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Lotus Teases With a Fuel-Agnostic Two-Stroke Engine
JohnnyBGod writes "Lotus claim to have invented a new, more efficient engine design. The two-stroke, flex-fuel engine can achieve, according to the surprisingly technical press release, 'approximately 10% better [fuel consumption] than current spray-guided direct injection, spark ignition engines.' The engine has a sliding puck arrangement to control its compression ratio, and has direct injection and a wet sump, to eliminate fuel leakage to the exhaust and the need to mix oil with the fuel, two common problems with two-stroke engines. Lotus engineering have released a video explaining the engine's operation."
Lotus do make some small two seaters, but I don't think I can fit one on my desk.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Ford built a Fiesta with a two-stroke engine that achieved 1.4l/100km (that’s 168 mpg!) in 1996! Not a drawing. Not a experimental model. No, a real driving prototype car. Looked just like a normal Fiesta.
I wonder why it took until now, for something that’s still worse to come out.
If I were the Ford engineer, I would be angry as hell.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Lotus do make some small two seaters, but I don't think I can fit one on my desk.
Anyone whose desk is too small for a Lotus needs a bigger desk!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
They can be run on multiple fuels (or indeed, mixtures thereof) and would be ideal for a series-hybrid vehicle, where the drivetrain could be eliminated (it was the weak point in the turbine cars.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This drives me nuts.
What about this is new? Does it exist due to breakthroughs and material science we didn't have available thirty years ago? Not that I can see.
Which means this is nothing that a team of imaginative engineers couldn't have come up with long ago, and likely would have, (and probably did) if they'd been allowed to. Fuel efficiency means the oil billionaires, (the people who have been running things since forever), make less money. The only reason this is happening now is because the corrupt deals being cut in Copenhagen with regard to carbon trading and various other ass-backward plans are a means of making more profit in different ways and promise greater control over every aspect of our lives.
Look, I'm all for efficiency and I'm sure the engineering team on this project are fine people. But this is bullshit. It's a press release which appears in the same breath as that Israeli company and their silicone battery. The people allowing this stuff to float to the top of global media-consciousness don't care about the actual state of human affairs or about the genuinely awesome things we could be actually doing with technology. This is about agendas and sculpting public awareness and making damned sure the slaves are tightly locked down.
So, yeah, thanks Lotus. Very courageous of you to cautiously advance this lukewarm idea past the oil barons. Because crop-based fuels are SUCH a good idea.
-FL
not using a car analogy is like walking
This engine looks to be a lot more complex than the usual two strokes, so it will cost a lot more to manufacture and maintain, a lot more to design and engineer, will have lower yield rates/higher failure rates so it will cost the customer a lot more money. So, as a consumer of engines, do you spend possibly twice as much on the engine because it is 10% more efficient? If the major cost is the engine itself and fuel - as has been the case up until recently - is comparatively cheap which will you buy? As a manufacturer who has to compete with other companies, which design is the best choice for you to focus on? Yes these could have been designed earlier, but the reason they weren't is nothing to do with propping up oil companies profits, it's to do with whether there was any profit to be made in building the engines.
What drove the adoption of fuel injection over carburettors? It wasn't oil companies, it was the pressure of emissions legislation: it's cheaper to produce an engine that meets the requirements with FI. Before that was a factor, carburettors are much cheaper so that's what was used. As fuel becomes more expensive and the quantity of emissions becomes a significant factor it becomes profitable to build more complex and expensive engines because that cost is recouped by the lowered consumption and emissions.
30 years ago we didn't have the electronic control systems, the precise manufacturing and the economic pressures we do now, so suddenly these 'designs we should have thought of years ago' become viable.
I talked to some guys who were doing automotive engineering apprenticeships at Lucas, and they said one of their projects was to design a super efficient carburettor for a motorcycle engine (this was around 1997). Their design was hugely efficient in comparison to the existing product, something like 20-30%, but significantly more complex and hence it was not suitable for production.
It would be great if we actually had all the technology and knowledge that we need to survive for an eternity in peace and harmony with our surroundings, but the likelihood of that being the case, and that it is all being held back by a few greedy corporations seems pretty slim...
Also wrt. the crop based fuels, since this can run on pretty much anything, wouldn't that open up the possibilities for switchgrass, algae based fuels etc. which are not based on food crop sources? Ethanol from corn is a bad idea - and one that is actually promoted by some big evil corporations
Yup. But it means the engine delivers roughly 10% more power or 10% less fuel consumption than a comparable "normal" engine. So it's significant.
the pun is mightier than the sword
Dude, Chill!
Let's assume you're right and it could have been done 30 years ago (it couldn't but I'll get to that later). It's newsworthy because no-one has done this before, in fact it's more newsworthy if someone has a really obvious idea that no-one has done before. I'm sure the first person to stick an internal combustion or steam engine on a cart was told it was a really obvious idea, but the first horseless carriage still deserved to be big news. I'd certainly class a major engine development as being as newsworthy as the latest revision of the Linux kernel being released.
