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New Gasoline Engine Prototype Claims 3X Current Engine Efficiency
erfnet writes "A cool new high-efficiency gasoline engine prototype has no radiator, no pistons, no valves, no transmission, and no fluids (except for the fuel). At first glance it has a few similarities with the Wankel engine, but is more advanced. The engine is only suited for hybrid-electric vehicles, but that's okay. The efficiency they are claiming: is over 3x what today's gasoline engines produce. The developers, a team at Michigan State University, hope to have this engine on the market in the next two/three years."
It does look awful like a gas turbine ...
...Dead inventor article.
then sit on it so we have to buy, buy, buy! I SAW IT ON GLENN BECK!
In Soviet Russia engine efficiency claims you 3X
Low resistance digital logic will power the future. Imagine speeding down an information superhighway at the speed of knowledge. The cyber world world of the future will eliminate racism, hatred, and reform gender roles--in short enabling circumspect and measured debate on important issues.
This is my manifesto, I will be hurd.
"The developers, a team at Michigan State University, hope to have this engine on the market in the next two/three years." Seen too many of these stories. If this happens within three years, I will eat my hat.
Some amazing claims.. I hope they'll be able to prove them..
Although I'm more hoping for huge leaps in renewable fuel technology. The more efficient petrol based fuel engines become, the less funding for other techs.
Let's assume for a moment this conspiracy theory and pretend that major oil and natural gas companies have bought up a bunch of energy-related patents that were filed before 1991 and granted before 1994. Now that those patents have expired, why haven't products based on those inventions been announced?
Though an article with more technical details (I couldn't find anything going through the linked websites) might help.
They're claiming 60% efficiency? It's still a heat engine, so their absolute maximum efficiency is based on how hot they can get things and how cold it is outside, and I'm skeptical that they can get it hot enough for 60% efficiency from gasoline. (Actually, I don't think they said gasoline -- I don't think they said any specific fuel.)
And what's this thing about "the engine is only suited for hybrid-electric vehicles, but that's okay. " ... what does THAT mean?
Somehow I doubt this is going to pan out quite like they say it will.
still waiting to see a working model that will run for a minute or two.
also, they talk about reducing the weight by eliminating the transmission, but do they talk about the weight of the generators or electric motors?
"it has a few similarities with the Wankel engine" .... 3 ......2.....
Wankel patent holders will be so happy of hearing that.
Inventor will be sued in
Well the video doesn't match the picture.
And the video doesn't match the article text.
It seems like some sort of intermittent combustion turbine. I'm curious how they can raise Tc enough to beat a diesel.
the youtube video was posted in 2009! recycled for a slow news day?
If what he's holding is the engine, it looks nothing like a Wankel.
It's circular. That's the cause of any very superficial resemblance.
Two to three years, but probably at two to three times the price. I'm all for saving the planet, but as long as the "greener" products cost way more than the standard ones, I'll probably remain a polluter.
3x the efficiency of an american engine or an engine anywhere else?
if it's an engine anywhere else then that's something to read about
"The developers, a team at Michigan State University, hope to have this engine on the market in the next two/three years."
Oh no! Two/three years falls suspiciously close to the forth quarter of next year or, in other words, the project will be canceled in six months! Oh well.. it was a good run.
http://xkcd.com/678/
Although I'm more hoping for huge leaps in renewable fuel technology. The more efficient petrol based fuel engines become, the less funding for other techs.
One problem is the tax structure.
As for petrol: Production of renewable fuel for petrol vehicles (that is, ethanol fuel) isn't exactly efficient outside of perhaps Brazil. As I understand it, producing ethanol from sugarcane is more efficient than producing it from corn. But most countries that demand petrol and ethanol are , and they've enacted import tariffs and farm price supports to make the corn method artificially more attractive. This could change if researchers perfect production of ethanol from switchgrass.
As for diesel: Soy biodiesel already has a positive EROEI, and production of biodiesel from microalgae looked promising last time I checked. But diesel is more commonly used on trucks and buses than on cars. A lot of U.S. cities lack good bus transit, and apart from Volkswagen's TDI vehicles, few automakers want to try marketing diesel cars in the United States, even after the nationwide switch to ultra-low-sulfur diesel a few years ago.
