Then there's the engine I made this year. It isn't built yet but I released it on November 14, 2005, to show others the principle involved >t secure21.htm
http://www.newpath4.com/millenialdawnpowerandligh
It doesn't use any fuel at all. Essentially, I reversed E=mc2 to mc2=E. The difference is explained on that page. This engine equation -unlike Einstein's- creates what I call "Controlled Devastation". It will power homes, laptops, electric cars, refrigerators and other appliances, heat your water for coffee and a shower.
Maybe I can balance any other Americans you referred to. Should you desire to read my entire story of invention on this 2nd engine, I made a series of posts on AARP's Message boards here:= rp-health&msg=5751.1&ctx=1
http://community.aarp.org/n/mb/message.asp?webtag
You may find it a long read but there's a lot that had to be covered, plus there is a surprise ending as to the one person I give lots of credit to for helping me have the idea.
I understand how a diesel engine works, but how does it start moving? If there's no sparkplug to ignite anything, how does it start moving? Does the starter just turn the engine enough to compress the fuel till it exploads?
Newer power plants are not exactly more efficient. By design, newer emission control technologies actually reduce efficiency in modern power plants. They are cleaner but produce less output per unit of input compared to a modern plant without any emission control equipment.
I am not advocating taking away emission controls for sure, but...
Even new technologies coming down the pike such as Combined Cycle Plants are even LESS efficient.
So my point is that many people just assume newer technologies are by design always more efficient, when in fact they may not be.
Can these $10,000 batteries suddenly become worthless once they're old? What makes them so expensive--is there a huge amount of hand labor, or are they made with valuable (i.e. recyclable) stuff?
If my old batteries are worth a couple grand in materials, that will both take care of the disposal problem (they won't be disposed, they'll be recycled) and help cover the replacement costs.
Plus, one must also assume that unless the entire high cost of these batteries is in materials (hence making them highly exchangable), improved manufacturing techniques over time and the economies of scale will make the batteries much cheaper by the time they need replacing.
It sounds to me like General Moters is blowing FUD as fast and hard as they can. Perhaps their workers and stockholders would be better served if GM would instead put their efforts into some useable efficiency technologies for their cars, instead of criticizing the companies who are trying to improve their products.
Oh, silly me. I forgot that isn't the Detroit way.
Fundamentalism is a crime against humanity