Engineering a Solution to the Energy Question 1.1 Hyper Efficient IC Engines

Well as far india is concerned my feeling is un less we adapt simple living with out un wanted or un nessery means of living the demand for energy will keep growing even super performance IC engines or what ever echofriendly equipments are intruduced. will not help In general un less we learn to obeay Nature we are doomed.

murali

The best thing we can do is kill Carnot, yes, I know he is dead already, but his limits live on.

What I mean is bypass carnot. use fuel cells to combine oxygen with carbon and hydrogen in reversible cells and get 99% of the theoretical energy from this reaction as electron flow instead of thermal expansion.

Now anything will burn = heat to run an engine, but not all things can be oxidized in fuel cells. So do not try to burn all things. Simple alcohols and hydrogen can be burned in fuekl cells with 90%+ efficiency. The higher the rate the lower the efficicnecy, but the smaller the cell and the higher the energy density. A balance can be struck. Ballard power has played with this. the membranes are costly and degrade with time = added cost = lower efficiency.

The true long term solution is 50% efficient solar cells on all houses and on lots of flat spaces. current state of the art =~41%, so 50% is reachable in 10 years or so.

Aurizon,

Fuel cells cannot get 99% or 90%. In practice (Ballard) the well to wheel is no better than a gasoline engine, and worse than a diesel.

Yes solar is great, but the sun does not shine all the time, and the power density of a solar powered car is much to low, and for an airplane, forget it.

It is not a matter of efficiency, but power per cost, and more important looks. Solar is about 10:1 in cost to IC engines, and payback is a .... Roof tiles would be great if their cost was about what high end shingle are and got 10%. Solar panels also cost a lot in terms of energy to build, and none have shown to date to recover costs in their life time. Ic engines do recover costs, hence the advantage.

I think that after 125 years of development diesel engines for car use have got just about as efficient as they are going to get what we need is for more people to use them.

In Europe where fuel cost about three times as expensive as it is in Australia or USA about 25% of new cars are diesel powered.

In the UK we drive fairly light vehicles at low speed due to congestion and in consequence have a very low road accident fatality rate helped by the fact that we have a draconian monitoring system of cameras watching our every move.

I think a thermal efficiency of 60% might be achievable by a large ship borne diesel with exhaust heat recovery by means of Stirling or rakine turbine engine but about half that is the most we should expect from a car engine.

The initial post of this thread was the fulfillment of a promise to Seaplaneguy for a forum that was open and would allow an in depth discussion of the concept of his engines as presented in part in multiple posts on various other threads.

When the initial post was made Seaplaneguy was immediately contacted via e-mail and given a link to this thread, so he could put forward his views and ideas. This was all done as early as possible and some 20 hours prior to the mail out so there would be sufficient time to insert the relevant information. Indeed Seaplaneguy promptly responded to my e-mails and has left posts on other threads since this thread was initiated.

Unfortunately there has been no response to date from Seaplaneguy in this thread. I will leave it up to others to draw their own conclusions and close with the statement that I am somewhat disappointed at the response.

My apologies for the false start.

Now don't go throw in the towel yet on this topic and thread. It only being Sunday and the end of the new year celebration. Many are just trying to get their brain cells all ready for work tomorrow and are not yet in gear towards offering any real support.

I myself have been really disappointed with the USA auto makers and their development of efficient rides. The Japanees and other European manf. have been moving forward over the past ten years in the development of good ans efficient transportation. While this gas guzzling country has siply turned 90* and headed towards the hills with the RVs' being mass produced. What a crock......and 90% of the efficient designs have been placed in the round bin. This is the main reason why these big auto companies are in the poop hopper to date.

Just a very in your face attitude about having all their meaningless TV promotions thrown at us and nothing to actualy serve our nation in the terms of ecconimic and affordable. Most everything developed has been for the upper 10% of our nations working force and citizens who relish from such nonsence. Sorry for not being a very efficient note in the demand and developing of more efficient IC engines.

I for one am working on building small notor cycle powered commuter vehicles. Lite-weight tubular framed chassis with three wheels and the range of 80+ mpg. The usage of a CVT with the proper gear ratio is always going to give any vehicle the actual ability to get better fuel efficient results. Power to weight ratio has no hold on a simple design of what is already developed. My friends and I have bycicle frames with 5hp engines and run a standard gearing and manual chain selecter for our required drive ratios.

Nothing like riding a bycicle powered by gas and only spending $3.00 per week in fuel cost just for local commuting. I can travel 125 miles on 1 gallon of 92 octane fuel with my bycicle conversion. Thumb trottle and thumb control on the shifting of gears.

Just some fuel for thought, I find it rediculous when someone tosses out a perfactly good piece of equipment just because it is not less then two years new. What a waistefull country we have developed and we do nothing to retrain out sosiety. This is the main cause of all the hatred in the world. Our country of pigs.

I will be finished with my little three wheeled commuter ride this year. The motorcycle I prefer is the Honda Gold Wing with electric reverse. It will average 40+mpg. There are other means to build simplicity, only our country does not understand this term.

LordMaximo,

Hate is caused by envy. That is why envy is on the big top ten list of commandments, as in thou shalt not...envy.

Try this. Invent an actual engine that gets 100 mpg. Put it in a car, like a GM or Buick. Find your local CAFE guy, like in California, have them test it, and then hide out. The auto guys will have 8 years to comply. Sounds like fun? That is what I am doing. Then patent is all and sign up one or two companies with a clue to produce under contract with massive penalties if they don't. Then watch the other car companies crap their pants as their market share tanks. It is almost as fun as touch and goes in a seaplane...in bad weather...