Last I checked, patents expired after 20 years
And why do we never get to see one of these prototype rotating engines running?
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
Has this projected matured to power generation phase? Because the concept, and indeed the video introduction of the device by Professor Mueller are nearly two years old already. That interview was posted back in October of 2009. I'm hopeful the resurgence in interest here is an indication that they now have a working prototype.
Original 10/2009 news release - including the same video that appears in todays article:
MSU receives $2.5 million DOE award to build advanced hybrid engine
*Needs an electric transmission. Still, the saving of 1000 pounds will add to the fuel savings. Sounds a lot like a gas turbine, although they claim better fuel economy.
Cool! If that little thing can produce 25kw, then I hope the vehicle it powers has a connection to power your house when the storm takes out the grid!
here are just way too many questions unanswered for me to buy this. Firstly, how does it work? He doesn't put any effort into explaining how it works. He should demonstrate the full assembly and it's operation. All the abuse of "ultra" also feels very inappropriate.
Sure under optimal conditions the efficiency may be 60% but could this really be sustained under all conditions? The figure 3.5 times seems to be taken out of nowhere. What does he mean with a combustion engine? The Diesel engine is more efficient than the Otto/Gasoline engine but the efficiency can be improved on an Otto engine if you increase the compression (which is possible when using high octane fuels such as ethanol or gas). A Diesel engine can have up to 40-45% efficiency. Since this is intended for hybrid cars, we also have to account for the losses that occur in the conversion to electricity (electrical generators for vehicular use lie at about 60-80%) and the inefficiency of the electrical engine (around 60%). So the overall efficiency in such a system would then be 0.6*0.6*0.6 which is about 20-25%.
Then what about operation and durability. How long does an engine like this engine last before it becomes inoperable? What happens to the efficiency during the lifetime of such an engine? An old engine may only be half as efficient as a new one. What about cooling, can it get overheated in certain situations? Is it reliable or is it prone to stalling? Is it easy to start and stop or does it need extended warm-up and cool down periods.
I feel sad to say this but I cannot feel naught but that this guy is a joke and I cannot take him seriously.
Now, modern variable vane turbocharged Diesels can give high torque over a wide range of speeds - more or less constant from 1500-3000 rpm is not unknown. This thing seems to be a constant speed machine. OK, do a little maths:
My guess is that the 60% efficiency is IHP, Let's be generous and assume SHP is 55% of theoretical.
The machine is constant speed and drives a generator. Generator efficiency around 85%.
55% * 85% = 47%, only very slightly better than a Diesel you can probably buy from VW or BMW today.
So what is the point? There will be new problems of pollution - running hot gas down narrow passages - new reliability and metallurgical problems to overcome. There will be a whole industrial pyramid from parts factory to service guy to tool and train. Three years? More like 25, if the time the shift to Diesel took is any guide. But, when the Diesel transition happened in Europe, Diesels had roughly 50-60% of the fuel costs of gasoline. This time, the fuel advantage would be zero-5%. It seems pretty pointless.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
A video from October 2009 is not news.
2011. The year Gnome decided Linux will never be on the desktop.
Imagine an emergency generator 4 times more efficient than current models...
Yes the military would be very much interested in generators that only require 1/4 as much fuel especially
considering the cost transporting fuel to combat areas as would hospitals, the red cross, FEMA.
It looks very similar to a sketch design I came up with in college. But, I did not (still don't) have the engineering background to make it around the actual number crunching needed to make it efficient, much less the money and machining facilities to actually throw at a prototype that would likely be inefficient due to not having calculated optimum shapes and proportions. Knowing which alloys to use: Shaft wear, rotor, and wall erosion being the big issues here, especially without rings. Things have to be kept tight or too much stuff leaks around.
