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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."
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.
And what's this thing about "the engine is only suited for hybrid-electric vehicles, but that's okay. " ... what does THAT mean?
Most likely it means that the engine has terrible spin up/down times and/or is inefficient at doing them. Its best operated at constant speed, generating electricity for an electric motor which actually pushes you forward.
And what's this thing about "the engine is only suited for hybrid-electric vehicles, but that's okay. " ... what does THAT mean?
Most likely it means that the engine has terrible spin up/down times and/or is inefficient at doing them. Its best operated at constant speed, generating electricity for an electric motor which actually pushes you forward.
That would be my guess too.
But that could be handled with a CV transmission too.
Perhaps it can't be throttled down easily, so it's always putting out full power, so it either needs to be charging a battery or powering the car or shut off if neither is needed?
But even so, if it's 60% efficient, that's huge -- more efficient than our large turbines that power power plants, ships, etc. -- these things would easily tolerate an engine that takes a long time to spin up or down, or could only be run at full power or speed. It's not just hybrids.
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.
Well I don't know what algebra you learned, but an efficiency of 60% and outside (cold) temperature of 20 degrees celsius (293 degrees Kelvin) gives me a hot temperature of 459 degrees celsius, which is practical.
I loved my RX-7's. Damn fun car to drive, dead simple to work on, and remarkably reliable. Back then I didn't mind the oil consumption. It was more like a quart every 600 or so miles (1000kms +/-) But they were gas guzzlers. I think I use to get ~ 15MPG even when I was not driving aggressively.
Now I drive a Honda S2000, enjoy better efficiency (but not great), and have an equally exciting drive. Ah, progress
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
I think he's using the Chambadal-Novikov efficiency, not the Carnot efficiency. C-N better models practical engines, but it's not an absolute limit.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
The only concrete spec I could find that could be tied to this was the 25 kw (33 hp) power max. That might be enough to have somewhat more-than-required power at unambitious cruising speeds, but would absolutely not be able to deliver sufficient acceleration and therefore need to save up excess capacity (when available) in a battery and delivered via an electric motor.
Also, hypothetically, if the spin-up time was ludicrously slow, a CV would not help a car go from a stopped position up to highway speed.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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."
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.
It's not really a new invention... and the car companies really don't care. My grandfather spent the last 30 years of his life developping what's essentially a combustion-powered hydraulic motor... his plan was to use the hydraulic pressure in large industrial applications (think power generation), but the math showed that it would still be far more efficient than traditional ICE's in cars and trucks. He had a working model in 1982, and a car on the road driven by it in 1984. GM offered him $1million for it, with the explicit promise that they'd sweep it under the rug and never develop it further... being ethical, my grandfather told them to stuff it, and ended up never selling the design.
Car companies won't make him disappear, they just won't care and won't buy his product. If they do buy his product it'll be with the expressed promise that they won't do anything with it. That's not going to change until the car companies are forced to sell off their interests in the oil companies.
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.
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
Have you ever noticed that *everyone* has a grandfather who invented a miracle engine that was repressed by Big Auto? This is at least the tenth time I've heard a story along these lines.
I'm sure your grandpa was an amazing engineer, but the "200 MPG engine" was the cold fusion / room-temperature superconductor of the mid-20th century. Maybe somebody's grandpa really had the answer, and maybe somebody's grandpa did get hushed up by GM ... but maybe a lot of peoples' grandpas like telling stories to their grandkids.
As for the specific engine in this story: I don't see an engine. I see a nicely machined chunk of steel and a piece of lucite on a bearing, some heavy handwaving, and an efficiency claim which can only be achieved if the engine operates at a temperature high enough that steel is as useful a construction material as pudding.
And if you actually read the post in question, you would have noticed two very important things:
1. nowhere in my post did I make any claims as to actual mileage in a car. in fact, the device was never designed with auto in mind, it was just a side note to the original industrial design for it
2. it wasn't suppressed by big auto, it was never bought by them in the first place, specifically because of the promise of it being suppressed. In the early 1980's.
It would not have been a miraculous invention or a 200mpg engine. It wasn't even a traditional ICE design... again, if you'd actually *read* the post, you would have noticed that I didn't talk about mechanical power being generated, but about hydraulic power being generated. There's also no argument that a lot has changed since the early 1980s, and such an engine wouldn't be more efficient than a modern hybrid, but compared against a 1970's or 1980's car? Absolutely more efficient.
Again, though, had you actually *read* what was said, you would have realized that the initial design had nothing to do with automobiles, and was chiefly intended for industrial use. And as far as my grandfather's credentials... he worked for Rolls Royce during WWII on both the Merlin and the Griffon engines, and then went on to work for Pratt & Whitney Canada after emmigrating in 1954... among his credentials there, he worked on the GG4 engine which is still in use in marine settings today. So unlike the kooks you're so fond of mocking, he actually did have the experience and background to know what the hell he was doing.
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
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"?