That is easy, absent any car specs on mass, required acceleration, and drag coefficient, anyone can do that.

Aurizon,

I agree. I meant to say an average car like a Camery or GM 4 door about 3500 lbs. In fact, balast it to match the old car to the lbs.

"Nothing like riding a bycicle powered by gas and only spending $3.00 per week in fuel cost just for local commuting. I can travel 125 miles on 1 gallon of 92 octane fuel with my bycicle conversion."

Is it legal on interstates? (There are no bicycle lanes crossing the Missouri River at Kansas City)

Does it work well in four feet of snow, with a wind chill of -40?

Masu,

You are truly amazing, big guy. You have the patience of a 2 year old. I'm busy with family, understand, I have a life and a wife. I like to hold cr4 comment to diversions during the week. Besides, I wanted to see if some else had their brain in gear.

"You are truly amazing, big guy. You have the patience of a 2 year old."

What about the 3,900 odd other CR4 users that have been waiting for 2 days for your input. Since I notified you of this thread you have made the time to criticize others and myself yet you ignore a thread that was set up especially for you so you could demonstrate how none of us understands the problem.

Your post could have been constructive and contained the information that was requested but instead we get a contemptuous insulting remark.

I apologize to my fellow CR4 members for foolishly thinking that this could have ever been a constructive discussion based on your ideas of improving the efficiency of IC engines. I will leave it to others to draw their own conclusions and express my disappointment that this has not been the constructive discussion that I envisaged.

!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would like to express my appology for Masu thinking my life revolves around him. Give it a rest, will you. I am totaly disappointed in your thinking that you are my boss and that I am at your service. I comment when I feel like it. See, look at all the comments I have now. I had a long one for your water comment, but I was nice to you, and bit my keyboard. Can you be nice in return? What is it about Global Warming wackos and not being nice? Ah, yes, they are saving us all from ourselves...and they know best...:)

Haha, what this discussion does, along with so many other forum based discussions, is perfectly illustrate the theory of Entropy!

If left to its own devices, a discussion, like everything else in nature, will descend into chaos!

Cheers

Andrew UK

To add more to this situation. I hate to rub someone the wrong way, especially when it is in the developement of technology. Our country has fallen asleep in regaurds to the development of efficient transportation. There needs to be a renewing of our technical development if we plan on being a leading industrialized country in this world. To many pushing for the all mighty dollar when it comes to producing a worthy compeditor to the world.

I am just one voice and many thoughts.

It takes more then one voice to make the change real.

"I am just one voice and many thoughts. It takes more then one voice to make the change real."

Thank goodness for that, you gave me a headache-with your opine. Your tubular fantasy bike has to share the road with real automobiles. Do you not fear ending up as a bug on the windshield of reality?

Also how does your bicycle bring home the groceries for a family of 4?

LordMaximo,

It does not take a village or a voice to change the world. It takes one guy who knows what to do who is willing to do it, and not talk about it, a Churchhill of our day, but without the politics. Then it takes some good employees to build and service customers.

I have often thought about using a sun generated wind to drive a fan driven generator. Cover an area a mile square with a heat absorbing material 'black anodized aluminum?'. This tent like structure would start about ten feet from the ground and would tent upwards to maybe two hundred feet and then enter a very tall and having a very large diameter stack that would rise perhaps a thousand feet. It would be pinched in (an modified hour glass shape) and in this narrowed section there would be a high efficient propeller - turbine - fan blade that would be forced to turn from the large updraft that would be generated by all the heated air.

This wind maker might work even better in a cool climate as the air would start being denser. I believe that this would structure would be able to generate a fair amount of electricity.

Fuel cell and Sterling engines have been around for more than a hundred years and neither seem to have progressed that much.

Massey Ferguson build a fuel celled powered tractor around 1957 that had good power, just a prototype, but it worked. Same problem as today, getting a supply of free (pure) hydrogen. Using LPG or natural gas converted to hydrogen is having a hard time of reaching a positive coefficient of energy conversion. And while fuel cells have almost only heat and water as waste products, converting natural gas to use in a fuel cell leaves many other byproducts. Better to use in a conventional boiler or IC engine. Storing hydrogen has and will remain a problem. Hydrogen has a great attraction to many other substances - getting it back is the problem. Hydrogen is hard on welds and most metals would have to be specially processed. It also escapes through the smallest openings. Converting water requires a lot of heat or electricity, this too has not proved to be an efficient operation.

Sterling engines have always seemed to have great promise, they have just not been able to produce the efficiently over IC engines. I played with a few when I was younger and I as well as many other smarter than me individuals could not reach the needed increase in power versus waste heat.

Then there is ethanol and biodiesel. Just as inefficient, another farm subsidy!

Just another idea from a poor old country hick.

The tower slated for completion in 2005 near Mildura is interesting but has one tiny flaw and that is I can't seem to find anybody that has ever heard of it. I just get the feeling that if somebody wanted to build a 3,000 foot high tower it would have managed to get some sort of publicity.

Jmart23

Why do you like stirling cycle (isothermal, Constant volume heat addition, isothermal espansion)?

The two processes are on opposite ends of the game. One wants to be hot and one wants to be cold. Have you tried to split up the compression and expansion?

Possibly the km-high stack solution has been stalled by the very powerful Aussie EPA until it can be proven by a proper environmental assessment that it will not damage the upper atmospheric layers by the constant flow of (otherwise absent) warm air it will generate; a problem analagous to the unforseen environmental damage caused by warm water outflow from generating stations. A great many (in fact almost all) methods of electricity generation are, unfortunately, environmentally hazardous either in their manufacture, operation or byproduct production. Some, admittedly are less-so than others (on my scale, atomic generation is the filthiest), especially given recent technology that ameliorates or completely abates air pollution. BTW, Have any of you a practical, simple solution to absorbing/transforming CO 2 into other useful and environmentally friendly forms? If so, I'd like to hear about them!