For instance, mine used "fins" on the rotor that started out normal to the center shaft and then curved to about 45 degree's near the outer "wall" which had the ungrounded end of the "spark plug" and the exhaust. A later design of a Wankel-like rotary came out showed that the exhaust should not be quite at the outer wall due to unspent fuel getting into the exhaust. I don't think I got around clearing out almost all the exhaust and replacing it with fresh fuel and air, either. But, now that I think about it again, it would just be a simple matter of separating the air and fuel injection portions of the cycle. I was trying to dump it in pre-mixed, which would either have to compress existing post combustion material that did not flee during the exhaust cycle, or run the risk of mixing too much and ending up in the exhaust system which would backfire. Variable torque was also an issue, as it seemed like it would be easy to stall and blow out the fins. Hybrids had not yet made it on the scene and had not caught my eye.
I do not know why I am spouting off about this. I guess it just brings back memories about things I would like to do, but cannot due to lack of resources. But, whatever, something about inspiration and perspiration.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
I guess this gives new meaning to the school's slogan "Go Green".... perhaps "Sparty On" will be replaced with a "Sputtering On"
The difficulty with this thing is that it is NOT suitable (if you read the article) for a hybrid. That's because the engine is unsuited for use as the baseload prime mover. It is only suitable for a full electric transmission with battery storage. Full electric transmissions are expensive and inefficient and, as I note in another post, probably can't compete with plain old Diesel.
I've been looking at full electric transmission for my next boat design, using a constant speed generator Diesel to run a large alternator with direct drive to the motors and auxiliary battery to enable short term high power (i.e. twice the generator output for an hour.) So I have been doing the maths...and it doesn't add up. It is more efficient and cheaper to have a small Diesel prime mover topping out at 2400rpm, and an auxiliary electric motor to boost shaft speed to 3000 for short periods(owing to the cube law, both motors have the same power.) I'm just confirming what Toyota and others already found out - hybrid is the most efficient.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Sorry, but epic comprehension fail. What is the generator, the DC drive, the one or more electric motors and the gearing/CV shafts and so on that get the power to the wheels if they aren't a transmission - and a complex one at that.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
there are efficient non-polluting energy sources available. maybe our information carbonation has a vapor lock somewhere?
next up, pending other behaviors; the roots of the hymen (scandal) exposed. sounds gross. the reality is even worse.
and also rotary-based. They're claiming 125hp from a 10-inch, 66 cu-in, 100 lb engine
http://www.regtech.com/Radmax_Technology/
http://www.regtech.com/download/radmaxbrochure_trifold.pdf
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
That would imply the exhaust gas left the combustion chamber at 20C. This would mean that the cylinder and piston operated at 20C and the expansion cycle had expansion to well beyond atmospheric. I'm afraid that a theoretical Carnot cycle engine cannot be built unless you have an almost infinitely long stroke to bore ratio on the exhaust stroke, and are discharging into a vacuum. (I know pushing_robot was kind of making the same point, but I thought it needed to be clarified for people who haven't done practical thermodynamics.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You didn't read the flippin' article.
If you had, you would have likely watched the youtube vid that explained the concept.
This engine is not an engine that directly propels a vehicle as a standard internal combustion engine does. Such engines are very inefficient, as much of the energy exerted is converted to heat, not to mention the additional energy that's used just to propel the weight of the engine itself. If there was a way to reduce the heat generated, and/or create a smaller and/or lighter engine that significantly reduces its mass, you would significantly improve energy efficiency. (Example: When engine blocks moved from cast iron to aluminum, it not only reduced the weight of the engine, but also allowed quicker transfer of heat energy out of the engine. Significant improvement of engine efficiency.)
This new engine has only one purpose: to spin a generator which charges the motor's batteries. With only that purpose in mind, this particular engine only has to run at a single speed to generate the RPM necessary to spin a generator. There's no need for lots of torque to propel the car forward at low speeds, plus one single RPM means that no drive train is necessary, plus one single RPM means that you can really simplify the design of the engine so that a minimal amount of cooling is required. All-in-all, you cut probably 90% off the weight of the engine, no longer require a radiator, and can transfer most of the energy generated directly to the generator, resulting in a much more efficient car.
The same video shown in the linked article is from UTube, uploaded Oct. 29, 2009.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf_-IMgla34
The concept of a detonation-wave engine is not new either. I remember reading about one in Popular Mechanics or one of its clones in the fifties or early sixties of the past century.
Seems like PR fluff to me. And that's not new, either.