As I understand the article they're using direct injection similar to that used in modern performance diesels. This is a relatively new technology that requires very high pressure fuel injectors which are still a developing technology and weren't available 10 years ago never mind 30. Don't forget mechanical engineering is a much slower moving field than software - they have to design and test things in their field before they release them ;-)
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
You've missed the Flex-Fuel. It will run on any variation of ethanol/gas mixture, from E5 all the way up to E100. You decide how green you want to be and this engine will adapt to your choice of fuel.
Oh, and the government has put spy chips in our heads too!
In all seriousness, this whole big oil conspiracy is a load of junk. I'm sure the oil companies would do that if they could, but look at it from the car company point of view. If a car company could come out and say "Hey! we got a car that gets amazing mpg and behaves just like any other car!" they would have an instant fortune. How exactly would oil companies go about stopping these companies? I've never heard of oil companies buying car companies, left and right. Did they go and kill everyone who has worked on a high efficiency engine program?
Whats changed more than anything recently is modeling software and rapid prototyping. There is only so much math you can do by hand when trying to model an internal combustion engine while it's running. For a long time we made engines with trial and error and whatever math could be done by hand, but now we're at the point where we can make accurate simulations of the workings of an engine. Hell I wouldn't doubt if they run these simulations with genetic algorithms trying to find the right shape or timings to run in a prototype.
As for this engine compared to that battery, there they've said "we have this working battery, it's not all that good, but it works!" and here we have "Not only does it work, but it's current form is better than other engines!"
Additionally it is in the oil companies' best interest to develop production of producible fuels (rather than extracted fuels) because the costs for extracting keep going up, and the amount of energy required to extract keeps going up. Eventually we will run out of oil, it's a matter of when. Once the price gets high enough if one company has been investing in producible fuels while the others have been slacking off, they have an opportunity to make massive amounts of money.
Ideally the best solution is using the electricity generated from a fission nuclear power plant to power the vehicles, indirectly through some storage medium. The question then becomes which storage medium? Hydrogen is inefficient and a compressed gas, making cars into mobile flamethrowers (since there is no oxygen in the tank it won't explode, but any that escapes will sure burn, and any rupture in the tank is a lot worse when working with a compressed gas than with a vaporous liquid like gasoline). Batteries will require large amounts of certain metals (I don't know what the current estimates for usage versus supply of battery metals are, but there are a LOT of cars in the world) and don't have the energy density of gasoline. This leaves us with biologically derived fuels. Let me first say that this whole 'ethanol from corn' is the true load of crap that being fed to Americans, corn is terrible for production of ethanol. It would be better if we could get the enzymes that break down cellulose into a fuel to work right, but we're not quite there yet. Algae grown in large salt water ponds are our best option currently, but that doesn't get the corn area swing votes quite as well as making a whole new use of the staple crop for several states.
So, in conclusion, nuclear fission power plants (with reprocessing, and newer reactor designs) used to power a storage medium for cars. Tada! Ok, not that simple, but more or less, yeah.
So Lotus has created an engine that believes that nothing is known or can be known about the existence of fuel.
:)
"[citation needed]" ... reminds me of wikipedia
This engine looks to be a lot more complex than the usual two strokes, so it will cost a lot more to manufacture and maintain, a lot more to design and engineer, will have lower yield rates/higher failure rates so it will cost the customer a lot more money. So, as a consumer of engines, do you spend possibly twice as much on the engine because it is 10% more efficient?
They key words there being "two strokes". It's very possible it's still cheaper to make and simpler to maintain than the equivalent powered four stroke engines.
which is totally what she said
You are assuming that ethanol is a green fuel. I'm not so sure about corn-based ethanol. Future technology may change that, but I am uneasy using a subsidized food crop to make fuel for cars.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
No one outside the USA uses corn for ethanol. It's only grown in the USA because it gets stupidly high government subsidies making it cheaper than everything else. If you drive across France, you'll see lots of bright yellow fields growing rapeseed, which is used to produce fuel.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Which means this is nothing that a team of imaginative engineers couldn't have come up with long ago
So is most of the new technology that you see. Even special relativity is obvious in retrospect.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
For the most part, bioethanol is produced from whatever is the main sugar-crop in the area. For example: In the midwest it's corn, In the midsouth its switchgrass, Sugarbeets in the northeast & Europe, and Sugarcane in more equitorial regions (Like Brazil, who despite being an OPEC nation gets most of their fuel from bioethanol).
Lots of good information and links here.
They now make alternative fuel engines. They run on the screams and nightmares of users.
Multiply that small number by the insanely huge number of gallons of gasoline consumed.
In all seriousness, this whole big oil conspiracy is a load of junk.
You say that with such certainty that you must have some pretty solid reasoning and knowledge on the subject. --Or be operating from a comfortable state of nearly perfect ignorance. Let's see which it is. . .
I'm sure the oil companies would do that if they could, but look at it from the car company point of view. If a car company could come out and say "Hey! we got a car that gets amazing mpg and behaves just like any other car!" they would have an instant fortune. How exactly would oil companies go about stopping these companies? I've never heard of oil companies buying car companies, left and right. Did they go and kill everyone who has worked on a high efficiency engine program?