But since the question is not whither or why, but how energy efficiency may be further improved, one answer has been by extending the closed systems to include open-system add-ons, such as the much-maligned but brilliant Sterling engines, which can be run off Venturi tube temperature differentials using exhaust lines and the already in-use huge variety of heat exchangers to extend the practical usage of every last iota of usable heat.

Isn't the main problem with IC efficiency the losses incurred from transmission between motive power and end-use? Or is that just one of a two-part question that includes more efficient motive engines? If so, why not extend the question to include EC engine efficiency as well, as the solar power and wind power folks are attempting to do here?

MarkTheHandyman has hit the nail on the head with the Stirling Engine. External Combustion engines have the advantage of environmental acceptance in their favour. The problem with Stirling Engines,now very much on the comeback, is that they suffer from inefficient design of the recuperator. Basic fluid mechancics and thermodynamics suggest that a much more thermally efficient solution is possible and

the quietness and low pollution operation of STIRLING ENGINES will mean that this type of engine will bring it to fruition afeter 120 years slow development.

Back to the apparent lack of efficient eginnes in the US - the low price of gasolene in the past has negated serious alternative engine development - even turbocharged Diesel engines. This will change as the price of gasolene increases in the us as it has in Europe.

Handyman,

The central problem of an IC engine is in the power variation method and in the power pulses that do not allow low speed operation. A throttle changes the amount of air in the engine by restriction and lowers the true expansion ratio.

For example, if you throttle back and only half the mass is allow in, then when the piston is at TDC you have 1/2 the expansion. The efficiency of an engine due to the lack of air then drops according to know formulas. An engine is quite sensitive below 8:1 to this drop in expansion which is quite strong in cars with large motors that are strongly throttled, such as SUVs.

Saab built an engine based on a USA patent that changed the head volume with throttle setting that restored the expansion ratio again (decreased head height by 1/2 so that the 1/2 charge allowed in now was compressed back to the full throttle ratio of 8:1). Results: 40% better economy, which is better than all the hybrids and much cheaper. hmmm

In a diesel the performance stays rather constant until about 50% of fuel injection or so, and then drops off. In contrast, a stirling increases in performance with lower fuel. A Diesel has a flat sensitivity curve to throttle in the 50-100% and this fact helps in fuel economy when a Diesel is heavily loaded, such as rabbit VW or a truck. Herein is the advantage of a Diesel.

A Diesel at 75% and 16:1 compression, and an Otto cycle at 75% and 8:1 are about the same efficiency wise per BTU. The otto engine however has a stronger drop in efficiency with lower power due to the power variation method by a throttle.

Having an open system introduces air hybrids and use of air in brake recovery. Such a system can be shown to be 30% efficient, or better than electric hybrids, less all the hardware. There is a lot of promise in air hybrids, and I think this will be the next wave in the auto industry.

Link for air hybrid.

http://wardsauto.com/ar/scuderi_air_hybrid/

Wouldn't such a power plant have to weigh more than a conventional IC motor? LBs/HP

I remember a trick motorcycle engine using the downstroke as a blower. A 2-stroke bottom end w/a 4-stroke head. A small tank w/a reed valve, as an accumulator. The downside was using pre-mix to lube the crank & piston.

Garthh:

In the trick motorcycle, how did that accumulator with the reed valve work, exactly?

MarkTheHandyman

I remember reading [ Cycle News] about it in the mid 90's [the exact details weren't revealed]. It was designed by the late Al Baker of baja1000 fame. Unfortunatly their online arcive doesn't go back that far.

I would have to guess that the intake valve rocker was used to release the pressure through the carb. There would have to be better sealing used on the crank to handle the increased pressures.

Wow... I feel like I am in the twilight zone.

I just came from one thread, agreeing with everything Impact Cases said, and now I find myself agreeing with everything -- or at least much of -- what you are saying (with the exception, perhaps, of specific efficiency figures). Dems and Republicans can get along, maybe.

I think the whole hybridization and transmission issues cloud your case. Both are so dependent on specific driving routines, that it is hard to say that 30% or 40% or 50% (or whatever) recovery is achievable (or meaningful -- suppose your trip is very long, and you only stop once). Some things you present as conjecture get commingled with things you have given a great deal of thought to, and for the reader, it's hard to know which is which. Then readers will say "Wait just a gull dern minute..." because it can appear you are claiming, as fact, things that are just conjecture.

At the too simple end is this scenario: imagine you are cruising down a flat road, at constant speed. Ignoring, for a moment, how you got there, then the most efficient transmission would have one speed that keeps the engine fully loaded at its torque peak (or slightly to one side or another, if the rule of thumb curve does not fit). For this condition, anything else is just excess weight (as is all that slick stuff in a Prius, after it has cruised for ten minutes or so). As soon as you vary from that idealized (and entirely hypothetical) case, then so many other things enter in that your discussion becomes (as you said above) book length. (Even my Bosch Automotive Handbook is 852 pages of very small type, and it glosses over many many things.)

I've mentioned elsewhere that I calculated the fuel efficiency of the Aptera, (for which they claim 330 mpg at 65mpg) and concluded that they would need to have a coefficient of aero drag of .06. (Turns out, I later found that they had claimed just that.) But that is the drag of a finless torpedo, without ground interference, windows, doors, air intakes, wheels, and any change in shape whatsoever from a body of rotation.... But .010 is achievable in a vehicle two people could actually ride in. So... it seems very likely they will have to back off their prediction as they start testing in the real world. At which point people will wonder about their integrity. At a more realistic 250 mpg, the figure is already plenty impressive enough -- if they advertise that and achieve 280, people will think of them as Gods, not frauds.