RADIAL-FLOW WAVE ROTOR CONCEPTS, UNCONVENTIONAL DESIGNS AND APPLICATIONS
Some text to shut up the "lameness filter": No, it isn't anything like a Wankel.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Unlike the US, things are very different here in Europe. If we consider France, more than 60% of Cars sold every year are Diesel Engined.
I drive a Saab Estate 2.1ltr Diesel. I get 42mpg(imperial gallons) around town and more than 50 and even as high as 56mpg on a long trip to the Pyrenees last year.
All the European Auto makers have a lot of GasOil powered cars in their ranges.
Quite why US Car buyers won't buy a Diesel Engined version instead of Petrol(Gas) powered is something that has always puzzled me.
They are using 15% as their baseline automotive number to inflate their ridiculous 3.5x efficiency claim. That should set off alarm bells right there. This is clearly an attempt to exaggerate the impact across the board here.
I suspect the 60% efficiency number is purely theoretical and likely compounded by errors or even fabrications given the snake oil like claim.
I don't see anything credible going on here.
This appears to be some kind of micro-turbine, they best of which rarely top 30% efficiency.
I certainly wouldn't invest a dollar in this, and IMO the chance of this ever getting beyond prototype is near zero.
As noted the video is from 2009, surely there should be a running prototype by now?
The engine probably uses shock waves to produce the compression necessary for combustion. As such it would have a high minimum RPM. And due to material strength and the high heat inside the engine the maximum RPM probably is close to the minimum RPM. This engine would need to run a generator to maintain its efficiency. At this high RPM it would run a generator that could be very efficient, maybe up to 95% and could be made very small, maybe incorporated into the engine itself.
"fuel efficient" is spelled "Golf Cart"
Angel Labs homepage
MYT demonstration at SJSU - youtube videos
MYT is a swing-piston engine that can be scaled to basically any size you want, from lawnmowers to semi trailers. The 14" prototype is appropriate for replacing a large diesel engine.
It was developed on a shoestring budget. At one point the prototype was running on diesel, but they switched it to run on compressed air for development and demonstration purposes.
It's basically a swing-piston engine. The inventor doesn't want to sell out, and has been looking for someone to loan him a couple million dollars ($4m) to build a factory. He did get enough to start development on a 6-inch version (appropriate for replacing a car engine) last year, but I think he ran out of money again...
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
So despite the prof looking like Indiana Jones, what he is saying and showing is plausible. What is going to make or break this technology would be the weight of the battery pack needed to store all that extra energy to provide surge and low end torque. Prius has a very tiny battery, relatively, just enough to propel the car for about 2 miles. We might need a battery midway between Prius and Chevy Volt/Nissan Leaf for this technology to work. Of course, the fine tolerance manufacturing, durability of the engine and seals (the bugaboo of Wankel) and other issues might crop up.
But the basic idea is plausible. Giving it one and half (guarded) thumbs up.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Hemp based biodiesel is very productive per acre, and has the added advantage of growing in some pretty harsh conditions compared to corn.
Howevver, hemp is related to cannabis, and as the US has shown, nothing like logic shall come between the government and their ill-advised prohibitionist policies.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
here:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/emergingtech/wave-disk-engines-to-make-hybrid-vehicles-cheaper-more-efficient/1887
and here
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.php/wave-disc-engine-generator-series-hybrids-10812.html
It's a modified Tesla turbine. Using engineering, they have redesigned the vertical splines of a traditional Tesla turbine into ones which use fins. A simplified way to put it is that they have engineered a combined Tesla turbine/supercharger; thus, creating a more efficient, smaller, lighter super turbine that is able to produce it's own power by combustion. By combining the two, they have created a turbine which can operate at very high flow rates without the normal loss of efficiency. In effect each of the two designs balance each others' weaknesses. This is a winner because they have actually redesigned both as a single unit. All previous motors, turbines, superchargers, turbos, etc. are "add-ons" to an existing design; thus, never able to fully optimize efficiency. It has never been done successfully before. Combine this with an electric drive train, KERS, and the reduction in weight of the vehicle you have a truly viable system which will beat the pants off any hybrid combination to date.
no way that thing is putting out enough power to really do anything with. I'll file this right along HHO.
