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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.
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
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
There's a much simpler and more effective solution... Go full electric drive hybrid. Decouple the engine from the drive.
So you want to go from:
gasoline->motion->electricty->motion
instead of
gasoline->motion
I can't really imagine that's any more (and probbably less with all those energy form transformations) efficient than the current hybrids. Engine efficiency comes from small engines running at constant speeds. That's already accomplished with the hybrids.
AccountKiller
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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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.
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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...
"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."
And which are signifcantly more efficient than masses of cars spewing less refined emissions, especially nuclear plants.
Essentially your post says "punish auto owners, and reward mass transit users" while completely ignoring the fact that mass transit is impractical in many places and always will be.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
gasoline->motion->electricty->motion
This is exactly what modern diesel locomotives do. I'm not sure the reasons for that particular implementation for that application, but it is out there in the real world today, so the idea itself is not without merit.
The power curve put out by an internal combustion engine isn't linear; it prefers to stay at a particular range of RPMs for maximum efficiency. This is why cars have transmisisons to change gears, trying to keep the engine at that preferred RPM range no matter what RPM the wheels are turning at.
Electical motors, on the other hand, are linear: turn up the juice, and the thing turns faster.
The philosophy of using a diesel with electric drive is to keep the diesel engine turning at exactly the right RPMs to maximize efficiency, supplying power to the electrical drive as needed. This way, the locomotive gets the same efficiency moving slowly as it does at speed (as opposed to cars, which would really rather be in 5th gear going 80 km/h).
massive drag? have you ever taken apart the airbox in a modern vehicle? They are very restrictive, you can get another ~20 HP in some vehicles just by replacing the standard air intake system with a cold air intake. You would likely have large gains in airflow from even a 3 inch hole because the air is being forced and not pulled in. There would not be much gain at 5 or 10 MPH but this is not much different than turbo lag with a turbo charger. The system might not produce quite as much HP as an all out turbo charger, but it would produce those gains with almost no added weight or cost.
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.
Decoupled drives are slightly less efficient at speed, but your average suburban vehicle falls to zero per cent efficiency at every traffic light (or going downhill for engines that require a minimum fuel input all the time).
The advantage of the fully decoupled engine is that it is at the same efficiency all the time, and around town that's a win.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Well you're assuming we'd keep the design of the gasoline engine similar. If we start using the idea of electricity as a virtual transmission then it's possible to make gains.
Consider a redesign of the combustion engine that has just cylinders that use 2 a modified 2 stroke compression cycle on each end, and just move the cylinder in a tube that has an electric coil. Put a magnet in the middle and you can transmit power without needing to connect the cylinder to any mechanical transfer system. It'll produce a pretty standard AC sine-wave, and because there's no direct mechanical coupling it can run at optimal efficiency or power rates instead of having to deal with constant acceleration/deceleration. You could even shut down and power up individual cylinders on demand, and since there's no mechanical connections, using say, dozens or hundreds of smaller cylinders for better efficiency and more flexible power would be possible.
On the electric side, motors have far better low end torque, and less moving parts overall. If you did the design right you might even be able to eliminate the mechanical transmission for different gears completely. Not having mechanical transfer means you can easily do things like 1 motor per wheel directly coupled. This would again provide more robust redundancy, better efficiency, scalability (only run 2 motors when needed i.e. highway driving), better driving properties (full time all-wheel drive), etc.
Granted you're still going gas->motion->electricity->motion, but you're not replacing just gas->motion. You're replacing gas->several thousand moving parts with friction losses and failure rates->motion with gas->electricity->maybe a couple dozen parts->motion. The removal of the complex mechanical transfer system is where you'll get the efficiency AND reliability boost. But that would make cars last for 20 years, and nobody wants that, right?
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
No, the serial hybrid posited by the parent poster (and that you're arguing against) has an engine running at constant speed. The current set of parallel hybrids are dual drive systems (in the case of the Prius) or inline boost (such as the Civic & Accord) systems. In all current (parallel) hybrids, the engine drives the car in exactly the same way as any other car on the road. The difference is that some of the energy for braking is supplied by the load of an electrical generator/battery combo, which is then later reused for acceleration. Additional optimizations come from using this captured braking energy to supply vehicle acceleration at low speeds or to provide accessory when stopped in traffic (for some models of hybrids). The only time the engine would potentially run at constant speed is while the vehicle is stopped and the energy demands (e.g., air conditioning) are great enough that the battery energy needs to be maintained.
And, yes, I realize this is a great simplification of things, but it seems that the general public is utterly ignorant of hybrid technology even though it's nothing new. Just new to the production automotive companies.
It's a shame GM hasn't resurrected the EV1 with a hybrid engine option. Oh yeah, that's right, it's an enormous conspiracy driven by Big Oil and those lazy, fat-cats in Detroit.
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