Oh boy. I don't want to be insulting, but this is extremely naive.
You could benefit from some reading on the events of the last century. First of all, it isn't oil companies. It's the oil elect. Many of them are politicians and decision makers in other key industries and boards. Oil is just one of the dominant forms of wealth, and so it is controlled by old money, along with every other significant sector of society, including the media, pharma, arms, banking and information industries. Collectively, this has been variously dubbed the Military Industrial Complex, and you can bet your socks it does whatever necessary to control power and wealth. Usually people don't need to be killed in order for secrets to be kept. Rather, you only hire on people who have been effectively programmed through schooling to be cognitively dissonant, (able to look facts in the face and yet continue believing contrary dictates), you silence them with non-disclosure agreements involving harsh threats for failure to comply, use simple bullying when that is not enough, character assassination when they get out of hand, and when things are dire, resort to murders, of which there are far too many examples. But primarily, simply training people to have a fear of seeking beyond orthodox beliefs is 99% effective. --As a practical example, consider your own reactions; You'd probably have a lot of trouble telling somebody that you believe in Astrology, and not just from any logical perspective, but rather from a deeply-felt gut wrenching imperative stemming from deep within. That sweaty-palmed sick feeling is evidence of the Pavlovian mind programming we've all been exposed to. It is both invisible and ubiquitous throughout society. It is deliberately inserted through simple techniques, it is easy for our controllers to modify after it is implanted, and it is incredibly effective in controlling human behavior.
I barely even know which way to point you on this. Perhaps this book would be a good start. "Farewell America" is fairly well accepted to have been authored by the French equivalent of the CIA, and based on hard intelligence gathered from French, Russian, and even American sources. It was originally published in French in 1968, but it was unavailable in the United States for many years. With the coming of the worldwide web, this is no longer true. With regard to this posting thread, it covers the involvement of the oil and arms industry.
Good luck.
-FL
seriously, with the amount of petroleum (or equivalent hydrocarbon) fuel used in this world, a 2% improvement in a system that's been tweaked and optimized during one of the most productive centuries for mechanical engineering is no small feat.
According to http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip_gasoline.html#demand
The US alone uses about 9 million barrels of gasoline each day, or 3.3 billion (US) per year. So if everyone got 2% better, that's a 65M barrel a year equivalent reduction in usage. Unless you come up with the next form of free energy, this sort of incremental improvement is about all we have going for us.
Of course, I seem to recall that a similar level of improvement can be achieved just by making sure your tires are balanced and at the proper pressure. It's winter now, so with colder temps everyone needs to re-check the static pressure in your tires!
I wonder how this compares to the OPOC engine that is being developed by the same guy who did the TDI for VW. Check out the nifty flash animation: http://www.ecomotors.com/ . I think the new found focus on economy is starting to (finally) spur some innovation in this area.
Yes, Two stroke engines have been around for a long time. However, this engine purports to be a clean two stroke - something that has not been around a long time. Anyone with an mid-70's two stroke motorcycle could probably go around the block before biking in their own smoke - so yes, this is new.
The advantage of this "system" is obviously 1) it's light, 2) it's clean; 3) it can use multiple fuel types.
1) A light engine can be combined with a generator; a battery. Think Electric-Car.
If the battery in an electric car is large enough to run ~30 miles; the car has a sufficiently strong auxillary motor (not enough to drive the car fast uphill, but enough to repower the battery between the downhill & uphill) - this makes an electric type car better. A "more complex" two stroke should be lighter than a four stroke; make the Electric car significantly better. (Personally, I drive under six miles most days. Occasionally I want to visit friends who live outside the range for a purely electric vehicle - requiring me to have a conventional vehicle, or an expensive one with multiple power systems.)
2) If the engine is as clean as a four stroke, then the engine is as clean as a four stroke. EG: you will be able to use it in a production vehicle without as much pollution as a conventional two stroke.
3) It can use multiple fuel types: EG: You can fill it with Gas, Diesel, Algie-Diesel - or if you're in a 3rd world country: you can use Strained Fryer Grease (Diesel Fuel) from Bob's Yak stand. (May only work in warm climates, not recommended for stoned hippies, etc...)
So yes, if this works as implied this is a good solution that represents a significant improvement over a four stroke engine. (Not to say that the moving-puch cylinder head would not work in a four-banger.) For a company that makes very light vehicles, and is working on an "electric-type" vehicle - this solution makes emminent sense. Please insert this in your tin-foil hat so the Govenment does not leak it to the Big Oil companies.
So is most of the new technology that you see. Even special relativity is obvious in retrospect.
You appear to be suggesting that everybody who has been thinking about how to improve internal combustion engines over the years simply failed to come up with anything smart.
If you read through just the examples posted among the comments for this story, I think you'll find such a position is untenable. Heck, there's one example in an adjacent response to this exact post which describes a significantly more efficient carburetor mechanism designed by apprentice engineers which was rejected because of the supposed manufacturing costs. (Which is ridiculous; the whole point of the industrial revolution is that manufacturing costs become negligible once factories are tooled up and a market for millions of copies exists.)