Oh wait - Nov 1, 2009? Hang on - could it be that the reason this story is "news" is current oil prices, rather than actual "newsworthiness"?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I could say the same thing about some of the people on "your side". Maddow, Shultz, Matthews etc. The DIFFERENCE, is that most on YOUR side want those on MY side off the air, and, those on MY side, could care less who on YOUR side is on the air. We let the FREE MARKET figure out which is best. From the ratings, I'm guessing more on MY side want to hear what "our" people are saying, than those on your side are saying. If your people are so good & honest, why are their ratings combined, lower than 90% of the people on our side? Hard to argue with ratings, which I suppose is why so many on your side, including some in the current administration, work so hard to try to get them knocked off the air. Oh, and as for Beck leaving his 5pm show on Fox, had you bothered to LISTEN, for the last year, he has pretty much without actually saying, he was leaving his daily show on Fox. He makes more from his radio, endorsements etc, than he makes on the TV show, not to mention it takes him away from his family for most of the day. I understand that people on "your side", use names when you run out of ideas, but please keep it civil will you?
It has only worked in the lab in this current design, and it's not even near able at the moment to even power a normal bicycle with a person on it let alone a car. /bit/ premature to automatically assume it is ready to replace any existing engine. In a decade to a decade and a half if things hold together then maybe you will see it out doing a normal engine, frankly i doubt things will hold together long enough for that to happen.
While it's a interesting development and re-discovery of a older tech, It's a
As someone consulting in the auto industry at the time, I can tell you that the auto company engineering departments at the time - including the upper executives - were DESPERATE for ANYTHING that would give them another MPG within the emission and performance constraints. The federal regulations were draconian and tightening while the Japanese competition was whipping their butts - especially on the west coast and among they new generation which was setting its lifetime car-buying preferences.
If your granddad had something that would give it to them - even if it meant redesigning the power train and retiring an engine production line - they'd have been on it like a shot. It would have been in the labs and undergoing testing. If it proved even marginal it would have been in a "concept car" prototype at auto shows. And if it had performed well enough to be a significant improvement, manufacturable at reasonable cost, and causing a car to perform well enough that it would sell, they'd have put it on the market to see if the public would accept it.
The problem is that there are a HOST of constraints, besides raw efficiency, on what ends up in cars. You can't have a car that accelerates so poorly that it gets rear-ended by road-raged drivers. You can't have one that only gets good MPG at some particular speed range. You can't have one that stalls about a car length after a stop sign. You can't have one that doesn't run when the temperature is below 10 degrees farenheit. you can't have one that needs an engine replacement every 20,000 miles. And I could go on for pages. There was a BUNCH of stuff they knew at the time would be fantastic - like hybrids for instance. Batteries weren't up to it but flywheels were. But it couldn't be done reliably until control and extreme power electronics was good enough to do the job - and were just getting there now.
And it has to be buildable, reliably, for an affordable price. Have you ANY IDEA what a tiny cost difference means when you are making millions of units? Figuring out how to eliminate a single screw that costs five cents to buy and install, at the cost of living at the time, would pay for TWO FULL TIME ENGINEERS to figure out how to do it. A big-three company spent many millions developing a flash-boiler steam engine during that period. If they could have gotten the construction cost down to $75 per unit it would have been their new power plant. They could only get it down to about twice that, so it only saw a racing car and a handful of prototypes.
So I call bull.
If it's real, the patent has expired by now. Give us the patent number. If it's still enough of an improvement over modern engines, and the patent attorneys didn't totally obfuscate some "secret sauce", a power plant like that could still be worth pursuing and could be engineered from the patent description. And there are a lot of applications BESIDES the US big-three ... two ... one car companies who could use it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
And what about the working fluid, ie: the hot gases that are actually doing the work, created by the oxygen and the fuel burning to heat those same forgotten gases?.
The engine's a great idea, and I hope it works out in the real world. I'd also hope that you guys start consulting old-school engineers and/or gearheads that understand basic principles. Completely missing how any combustion engine produces power is revealing, dontch'a think?.
And yes, buckaroos...gases are fluids.
Sounds like a perfect use for the F/OSS model! I'm sure he has patents and or copyrights on his design, yes? so offer them to the world under a license that is free for non commercial use and anybody that wants to build commercial gives him a nice RAND number, say 3% per sale.