With the Aptera, things are quite concrete: one can get the frontal area, the weight, the characteristics of the engine, etc. And engineering types can evaluate all that and say, yes they'll get great mileage. With your engine, the uncertainty is much higher, because it is not installed in a particular vehicle with known characteristics: the level of abstraction is higher. So... keeping it simple, dealing only with the characteristics of the engine itself, would, I think, get you more supporters -- which you will need if you hope to deal with the state of California. It would also make your posts here more productive, I think.

This is kind of rambling, isn't it? From my perspective, you get a better reception, if you keep it as simple as possible. And yes, I know that is not terribly easy. 60% percent efficiency of the engine alone is very impressive. When you add in hybridization and transmission issues, then you introduce compounding levels of uncertainty, and can expect challenges at each level. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it sucks up a lot of your time.

In any case, good luck with the development, and get the patents at least applied for before you go to anyone. And do it soon, too. -- I have personal experience with having a patent denied because of prior art that occurred just before I filed, and which hadn't been issued until well after my filing date. And my patent could have been much broader than I'd originally planned, had I submitted it earlier. Personally, I think if you don't have cash on had, do a provisional first -- although most patent attorneys will advise against this.

Suppose, all of a sudden, I "get" your idea from what you've said here, and rush to file a patent? No, I won't do that, but if I were not busy in other areas, I could incorporate your ideas into perhaps something that had already been in the back of my head, and file. I'd probably honestly think the idea was my own, but then you (maybe) get closed out because "my" idea (which is really half or more yours) makes yours "obvous."

Mr. Fry,

I like to say Al Gore and Rush Limbaugh getting along…Dems and Repub…I agree.

Driving routine makes a large difference, of course, but if you can get 100% driving pattern does not matter anymore. The closer you are to 100% the less impact your driving pattern has. I think I can get "75-95%" depending on rates and delays because of how I do the engine. The F-150 with hydraulics claims 75%. If you slam on the brakes, it will drop to around 50%. Keep it up and you will need new tires short order…

My point goes to the fact that if you get 100% then the weight of the vehicle or driving pattern does not matter so much because momentum is conserved. Of course a heavier car will have a proportionally large rolling friction, transmission losses, etc. and weight does always matter. But the cost and customer acceptance of a lightweight car are inverse of each other. Lightweight cars don't sell because they are perceived as unsafe. Light is usually, but not always, harder and costlier to make than heavy.

Another was to say this is, focus on the engine, not on making a composite lightweight car at 800 lbs like the Aptera. The real trick at 800 lbs is keeping it on the road at 70 mph.

In a head on crash between a car ten times as heavy at the Aptera, you will experience nearly a complete reversal of speed. The DOT bases crashes on 35 mph because this is the typical non-interstate / divided road max speed. The idea is a head-on crash at 70 mph is not so good and interstates separate the traffic and such crashes are not common.

If you go to an 800 lb Aptera, you need to increase your energy absorption by roughly 4 times. That 35 mph crash is now a 70 mph crash to the Aptera occupant and 10 mph to the 8000 lbs SUV…ouch! You now are well into the completely zero ability to survive with current technology.

The real challenge of the Aptera is crash survival. I know all about airbags (four patents, worked in the industry, sensors and bags six years) and they just will not do the trick to a level I would put my wife into a Aptera, especially as it appears, and more so with composites as they make them. I have built composite airframes, and composites… Ah, no, not for me in an auto crash.

My point is "first things first." The auto industry and customers are NOT ready for light cars. Safety is first and foremost. We drive tanks because we want to live. One crash can offset a lifetime of fuel savings. People don't drive motorcycles because they want to walk all the days of the lives. Until safety is met, fuel economy does not matter…Hummer is the poster child of this fear.

I agree with your comments on support for the most part, but I am not interested or focused on support in general. I did make a post on an engine development project and got a few responses. I have interviewed several engineers, but none I want to work with. I am actually looking for a few good comrades to go on a journey to the engine north pole, so to speak. I do it because it is fun and I do it without pay every day for the process of it. Getting to the North Pole is where the fun is, not just standing there freezing your butt off. I do engineering because I like to do it, not because the pay (zero for me) is great. I made money in investment just to do engineering that I wanted to do without the politics and compromise. Does this rant make sense?

This discussion progressed from my original post of Global Warming is a political hoax. It occurred to me that a guy like Masu who is a born again GWer and a guy like me who is the hairiest tick in the forest can set out on the same goal of a better engine and both achieve our GW reality. This engine could cut 75% of co2. It will also make every person on planet earth be able to drive and raise their standard of living. Dems and Repub all friends.

The key is focus. What should we focus on? Fusion? Solar? A new engine that gets 60%. Which are possible in the next 5-10 years? Fusion? No. Solar? I have looked at it, but the cost with current spectral methods are not cost effective, and it always ends up with heavy electric motors. I want to fly, not stay on the ground. A methanol-based engine of my design would be all renewable and lightweight. Anybody from Georgia or Tennessee can do the brew. I've seen Duke of Hazards…(just kidding).

How to arrive at energy independence: (my new post…previewed by Mr. Fry…)

The BTUs from Ethanol and Methanol are about what it takes to produce it in the form of Diesel fuel for running a tractor and machinery, give or take. For sake of discussion they are 1:1. If the efficiency of the tractor engine were twice (60% efficient instead of 30% as I think is possible) then the BTUs used in the production of Ethanol is then only 50%. For every gallon of Ethanol made it would only take ½ gallon.