The brain spark was burning gasoline in the first place. Everything since then has largely been a matter of mechanics and efficiency management. If good ideas are only just now coming up, then the last half century's worth of engineers have been pretty thick. I think in this instance, one can safely invoke even Occam for guidance on that question!
-FL
And that's used for BioDiesel, not Ethanol. BioDiesel is MUCH more environment friendly in terms of production. A few simple catalysts and it's done, no waiting for or heating fermentation.
Not only is it a two-stroke engine, which are inherently more efficient than four-stroke engines, but it also limits the moving parts to a minimum. And Lotus never boasts about something it cannot do. However, I'd like to see a multicylinder version of it.
And that's no mean feature when you see the number of moving parts in today's engines fitted with variable valve timing/lift systems (which, of course, the switch to electric propulsion will avoid altogether).
The question is, however, is it too late? And imho, there is a "yes" and a "no".
Yes, the electric motors have been long proven to work.
No, the weight/energy ratio of electricity sucks. No, other (really!) "CO2 clean" fuels already exist, with engines already able to run on them (this particular engine included).
The future looks promising anyway. Now, I just wish that the car manufacturers turned more effort into removing weight. Even if that means stepping back on safety features - after all, nothing has been done yet on the driver training front.
And if you visit Indonesia you will see a lot of subsidised Palm Oil plantations where rainforest used to be.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If you drive across France, you'll see lots of bright yellow fields growing rapeseed...
Petrol in France (currently about €1.29/litre* or nearly $7.50/US gallon) costs too much for me to drive across France.
But I might take the train.
*http://www.prix-carburants.gouv.fr/
Thank-you for offering the first reasonable-sounding notes among this spate of responses.
What a day!
-FL
Wasn't that back in the early to mid 90s?
Specifically because retarded people weren't able to make the distinction between rape and rapeseed, they call the plant Canola on this side of the pond.
Two Strokes are notorious for having a narrow power band. I wonder if they'll couple this with an CVT transmission to keep the engine in the best efficiency range? Also, I'd be curious to see how the pipe tuning holds out especially in road vehicles.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
To paraphrase Robin Williams; Never have I seen a slashdotter in more dire need of a blowjob.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
... they call the plant Canola on this side of the pond.
Seems like we call canola, a particular variety of rapeseed, canola; and rapeseed, when that's what it is, rapeseed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canola
You appear to be suggesting that everybody who has been thinking about how to improve internal combustion engines over the years simply failed to come up with anything smart.
No, merely that a lot of the improvements we've seen in internal combustion engines have been along these lines (things that were physically possible decades earlier but needed someone to think of them). The fact that we haven't seen this particular improvement before just means that no one thought of it. No conspiracy needed.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It doesn't really save you any money until you know what MPG you get with each type of fuel vs the price of that fuel. While this is a good idea, it sounds like it will be too much work for the average idiot.
This is "News for Nerds", not "News for Oil Traders". We use SI units here.
You are assuming that ethanol is a green fuel. I'm not so sure about corn-based ethanol. Future technology may change that, but I am uneasy using a subsidized food crop to make fuel for cars.
The grand-parent is not assuming anything, you are the one who missed that since this is a Flex-Fuel engine, you choose whether to subsidize ethanol or not. So if this ever takes off, buy a car with this engine, continue using regular fossil fuel, and enjoy the 10% consumption reduction anyway.
I believe this could work, and in fact it is what I advocate, and what will be done in more economically free countries (ironically including China which is already building the infrastructure now). There are no technological challenges that I see, only political ones.
Regarding how to store the relatively cheap electricity we could be getting from fission done right, the easiest way in the short term would be by coal gasification. This would allow us to convert low-quality, high-sulfur coal, which we have in abundance in the U.S. (and also in China, Russia, and India), into a higher-quality, less polluting, but definitely non-carbon-neutral liquid fuel. Eventually, the incremental improvements we are already seeing in fuel cell technology should allow us to transition to carbon-neutral or carbon-negative methods of storing and converting energy.
The market will work if we let it. We won't completely run out of oil, but as proven and recoverable reserves shrink, prices will rise, making other forms of energy production more competitive. Carbon emissions will not shrink in the near term due to growth in the developing world, but if sustainable green technology is developed in the wealthier nations, it can be shared so as to allow other places to develop more cleanly and sustainably. (I don't believe in AGW but I understand there are other good reasons to wean ourselves from oil dependency, and I also understand that energy usage is one of the prime determinants of quality of life and we should be looking for ways to provide clean energy, not forcing people at gunpoint to use less of it.)
Nonaggression works!
It usually has to do with the parts around the engine. Lotus' initial quality control isn't the greatest, and they've put some parts where they shouldn't in the past.
As far as the engines, Lotus is famous for tricking out existing engines, from the ancient Fords to GM in the Opel Omega to the modern Toyotas in your Exige dream. They've even gone ethanol for that in testing.
I don't know why people still think the Oldsmobile diesel was based on a gasoline engine. It wasn't.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_V8_engine#LF9_Diesel
Actually, I wonder what's the efficiency of a car engine in winter, when the heat is also used to heat the passenger cabin.