I'm sure there are plenty of countries out there that doesn't suck the big oil cock like the USA companies do, the BRIC for instance. Sounds like a good chance to give the big companies the bird and make a nice little bit of dough for old gramps while you're at it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Howevver, hemp is related to cannabis
How would an aerial survey distinguish C. sativa bred for hemp fiber and hemp oil from C. sativa bred for THC?
Just like the carburetor from the 70's that would allow a station wagon loaded with a family of 4 to drive from DC to FL on one tank of gas.
Which now sits on some shelf because the big oil companies couldn't allow something to take away from their profits.
SO yea this will be bought up and shelved almost immediately and we will not hear anything more of it.
Kiss your oil overlords feet or be prepared for the revolution.
This is why suppression must be outlawed in any real patent reform.
Charging too much to license the patent is defacto suppression also. If you take out a patent, you must be willing to submit to regulatory action on your pricing scheme.
If you don't like regulation from the government, then don't seek monopolies from the government.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Why deal with something now when you can put it off until later and forget about it?
I aint goin' to THINK about my budget or save up money like people in inferior countries do - I'm American, my money troubles are for my loan consolidation company! GO USA! GO USA!
Spending zero down and not worrying about the end cost is the American way.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Mitsubishi tried this for their prototype electric vehicle, gave up and reverted to single motor drive.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
BTW, I have looked at available energy to effective transported mass. Very roughly, a US SUV averages about 0.5% efficiency, a European turbodiesel about 1%, and a Prius about 1.1%.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Definitely. I'd say if one had to make a hasty generalisation, it would fit a centrifugal slurry pump much better.
Personally, I wished that they had NOT announced this and continued work on it. Now China, and probably other nations, will simply grab the work regardless of IP. Hopefully, they will keep it in the states.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Expansion on the parent comment: any claim about "tripling the efficiency of current engines" ought to set off alarm bells, because there are strict theoretical limits on the efficiency of any engine. Yes, switching to a different basic design (such as Diesel vs. the more common Otto cycle) can give you a better possible rating, as can changing the temperatures involved, but you're still likely to hit theoretical limits that are far below what you might think of as "perfect efficiency", ie. pure conversion of the fuel's chemical energy into motion.
Revive the Constitution.
I didn't see any video of a working test model. If this guy doesn't have a working model he's got nothing.
- I've got bad karma because I won't parrot everyone else's opinion
This could be used on a number of products. RVs, Boats, Home Generators, and of course, hybrids. One very smart move on this would be to create a semi-truck with several of these, along with a small number of batteries. Quite the fuel savings.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The patent system is a guaranteed monopoly. That is the exact purpose for which it was created. The intent is to reward investment in innovation by granting a temporary monopoly to the inventor. You may argue that the current system has flaws that prevent it from working as intended, especially with regard to the cost and pace of recent technological development, and in light of the development of a secondary market for patent licenses, but eliminating the monopoly granted or imposing a value on a license that doesn't necessarily reflect the market value of the license or the amount of investment that led to the original patent is silly. Your attempt to spread innovation to the market will more likely stifle it and lead companies to keeping innovations to themselves in the form of trade secrets.
Regarding your signature, the correct expression is "for all intents and purposes", and the word whom is not dead. Most people just don't learn how to use it any more.
It's quite suitable for a series hybrid. There are several of those in production; they work. You can even get a series hybrid bicycle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vehicle#Series
They can and they do. Instead of inventing your own big words and guessing about what does and doesn't work, why not do your homework?
The usual efficiency values for internal combustion are around 40%, given a well tuned device. They claim that the efficiency is increased by a factor > 3, does it mean an efficiency > 120%? What about the Carnot principle?
Vapor engine ware.
Until there's a wave detonation engine powered car Jeremy Clarkson can talk crap about, I won't believe it.