If you increase co2 concentrations by 2-3 times (600-900 ppm), the plant growth may double. If you can now get twice the crops from half the fuel input, for every gallon of Ethanol made it would only take ¼ th of a gallon to produce it.

If you have and engine that would bet 4 times the fuel economy over current cars (100 mpg) because of the twice efficiency factor and the constant BSFC curve at 60% (2 times 2), you would only need ¼ th fuel for transit.

The total land area needed for bio fuels is estimated at 100% of current farm land on worst case. Following the train of thought, if you need only ¼ the fuel, you only need ¼ the land. If you double crop growth by increasing the co2 concentrations, you will only need 1/8^th the land mass. If if takes you ½ gallon to produce one gallon, you then need ¼ the total land mass.

If bio fuel crops increase twice, so would other crops. That means that ½ the current farm land would be needed to produce the same amount of crops. That is ½ + ¼. Or ¾ of the current farmland. We would therefore have ¼ of surplus farm land, making it cheap and cost effective.

With higher co2 concentrations, crops become much better at retaining water. There are many farming techniques that can cut the water usage by say ½ by direct injection via pipes.

If Farmers were to generate electrical power on the farm and inject co2 onto plants like is now done in greenhouses from the electrical power generators, they would double yields over only using atmospheric air and cut water in half, and have an income from power generation.

CO2/Air mixture is too lean at 370 ppm to get the fuel independence co2 cycle engine going. If we enrich the mixture by 2-3 times the engine of "sustainability" will start via bio fuels. The total carbon in living plant mass will be high enough to enable enough power/fuel generation for a completely renewable and "sustainable" life on planet earth via the co2 cycle and fuel such as Methanol and Ethanol.

If this new IC engine (60% efficient) produces only CO2 and H2O, which is very possible, it would be part of the co2 cycle and be totally clean and emissions free. It would enhance life beyond what man has ever known for 10,000 years. Since co2 in the atmosphere is in saturation, adding 2-3 times the co2 will not cause any significant warming. Any warming would be a big bonus for crop production and life in general, as most heating just moves to polar latitudes, opening up vast lands to crop production.

As I see it there is no crisis, just a lot of fear coming from the Global Warming hoaxers who's motive is global taxation and population decrease. We could be on the road to energy independence in less than 10 years for transit, and building heat, depending on how fast we can increase co2 concentrations or get power generation in the hands of farmers, instead of utilities, where the co2 does a lot a good. Until the concentrations rise to 600-900 ppm, supplemental co2 would be helpful and even needed to keep the engine running. Any efforts to stop co2 increases in the atmosphere would lengthen the time to energy independence, which is unwise.

In the "last days" the "wisdom of wise men" will be as foolishness. It seems that the "wisdom" of so-called "scientists" who call themselves "wise" seems to be just more political foolishness.

As we all know, CO2 is a good thing… Now go take a long drive in that Hummer, increase the co2/air mixture of planet earth so we can start the engine of energy independence ASAP. Along the road you will give a farmer a job, and feed the starving plants that feed millions of starving humans and animals that depend on co2.

The guy who designed this planet is one cool engineer! And yes, planet earth cools itself when it needs to, just like any living being….no need to fear… for He is with you always…

The Ford F150 stories are a hoax. They are experimenting with the same EPA-designed system that UPS is using. The energy storage capacity is far too low relative to its weight for it to make any sense on an ordinary pickup. EPA claims up to 30% improvement in mileage, but that is a huge stretch, unless it is used on a garbage truck, where all your time is spent either accelerating or decelerating. The EPA dream is that hydraulics will get far lighter than they are now. A 2500 lb car needs 1.5kWhr storage to work as a reasonable hybrid, in typical commuting. The entire UPS system, on a huge truck, has only a third of that. Rolling resistance and aero drag from large vehicles are not recovered, so weight does have a negative impact, if you can't get near 100% recovery. The EPA system can't store enough to get close. You might as well be using a rubber band. The results of their testing can only be: Whoops, the technology is not there yet. How many times do I have to tell you: don't put your faith in big government.

Yes, small cars have safety issues. Interesting how much things have changed: Iacocca's mantra at Ford was "Safety doesn't sell." Also interesting is the fact that the current record driver killer vehicle is the Chevy Blazer – proving that if you make the engineering poor enough, you can overcome the advantage of mass. The Firebird and Camaro are near the bottom too, but at least there, GM can claim demographic problems – it's the drivers fault, they say (ignoring the fact that the Mustang is much better). But the Nissan Pathfinder has a wilder demographic than the Blazer, and it's all the way at the other end of the spectrum – one of the safest for drivers. Likewise the Toyota 4Runner, Camry, a couple Hondas, and a couple Mercedes's. So engineering counts for something, but it's really hard to overcome a 4:1 or 5:1 mass advantage.

I think the real crash fear poster child is the Expedition. The Hummer is a different demographic – mainly men who have sexual issues they are trying to compensate for, whereas plenty of soccer moms drive Expeditions.

Yes, if you can get 60% efficiency, and also get your engine into every vehicle, you'd make a huge dent on CO2 production.

I think the improvement in growth rate due to increased CO2 is lower than you think. Universal Industrial Gases, a supplier of gases for such things, says:

Studies have demonstrated that yields of plant products grown in greenhouses can increase by 20% by enriching the air inside the greenhouse with carbon dioxide. The target level for enrichment is typically a carbon dioxide concentration of 1000 PPM (parts per million) - or about two and a half times the level present in the atmosphere.