I for one do understand the military/industrial/banking/education/media/medical/pharma complex, and in fact I am part of it (not because I'm proud of it, but because I must feed my family and have no other way to do so). I agree for the most part with your observations. But it does NOT control the entire world, and in fact it is being kept on an increasingly short leash by those who do, by those whose money is older by centuries than the American experiment itself. They view American imperialism and militarism as no longer a business opportunity, but rather a significant threat to their entire way of life. They are engineering a war that will end this threat, while preserving their own wealth and investments by shifting them to the places they believe will survive and even prosper in the aftermath of that war.
Energy is indeed being suppressed; people are being manipulated to believe that it is scarce and dangerous and that consuming it is a bad thing. And oil, which most people equate with energy, is indeed scarce at the moment. But, in the form of uranium, thorium, and coal (which can be converted to cleaner forms of energy), among other things, there is PLENTY. The US and world elites are struggling to maintain control over it, which means both ensuring that they have "their" share but also that others do not, since this way others can be manipulated into fighting each other for it and increasing its value. But the resulting shortages that all of us normal people see are PURELY political in nature. Even barring any future technological innovations, there is plenty of energy for all of us, and our descendants, and theirs, for generations to come. We just aren't being allowed to access it.
Nonaggression works!
I already posted in this thread, so I can't mod this informative... But yes, it is true that for some reason the oil industry uses accounting notation, not scientific notation and thus M is thousand not million (M from roman numerals as opposed to short for Mega). So M is thousand, MM is million, and (really stupid) B is billion.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
So in 2005, when they introduced the Daylight Saving Time changes, they did so to save approximately 15-20,000 barrels of oil a year (if I recall correctly). This engine, if made mandatory, would save around 30 times as much? Well get legislating, American Politicos!
http://marsandmore.com - Posters of space, spacecraft, and astronomy.
This might be a great power plant for a plug in hybrid.
If it can be a clean as a petrol, or the new diesel tech.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
Flex fuel engines are the norm for new cars in Brazil now (meaning gasoline/alcohol, not diesel). But there's a flaw in this picture: Drivers quickly discover which fuel is cheaper and offers a longer range (gasoline), and that's what they use exclusively. So in practice the advantage is more theoretical than actual.
The fact that we haven't seen this particular improvement before just means that no one thought of it. No conspiracy needed.
You're right, but for the wrong reasons.
Ideas are just ideas. They come when they are called for. Finding a more efficient alternative to the existing design paradigm is just a matter of hiring a diverse group of people to come up with novel solutions using the materials and tools available. That's where this idea came from. I doubt very much that it was a brain spark which, upon its discovery, was heralded to the top of the car-making empire by a bright-eyed inventor. No. I suspect that a design team was hired to build an efficient engine capable of burning bio-fuels in response to the shifting nature of the fuel industry.
The, so-called "Conspiracy" is simply that there have been forces present resisting this kind of activity because the old ways are perceived as safer, tried & true and just too risky a flow to work against. I don't call that "conspiracy". I call it cowardly and stupid. It's just plain lazy corruption, greed and the force of people too scared of losing their jobs to rock the boat in any significant manner. Why is it that sceptics perceive every complaint offered against the public-relations brochure/TV version of reality as a claim of conscious and deliberate "Conspiracy"? -A brush up on the fundamentals of basic human nature would go a long way to quelling their desire to rationalize everything into a false reality where no government or corporate body ever tells a lie.
It's never black & white, of course. The human creative muscle has its phases, one idea builds upon the next to be certain. It would be silly to ignore how the process of invention works. But it would be equally silly to pretend that corrupt forces do not exist when it is clearly evident that they do. All I'm saying is that this engine and the people who designed it may well be brilliant, but that it's peanuts compared to what could have been if corrupt forces were not acting on the world as a whole.
-FL
Canola isn't actually rapeseed, it's a crossbreed. Its name comes from Canadian Oil Low Acid. It was developed to have an edible form of rapeseed and now is grown across the world. The Brassica genus includes everything from mustard to rutabega.
The problem with food shortages isn't a matter of having enough food, it's getting it to where it needs to go. The US alone can massively overshoot what the world needs in food production, but then the food rots in harbors while petty local bureaucrats and dictators hold up the paperwork.
Not a typewriter
Uh, what? Did you even read my post? Nothing you said contradicts anything that I said...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Excellent.
If those damn kids put sugar in my gas tank again, I'll get cinnamon buns now instead of a dead engine.
You've missed the Flex-Fuel
There are lots of Flex-Fuel cars on the road these days. The big difference here is that it runs efficiently on multiple fuels.
Current flex fuel vehicles run on a standard ~9:1 compression ratio. This ratio burns regular 87 octane pump gas just fine. But E85 has an octane rating of approximately 105. This means it can run at much higher compression ratios (like 14:1). Higher compression ratios mean higher efficiency.
Because current Flex-Fuel vehicles burn E85 at 9:1 compression ratios, they experience a 30% reduction in efficiency on E85. This engine won't experience that. Not only can it run on multiple types of fuel, it can do so efficiently.