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
Let's revisit this when they actually have a working prototype car. And remember that these days internal combustion isn't as simple as just building an efficient engine. You have every kind of restriction from what fuel it can burn to what emissions it can emit to how much noise it can generate to what temperature range it must be operable over - not to mention what is it's operational lifetime? A competitive engine has a lot of conditions that it has to meet.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Tack a mini version of this onto a Tesla-style BEV and you'll have a 99MPG ultraquiet roadster with massive acceleration that can recharge from a gas station in an emergency or if traveling long distance. If at all possible, rig it so it can convert fuel to charge right there at the gas pump without the need for a massive attached gas tank.
Heck, sell it as an aftermarket clip-on to BEVs. It could be rented to people who want to make rare long-distance trips, or sold directly to those who have variable motoring needs, letting them store it in their garage to save weight when it's not in use.
Similar design has been in development by the StarRotor Corporation. Will be interesting to see if they violated their patent. http://www.starrotor.com/
Wankels have a poor thermal efficiency. They use the same thermodynamic cycle as piston engines, but they have a much worse surface area to volume ratio, which results in more wasted energy. The only one in production vehicles get crap mileage. Mazda has a newer version in development where they try to optimize the area/volume ratio among other things. We'll see how good it does if they ever get it into a car. Rotaries are not required to run fast either - the reason they run them so fast is to get higher power out of a small engine. They CAN go fast because they are perfectly balanced, but it's not required.
Is it better to use this engine as air compressor and use compressed air to power the car?
The article mentions making a 25 kilowatt version of the prototype, but that translates to 33.5 horsepower. That's perfectly fine for human transportation (heck 1 hp should be able to propel a human to 60+ mph if the vehicle was aerodynamic and light), but Americans (or people of any wealthy nation) like to splurge on a massive car with a massive engine.
This is indeed an engineering breakthrough, but what we need in conjunction with is either a change in human nature or some radical mandates on maximum vehicle weight. That obviously can't happen over night because no one wants to be in the smaller car when there is a collision. No one wants to unilaterally disarm on vehicle weight. What would need to happen is to have a max car and SUV size of say 4000 lbs and then reduce the maximum allowed weight by 100 lbs a year. Keep going until the maximum allowable car size is 500 lbs.
This story is only two years old. Come on mods, wake up.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Your nom de clavier is "Zediker" ... and you're laughing at someone else's name?
What, again? http://www.dilbert.com/2011-03-29/
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This generates a very small amount of output currently.
When the prototype gets scaled up to deliver 60-100 kW, as would be needed for a real vehicle, the question will be whether it is possible to achieve complete and efficient combustion of the fuel, and what will be thermal losses under high load, and what will be torque figures.
I don't understand how this substantively differs from a gas turbine. Jaguar has recently been playing with such things in the UK, but actually in a real vehicle, and with working and demonstrable technology.
Most automotive engines of new generation, use a very sophisticated high pressure fuel system, often with direct injection into the cylinder to ensure high combustion efficiency. I wonder with the design shown, if such complete combustion would be achievable.
With most current diesel engines achieving ~40% efficiency on average, the claims made here do not seem to add up. An installation of this powerplant may have been lighter without a hybrid powertrain - but with it? - I am not so sure. Even if we somehow gain the idealistic 20% efficiency over classic powertrain, we still have a higher environmental cost over full vehicle lifecycle when we add the expense of other hybrid vehicle components like batteries.
I think US industry just invents such product, to deflect from the fact that R&D spend at US big three manufacturers has all but ceased. Unless they start to invest again soon, they will not ever catch up technologically with other manufacturers.
I had a grandfather that invented a time machine. But he went back in time and killed himself. Now he's gone.
Luxury
I had a grand father who went back and killed his father now both of us dont exist.
$%^&*(NO CARRIER
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Patents last 17 years, not forever. You can't "suppress" something permanently by patenting it - quite the opposite really because the patent is now published and once it expires others can begin to use it. The point of patents is to let those who developed an invention have a chance to profit from them and be glad they shared the idea at all; in software that mostly doesn't work but I'm not convinced it's such a bad idea with expensive machine parts.
Check out the Apostrophe open-source CMS: http://www.apostrophenow.com/
The prof talked about the design, showed a mockup with plastic casing, and promised a working model. Three years is a long time to have a prototype. Even if he could, there are still all the environmental tests, as were indicated in many comments. (From cold weather or hot weather operation, barometric pressure effects to acceleration,stalling after a stop, etc.)