We have different opinions of scientists. I've done time at Cornell, and even the famous guys, like Carl Sagan, were straight shooters. He'd talk to anyone on planes in and out, and was pretty charming. I had a couple scientist mentors at Cornell, and they were very normal, modest, and generous with knowledge and advice. They put me in touch with people at Stanford, and I found the same thing there. So somehow, I can't buy into your conspiracy/hoax theory, with scientists doing a power grab. Given our history of trashing the planet, though, it seems that we should tread lightly. Most of the things we could do to keep CO2 from increasing are also things that are worth doing anyway, for other environmental reasons. So no, I'm not going to buy a Hummer (mainly because people would then assume that there is something a little too small about me, and I'm already too insecure). I am not convinced continued global warming is a certainty, but the stuff I've read seems to point in that direction. I don't know any scientific type who is certain one way or the other. There are loads of non-scientific types who are completely convinced of one extreme or the other.

So, while I don't agree with everything you say, I certainly wish you luck with the engine, and think it has some potential (huge potential, if you can get it to work as described). So stop reading this drivel, and get back to work.

re: greehouses and CO2.

Supplementary CO2 is commonly used to increase yield and to avoid the plants eating it all on a sealed sunny day

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=CO2+%2B%22greenhouse+construction%22+%2Badding&btnG=Search

Supplementary co² can be generated using fungus [mushrooms], the gas exchange is the opposite of plants. Fungus [the proper types], will convert the nutrients in the soil into more usable forms & increase plant yields. Mycology is short on hard comprehensive data. The relationship between fungus & plants is an important, yet overlooked part of increasing plant yeilds!

"If you increase co2 concentrations by 2-3 times (600-900 ppm), the plant growth may double. If you can now get twice the crops from half the fuel input, for every gallon of Ethanol made it would only take ¼ th of a gallon to produce it."

Whilst increased levels of CO₂ will apparently increase the growth of plants I do not believe that you will get anything like 100% increase you think may occur. I found the following papers that deals with the subject:

http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

While the paper supports the concept that plant growth has some correlation with atmospheric CO₂ levels there appears to be a limiting factor to plant growth. If you scroll about 80% of the way down the paper you will see a graph that show growth enhancement versus CO₂ levels for stressed and non stressed plants. It clearly shows that the non stressed plants do not respond any think like the stressed ones do and that for properly cultivated crops the sort of increase at 600-900 ppm is more like 40-50% not the 100% you are claiming. It also shows that there is some other factor that limits the increase in well cultivated plant growth to around 80%.

There also appears to be data that suggest that it is more complex that most think and that when everything is factored in the net result can be a retarding of plant growth.

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2002/december11/jasperplots-124.html

As for the claim that global warming is good and that some places will get wetter and some dryer I must agree with the second part only. The problem is that the places that get wetter are the tropics and the places that get drier are the sub tropical, temperate and desert climates. This is certainly born out by the Australian experience where the 1°C warming over the last half century has increase the rainfall in the tropical regions while decreasing it everywhere else. The following charts¹ show the variations in mean temperature and rainfall on an 10 year average since 1950

These charts are not predictions they are what has already occurred and are based on readings taken from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's records.

This dose not bode well for continental USA since it is all sub tropical or temperate so you are more than likely going to see a considerable decrease in precipitation and no where near the sort of increase in plant growth claimed earlier. Couple this with increased sea levels, prevalence and ferocity of tropical storms and cyclones (hurricanes), increased desertification and global warming ends up not being the warm an cuddly future some are making it out to be.

Note 1 The charts are courtesy of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and can be obtained along with many other charts from the ABoM Australian Climate Variability and Change web site at http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/trendmaps.cgi

I am not a mechanical type, but I have noticed that my pickup gets better gas mileage in the summer (18 mpg) than in the winter (12 mpg). While some of this is due to lower transmission temperature, I wonder if the temperature of the fuel/air mixture, and thus dispersion and mixing of fuel leading to poorer combustion could be a factor.

Some diesel engines use an aftercooler to capture waste heat from the exhaust stream to warm the intake stream. The cooling system also radiates waste heat even when it is 30 below. Is there a way to capture this waste heat to optimize intake temperatures, presumably get an optimal fuel/air mixture, and thus improve fuel economy?

Radiator heat is indeed wasted heat.

IC engines would be more efficient if they were made with ceramic and operated at red heat. Some work has been done in that direction, but friction issues limit the lifetime of such an engine. intake air warming can only go so far before the air charged gets too hot and loses density = less oxygen, although rootes blowers can double the pressure of the intake charge = more oxygen. Too much of this and you start to need very strongly built engines and you also reach the domani of serious pre-ignition prolblems, and so must consider diesel style fuel injection.

A complex field

Thanks for the feedback, Aurizon! Checked out Rootes Blowers and learned a little more than I knew before. Your points about red-hot engines and limits to air temperatures are also well taken.

Is there a middle ground where incremental gains can be made? I am thinking of something like an in-stream heater core in the intake air with the flow from the radiator controlled by the(an?) intake air temperature sensor that would raise the intake temp from -10 to 25 C on frosty mornings.

If summer-like mileage can be achieved, significant savings could result since there are a lot of trucks like mine around here!

Depending on preheat, you can get a larger change into an engine with very cold air. With caburettion you get more unburned fuel at lower temps = less MPG. with fuel injection at lower temp you should get similar MPG in a warmed up engine

You may have noticed that internal Combustion engines seem to work better when its raining. This is in part due to the moisture content in the air as any suspended moisture will vaporize thus expanding and increasing the pressure in the cylinder above what it would be without the moisture. This bring up an idea that I had some time back that is involved with another enhancement of the IC engine.