I'm interested in what kind of control logic they use to vary the compression ratio. How do they know the combustion properties of the fuel?
Disclaimer: I am a combustion engineer, and I have spent the past 3 years working on 2-stroke diesel engines.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
No, we are forced to subsidize the corn-based ethanol producers. There is no choose in this when the money comes from our taxes.
Not picking a fight here so please don't take it that way
Do you realize that using Electricity or Hydrogen is not quiet as green as everyone thinks is?
The combustion of H and O2 yields H2O but I have yet to see the spectrum of the exhaust gases of H - Atmosphere - Oil Vapor combustion.
I suspect it is something quite different then what the public has been sold since our atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.038% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Air also contains a variable amount of water vapor, on average around 1%.
Until we find a way to isolate H from available sources with an efficiency factor an order of magnitude better then what we have now the cost will stay prohibitive.
Electric cars are great and battery technology is getting there but still quite a ways out for a pure electric ( as opposed to Hybrid ) vehicle that has the range and performance of the most efficient petroleum powered vehicle.
Electric cars are mostly a shift of the pollution problem from individual power generation ( the engine burning petroleum ) to the very very large and new power plants that would have to be built to charge those batteries.
I have never seen a study that shows how many Megawatts are produced by the average number of cars being driven at one time but I suspect it is rather high value. Just a completely off the cuff calculation here but, the San Francisco Bay Bridge has about 250,000 cars crossing it every day.So the average maximum power output of those cars is probably around 149 KW. Assume that each runs about 50% of rated power on average so... 74.5 KW * 250000 = 18.5 MW
So assume that an internal combustion engine is only about 30% efficient and an electric motor can approach about 90% efficiency in the 50 to 100hp power range. so 18 div 3 = 6 MW (give or take). So by that very rough calculation we need to add 6 MW of capacity just for the cars crossing the bay bridge in any 24 hour period.
That additional capacity has to come from someplace. We are pushing a very fine line on hydro power since we are trying to balance fish stocks and habitat -v- building bigger damns, I doubt it can come from there. So what does that leave? Geo-Thermal, Solar, Wind, Nuclear and of course fossil fuel. So the question is, which do we start building more of, and in who's backyard? These are hard problems with no easy answers. People still need to get from point A to points B,C,D etc.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
The best internal combustion engine is about 30% efficient. 60% of the heat energy produced heads out the tail pip or is radiated into the air in cooling the engine. The amount of heat drawn off the coolant loop to heat the car ( forced air heating ) is negligible.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
oops.. yer right....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I learned to drive in a 2-stroke car -- a 1968 Saab, AFAIK the last 2-stroke car that could legally be sold in the US (50CID was the limit for that year, it was at or a hair under). They are not better in absolute terms, old style 2-strokes are just plain filthy. Their rear mufflers would not rust, instead they would become plugged with a mixture of soot and partially-burned gunk. If you left one of those cars idling for too long next to another car, you would leave an sooty oily spot from the exhaust. You could rejuvenate a muffler, if you had access to a trash fire or bonfire, by cooking it to bake/burn off the gunk.
Using synthetic oil for lubrication helps a little bit, because it is formulated to burn better, but in general, there is no way that these cars were cleaner.
So -- I actually drove one for years, actually worked on their exhaust system, actually left one idling next to another car for too long, and have seen all this with my own eyes. Where did you get your information? I'm curious to know what would cause someone to spout such obvious nonsense with such self-assured authority.
Wouldn't a knock sensor be able to tell the PCM when to back off the compression ratio? The PCM could maintain short and long term trim tables of compression ratios mapped to throttle angle. Some engines already use these sensors for short and long term spark ignition timing advance tables. As for recognizing the fuel type, unless it can rely on a knock sensor, I can't see any way to detect what the fuel type is other than some easily detectable property(electrical resistance maybe? density?).
What I'm curious about is how fast can it change the compression ratio? Is it throttle by wire? If not and you mash on the gas from a dead stop, does it try to combust a few cycles at 50:1 compression? If so, the engine will not last long. It will break parts quicker than you can say "cast aluminum piston".
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
It's really amazing how they can do so well in engine design and yet put out software that causes this much consternation...
That is all.
Would it pass in California? Probably not. You see two-stroke scooters around here sometimes. I don't know if they're legal or not, but I know they STINK when they go by, especially if they're not well maintained.
Odds seem slim that California would ever allow a production two-stroke automobile on the road, unless they could prove that it throws out less emissions than a regular car. They are already quite strict about Diesels from my understanding (although you can still get them if you really want one). Part of the Diesel requirements are that you have to prove an older engine doesn't become a heavy polluter under regular use. Two-strokes would probably have a similar procedure.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
No, we are forced to subsidize the corn-based ethanol producers. There is no choose in this when the money comes from our taxes.
Right but your taxes will subsidize corn ethanol no matter what kind of engine you use so this cannot count as a point against this new engine. I guess paiute's point was more that, from an ecological standpoint, Flex-Fuel engines are no better than regular engines as long as the only choice is corn ethanol. In that view this new engine's only advantage is the 10% reduction in fuel consumption.