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Wave Disk Generator?
I'm holding out for the Wave Motion Engine/Cannon!
Our Star-Blazers!
I love these 3x type statements.
The implication is that 3x is possible with modern regulations.
Consider that the NOx restrictions will keep the effective compression
ratio so low what 3x would be illegal on the emissions alone.
Also a 3x implies that the motor runs within a rather limited parameter set.
This might be OK for trains but a modern train diesel runs rather efficiently
when compared to gasoline engines.
The 25KWatt number is interesting. If we were to restrict ALL passenger
cars to a 25KW power plant we would easy improve the fuel efficiency of
the auto fleet, perhaps 3x.
Hybrids are interesting because they address the red light and
freeway parking lot too common situation (badly but better than zero).
Also the engine can run at a near constant load when it does run.
A constant load can raise the efficiency of any engine on the road today.
However engines are not optimum for mileage they are optimum
for acceleration in most cases.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
This is probably the last you will hear about this one. If there is a patent application, it will be bought, and the technology hidden. Draw your own conclusion.
There is no business sense, in the current business viewpoint, in promoting technology in this area that is likely to replace the current wasteful standards.
Five years from now, with gas prices even higher as a proportion of personal income, yes.
But right now, there is too much money being made by vested interests in current technology. This ain't computers, a relatively new field. This is oil, and coal, and gas---all old-timers, with trillions of dollars invested in current tech. It ain't going to be replaced yet. Get over it.
... sad ...
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
So... the fact it only works on engines that are hybrids, means they use electricity somehow to do away with the rest.....or that they would not want to hear everyone is retro fitting their cars with this and getting 3 times more value for their buck, thereby killing any chance of the electric car business taking off....
I've been looking at a lot of "new engine" ideas over the years, and I've come up with a short list of items to check for to evaluate their feasibility. Most I've seen fail due to one of these.
1) Seal exposure. How is the combustion chamber sealed? What is the length of the seal, and how stiff is it? This looks like it has a long, winding seal on a plate. A lot of pressure will leak down from the chamber in the milliseconds after the ignition pressure builds just from having so many escape routes. And if that plate flexes (a few thousandths of an inch is a chasm), anything resembling efficiency disappears. Every bend in the seal area means a seal joint, and lost efficiency. One of the big losses for the Wankel engine is the large seal areas on both sides of the rotor. The tip seal meet the corner seals which meet the side seal, and each joint leaks like a sieve. Fortunately, the rotor is a chunk of cast iron, and the sides and housings can be made really beefy, since they are stationary. The piston engine, otoh, has a round piston, with seal that are hidden inside a crack from the combustion gases point of view. The piston engine probably has the smallest possible seal length to combustion chamber volume that can be achieved. What's more, the seals can overlapped themselves, decreasing the effect of the joint the seal makes with itself.
2) Wetted area inside the combustion chamber. The more metal exposed to combustion gases, the more heat is going to be sucked out the combustion event. The Wankel loses out to the piston engine on that front to. The cylinder maximizes the volume to surface area ratio. Anything else can expect to take an efficiency hit from there.
3) Corners. Sharp corners are the enemy. As the sides meet, the exposure to so much metal will extinquish the flame front. The Wankel exhaust is so hot and loud because as the tip seal moves past the exhaust, unburnt FA mixture from both sides of the seal are suddenly dumped into the hot burnt gases and explodes. It an awfully tiny explosion, but it happens right in the entrance to the exhaust. This tiny explosion uses fuel, but does nothing to push the rotor. Bad news for efficiency. It can be alleviated somewhat with direct injection.
From my layman's POV, those are the three things that hold back most new engine designs.
I could be wrong.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
They will spend the rest of their lives in court over IP with Big Oil until one of two things happen: there is no oil left, or they have no money left for lawyers. I'm counting on the latter.
There are pointers to this 2009 video and an engineering report from 2004. No indication of a working prototype under testing, no actual measurements of efficiency, no indication of recent progress, no indication of interest or investment on the part of the automotive industry or government. This appears to be vaporware.
OTOH, the vast energy conspiracy may have forced this to the back burner for fear of disrupting established economic models.
...omphaloskepsis often...