Firstly we need to look at how a diesel engine achieves its efficiency. Primarily the increase is due to the increased compression ratio. But you can only compress a fuel air mixture so fat before it explodes due to the heat of compression. A diesel engine gets round this problem by compressing the air without the fuel then injecting the fuel at the final moment. This is called direct injection but unfortunately its not the type of injection used on most petrol engines.

If we now use direct injection we can increase the compression ratio and therefore improve the overall efficiency. Since we have one injector for each cylinder why not add a second one but this time inject water immediately after the explosion. This water would vaporize, expand and would therefore increasing the pressure within the cylinder which gives us more power. It would also reduce the temperature of the exhaust and that would have a beneficial effect on some of the nasties that are created due to the high temperatures in the engine.

I believe that manufacturers (Caterpillar for one) of large diesel engines use a water injection system for an occasional cleaning cycle. De-carbonation maybe? Also, I seem to remember that some piston engine fighter planes in WW2 used water injection for an emergency HP boost. Can anyone confirm/deny this?

water injection is indeed a well established method

http://www.aquamist.co.uk/

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=%22water+injection%22+%2B%22internal+combustion%22&btnG=Google+Search

I suspect the problem with winter freezing and other complexities hinder it's takeup on cars

Water injection has been used over time on any number of engines, including those in some racing cars. It will boost power, but it is definitely not "engine friendly" when used in that way to any extent. It scours the cylinder walls of oil film for starters. As to cooling the exhaust, and adding more moisture to it, I'm not sure how that might affect the operation of catalyctic converters.

However, if a modern computer controlled IC engine were designed to make use of it that might well have some potential.

A note on aftercoolers: They are just what their name implies. That is they cool the hot air as it leaves the turbocharger in order to achieve a denser charge in the cylinders. The reason for poor fuel economy in the winter is a factor of the engine and all moving parts being cold and their lubricants more viscous. Once the engine is fully warmed up, it is only the other lubricated parts that sap energy via thicker, more viscous oils and greases, and any possible effects from the "winter blend" of gasolines that would work to lower mileage. It is not that the fuel/air mixture is deficient in mixing. In cold weather, we also warm our engines up a lot longer, to get heat, clear windows etc, plus a cold engine is definitely not running efficiently.

Assuming Distilled Water, the Cat Conv should not be adversely affected. With the addition of an ionic avalanche precipitator (small sparkplug-driven electric storm developed by Ben Masters in 94 and used in the Sparc~Air device and copycats thereof by Siemens and ) ahead of the CC in the exhaust stream, the conversion of nasty by-production of combustion to innocuous recombinations through the CC might even be enhanced by the addition of water. If blowing away lubricating oil is a problem, it might be challenged by the addition of lubrication injection somewhere along the cycle.

Habib, I experienced that same gas mileage phenomena with my pickup. I talked to a petroleum engineer and he told me "there is summer gas and winter gas" You get more power from summer gas because it contains more compound hydrocarbon chains than winter gas. Winter gas has a lot of dissolved propanes, benzines, heptanes and other lighter compounds to aid in getting your engine started on winter days. These lighter compounds displace a lot of the heavier more potent hydrocarbon molecules which by weight give you more power." He also said something about summer gas has more heavier molecules which lower the vapor pressure limiting "boil off" in the summer heat and so on. His best tip was to buy summer gas as long as you can. He said the "independents get the last of the refineries summer gas run well into winter". So Habib, switch from buying at the majors to the cheapo gas stations at the beginning of winter and continue to get your 18 mpg.

Taejon,

You also have a density altitude effect that puts the engine in a favorable BSFC point on the curve during the summer. For example, an airplane engine will run best at 75% of power. At 7500 ft standard day, you are at 75% of peak power with full throttle. The negative effects of throttle are gone. In a car in the summer, you have a little more open throttle and lower pump losses. The effect is like that in an airplane going up in altitude. In a correctly designed engine none of this effect should be had.

They do something similar to petrol in Australia except I believe they add more of the heavier compounds in an attempt to reduce the vapor problems that are prevalent with the higher temperatures. I had problems once when I was somehow supplied with summer fuel in winter. The additive that they use to reduce the vapor problems would end up condensing out and it kept blocking the fuel filter. I ended up getting about a week out of a fuel filter. It tool several tanks of winter fuel and 4 or 5 filters before the problem cleared and as normal with problems like this the fuel filter would always block up on cold rainy nights while going up hill. There were several reasons for the reason for the selective way the filters would block but I will let you contemplate it for a wile before giving them.

Masu:

SO4 Production in the evaporation process, perhaps? You could manufacture your own strike-anywhere matches at home!

MarkTheHandyman

Masu,

I have spent a few hours trying to write a decent post on what is needed for a hyper efficient (60%?) engine, and I have realized that I am only on first base. This would take at least 100 pages to explain it to you. I also realized that I would be disclosing information and understanding that is critical and proprietary which would not be in my best interest to disclose seeing it is central to any patent. A patent in essence is a disclosure of how something is done and the insights the inventor sees that are not visible to others in the art. He then makes a claim, like a person makes a claim to land in the old days. I would be in essence giving up my patent rights for the sake of a little discussion and to make a point, kind of like what Ishmael did, ya know. I did not agree to do this, Masu. I think you can respect that.

My point is and has been that the IC engine as now designed and constituted is design incorrectly. When it is designed correctly, which could be done in may different ways or means, some more costly than others, it will get around 60% efficiency from 0- its max power. This is much higher than what a hydrogen fuel cell or electric car will ever get in practice, considering that electric utilities are only 30% at the plug, and hydrogen is likely only 20%.