Yes, I'm guessing it uses a knock sensor as well. Current use of knock sensors can vary valve timing to change the effective compression ratio from ~11:1 to about 9:1. However, I'm not sure a knock sensor strategy is the most durable choice for such extreme changes in compression as demonstrated here.
I'm speculating that if Lotus has used the knock sensor to control compression ratio, the engine won't run very well for a few miles after each fill up. This would be because the ECU would essentially have to remap everything for the new fuel.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
When you come up with a cost effective way to replace all of the automobiles in use with something dramatically more efficient, you let us know.
Until then, we have to be satisfied with the incremental improvements to the designs that are actually in production. We don't live in an ideal world, and there are currently no feasible plans for replacing all of the cars in use with electric vehicles (and all of the coal power plants that charge them with renewable energy sources).
Further, supposedly this engine design can accept a wide number of fuels. That might allow the Lotus Omnivore engine you buy in 2015 support some new biofuel that is invented in 2021. As a consumer, it also lets you switch fuels based on pricing - use propane when it's cheapest per mile traveled and diesel when diesel is cheapest per mile traveled and gasoline when gasoline is cheapest per mile traveled.
Now whether this concept makes mass production, I have no idea.
Oh, man... I'm picturing being *that guy*, the one that rolls out his riding lawnmower with the Lotus symbol on the hood... All my neighbors would stop pushing their mowers to watch my gleaming grass cutting muscle machine in amazement and envy. Cue Tim Allen caveman grunts...
Awww yeah...
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
The fact is, they were a slightly modified gasoline engine design. That's the problem. Sure, you can beef-up the crank, change the pistons slightly, and cast from a different alloy, but it's still a bad design for a diesel engine. Diesels have different design considerations, and aside from the 4-cycle basic layout that diesels and gasoline engines have in common, they really need to be designed from scratch.
As a result, it was rather unreliable and underpowered. I found it amusing you could have a car in the NADA Older Used Cars book that had a book value of $400, with a $500 deduction for having that godawful engine in it.
The 6.2/6.5 GM diesel engines weren't really that much better. They're more powerful and a somewhat better design, but they still miss the mark on reliability and were prone to overheating because they just weren't designed to have enough oil volume, adequate oil or block cooling systems, and the other little things that keep diesels reliable (like good fuel filters and fuel-water separators) were absent from the implementation. I was not impressed by the 6.2l engine in a Chevy truck I had a number of years ago. It simply didn't have the diesel reliability and other traits I expect. I have a good bit of experience owning, operating, maintaining, and making minor repairs to a whole lot of diesel engines (I owned & operated an excavating & trucking business), those older Chevy engines are really the only diesel engine I actively avoid and consider dealbreakers. It's just not worth the brain damage when you can get a real diesel engine that gets the job done and is reliable like a good diesel is.
The people allowing this stuff to float to the top of global media-consciousness don't care about the actual state of human affairs or about the genuinely awesome things we could be actually doing with technology.
Argh, you can't say something like that and leave your readers hanging, wondering what "genuinely awesome things we could actually be doing with technology." Please provide some examples. Thanks.
Rapeseed is what causes rape.
I have a lot of friends that are corn farmers and they would all love to know about how to get this supposed corn subsidy
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Energy is indeed being suppressed; people are being manipulated to believe that it is scarce and dangerous and that consuming it is a bad thing. And oil, which most people equate with energy, is indeed scarce at the moment. But, in the form of uranium, thorium, and coal (which can be converted to cleaner forms of energy), among other things, there is PLENTY. The US and world elites are struggling to maintain control over it, which means both ensuring that they have "their" share but also that others do not, since this way others can be manipulated into fighting each other for it and increasing its value. But the resulting shortages that all of us normal people see are PURELY political in nature. Even barring any future technological innovations, there is plenty of energy for all of us, and our descendants, and theirs, for generations to come. We just aren't being allowed to access it.
This is the most insightful and useful comment anybody has made in thus far in this whole thread.
-FL
I find this to be an interesting discussion, because although everyone blames the GM diesels' problems on being a modified gasoline engine, some of the most well-known and reliable "classic" Diesel engines in cars were nearly identical to their gasoline counterparts: VW 1.5, 1.6, and 1.9 Diesels and BMW 2.4L Diesels. The 1980's VW 1.5-1.9 engine blocks were nearly identical to 1.8-2.0L gasoline engines, with bore spacing, etc being identical. The same goes for the BMW 324TD and 325e/i...the cranks are swappable etc.
The problem (as your post supports) is poor design choices, not the base from which they were derived.
Any source and more information would always be welcomed.
The 2009 RX8 is rated at 22 highway mpg by the EPA. The bigger, heavier, faster Corvette is rated at 25 mpg. So yeah, the rotary is a great, powerful, compact engine. Unless you care about fuel economy.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have an RX8, as long as someone else was paying for the gas.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
At a steady 60 mph on a level road, 20 hp is a reasonable estimate for an average passenger vehicle. That's about 15 kW.
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If you aren't competent enough to know the difference between silicon and silicone, you're nowhere near competent enough to make decisions on the other subjects you mentioned.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Agreed, on a very level road, with an average coefficient of friction and no head wind, no acceleration,
That being said of the SF Bay bridge 30% of it is about a 1% grade up hill, about 50% of it is level and about 20% is about a .5% grade down hill with winds that increase induced drag so I would guess more like 50 hp so around 3 MW of increased load on the public power grid.
But lets not quibble, that is for only 250,000 cars. The number of registered vehicles in the state of California is about 2.8 million.
So if we can take an average of 21KW ( 30hp ) * 2.8 Million = 58GW ( yes gigawatts ) of additional electrical generating capacity. Contrast with current electrical peak demand for today of the State of California of 32 GW and I gotta tell ya, I just don't see how it is going to happen.
Now you can massage those number, estimate how many cars are going to need recharging overnight, what percentage will be on the road at any one time etc. but if my estimation is to high be even 50% then that still laves us short of about 29GW of Generation capacity.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
The problem with this is that ethanol isn't particularly green at this point and most engines have been tuned for regular gasoline, not high-octane ethanol blends. So they aren't particularly efficient at running pure ethanol, further reducing any green gains.
I don't read AC A human right
The video shows wildly-varying compression ratios depending on instantaneous load, up to 50:1.
I'd say, then, that the engine must learn the characteristics of the fuel which happens to be in use very, very quickly in order to achieve this. It's not so much adjusting for the last fillup, as it is adjusting for the conditions at this very moment.
I would guess that a knock sensor (or similar magic, perhaps in plural) and fancy software does the trick. I'd guess that they use somewhat risky engine management, as opposed to the very conservative and slow tuning performed by typical ECUs. This would allow it to be very aggressive, while not exceeding the mechanical limits of the engine, as it learned the limits of the particular fuel which is in use in order to maximize economy or power (whichever it might be being asked for at the moment), or anything in between.
Just because it takes a typical engine a good while to adjust, does not mean that it's impossible to improve that adjustment period to just a few cycles.
Kid-proof tablet..
If you aren't competent enough to know the difference between silicon and silicone, you're nowhere near competent enough to make decisions on the other subjects you mentioned.
I've seen this pattern far too many times; people who are so desperate to avoid thinking, they will latch on to the first flaw, no matter how small and irrelevant, even something as minor as a typo (*cough*), and toss out everything else based on that. --It has been my experience that this never has anything to do with the actual noted flaw, and everything to do with deeper emotional issues.
I knew a guy who told me, in all seriousness, that he didn't like science fiction books, (ALL science fiction books), because one book he'd read had been poorly written. --The actual problem being that he found the act of reading itself difficult (due to minor dyslexia) and so needed an external excuse to not have to engage with books at all.
The difference being that that person was just a kid. Half-baked evasion techniques are excusable in kids.
How old are you?
-FL
I, for one, welcome any combination of hydroelectric, geothermal, solar, wind, or nuclear facilities in my own backyard, as long as I get to keep some meaningful residual income from it. I would also welcome the addition of one or more cellular towers to my estate, under the same pretense.
Others may vary.
Kid-proof tablet..
Is their name Archer, Daniels or Midland? No? Then they're shit outta luck.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
and there is nothing environmentally desirable about the mono-culture of rapeseed, which rapes the soil of nutrients, requiring (usually mineral) fertilizers, which ruin the nitrogen content of waterways - and the fertilizers had their own CO2 costs of production - as well as being a non-renewable resource.
I'm waiting for someone to calculate the real cost of any of these "bio" fuels. Mostly the environmental damage is virtualized away so no-one notices (like seabed death 100's of miles away due of excessive N2 runoff)
Until they start advocating nuclear power, the greenie solution is to freeze in the dark. And all for a bogus AGW scare.
The combustion of H and O2 yields H2O but I have yet to see the spectrum of the exhaust gases of H - Atmosphere - Oil Vapor combustion.
I suspect it is something quite different then what the public has been sold since our atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.038% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases.
Given that "combustion" is just a colloquial term for rapid oxidation -- as in "this thing here combining with oxygen" -- I think your concern is unwarranted.
Until we find a way to isolate H from available sources with an efficiency factor an order of magnitude better then what we have now the cost will stay prohibitive.
I can put a solar panel on my roof and crack water all day long. If I'm not getting enough I can put up another solar panel. Yeah, improved efficiency might mean I need fewer panels, which could save me some money, but even at current efficiency levels I'm pretty sure I'd be saving money compared to what I'm currently spending on gasoline.
Electric cars are mostly a shift of the pollution problem from individual grossly inefficient power generation ( the engine burning petroleum ) to the very very large and vastly more efficient, even when using the exact same fuel, new power plants that would have to be built to charge those batteries.
Fixed that for you.
Even if we're talking about fossil fuel power generation, those engines can be run at a constant RPM, usually in the optimal range for that engine design, giving a huge boost in efficiency. One of the reasons car engines are so inefficient is that they spend so much time out of their optimal range, simply as a consequence of the environment they're operating in. That's why there's a difference between city and highway MPG.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.