As I have stated in my other posts, the BSFC curve tells you how the efficiency of the engines varies with power. An IC engine has a lower power limit at which it will not run at its most efficient level. The cause of this limitation is the "throttle" or power changing means, and this means is central to the inefficiency of the engine. Power change must be achieved in another method that respects the thermodynamics in play.

As a point of discussion please see this link energy losses in a car

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv.shtml

A little observation shows that if you can recover 100% braking energy you will get 1.85 (12.6/(2.6+4.2)) times the fuel economy on average.

Most cars run at 10-15% of power in cruise, and at that power they are using around twice the fuel per power than if they were running at mostly open throttle or 75% of power at a given rpm. The engine cannot be slowed down to a power level where it can generate low enough power and still have 75% throttle, due in part to resonance and power pulse issues. A throttle is used to bridge the gap allowing the engine to produce lower power to zero power at a given rpm at the expense of efficiency. In a Diesel lower fuel amounts are injected to "throttle" and this to a lesser extent than a throttled gasoline engine, causes the engine to run less efficient below 50%.

This "throttle" means is the major source of the difference in fuel economy from a Diesel vs. a gasoline engine in real world performance.

The problem basically cannot be solved with a piston crank, and turbines have issues that are worse.

It all comes down to force, dampening, resonances, combustion requirements, heat transfer, operation in low power ranges, and the transition from 0 to operating speed. Electric motors don't have the 500-1200-prm minimum rpm limitation like an IC engine does have currently. Solve that problem and you are on the road to higher fuel economy. The diesel also has a lot of combustion issues that affect efficiency.

A constant variable transmission will also not work because the power pulses will not allow it to operate at 100-250 rpm where it needs to in order to generate the low levels of power needed in cruise.

Flywheels will also not work for a host of reasons.

The same problems found in IC engines are also present in electric motors, and without complex controls, the electric motors are also very inefficient in wide power ranges.

When you have a correctly designed car, the city mileage should be 2-4 times higher than highway mileage, not lower as it usually is. Since hybrid electrics can only barely get the same economy city/highway, you know there is a serious flaw in their design.

Since a car is 12.6% efficient at the axle, reason would say that there is a lot of room for improvement. Look at the link above. If you were to have it 50.4% efficiency you would be 4 times the economy, or around 100 mpg. If recovered braking was at 75% you would be 1.38 times 4 or around 5.55 times current economy levels, give or take.

Clearly a car can get 4-6 times better mileage, if not much more. This will be at a maximum at around 60% constant efficiency, give or take, when the engine is design correctly. Electric cars or electric hybrids will not be able to achieve half that. When you plug in your car battery in your GM electric Volt car you are at best 20-25% efficient, and when you do so in cold or hot climates, which is about half the year, you will drop that efficiency in half, or about what a current car gets. In the long run the electric car will be ½ as efficient, and there is no need to make a hybrid of a correctly built engine.

Going electric does NOT minimize total co2 emissions. Solving the problems I mentioned above minimizes them. So if you believe the Global Warming political hoax, and you want to do all you can do to cut co2 emissions, you might take another look at what an IC engine is or what it can be, and correct the problems that will give you cost effective 60% efficient power across the power band. There you will find at least 75% of the energy consumption for transit eliminated. Fuel cells and electrics cannot get us there, and when you consider total energy to produce a complex hybrid electric car you are even further behind.

Solving the problems of an IC engine is the best place to focus investments for the next 10-20 years. Once it is solved, we will have 75% of the fuel needs eliminated, have energy independence, and save well over 250 billion in the USA per year on fuel costs.

As the old saying goes: "put first things first." A new IC engine is the first thing that needs to be done, and fusion is the last.

what is wrong in having a hybrid engine where the starting torque requirements are met by an electric motor and the cruising force requirements (when torque requrement is low) by th gasoline or diesel engine. as far as ful cell engine is concerned are you not aware how bulky it is with all the pumps, blowers apart from the pressurised gas tanks.

Sirius1845,

Wrong? Nothing. You just don't improve economy. It would seem it would be worse than current overdrive systems.

I am no fan of fuel cells. I don't think they can compete when an IC engine that has all the problems corrected. Fuel cells produce heat, and some operate at over 1000k. What can you do with it on a mild day? Nothing. Fuels should be Methanol if you want renewable. If you can get 250 mpg (ideally), the amount of fuel needed is 1/10th. That also translates to much better economics in ag produced Alcohols. If you notice much of the input into ethanol is in running the tractor. Double that performance and things start to look "sustainable" as some like to say.

Hi Seaplaneguy, thank you for post #24. I agree 100% that it would be foolish to disclose the details of your work, it's your work and you should be the one that gets the credit. Stealing the intellectual property of others is a serious offence and should be treated far more seriously than it is. The practice of stealing somebody's hard earned knowledge and then regardless of patent protection and then by throwing enormously expensive legal barriers up in an attempt to financially destroy the rightful owner despicable. I also deplore the tactic of buying up a technology and sitting on it in a attempt to deny the general public access.

Anyway thank you again for putting in the effort in post #24 and other responses, I am sure they will generate plenty of debate.

In post #34 your stated;

"Saab built an engine based on a USA patent that changed the head volume with throttle setting that restored the expansion ratio again (decreased head height by 1/2 so that the 1/2 charge allowed in now was compressed back to the full throttle ratio of 8:1). Results: 40% better economy, which is better than all the hybrids and much cheaper."

I vaguely remember hearing of something along these lines but it seems to have dropped off the radar. Do you have any idea what the fate of this technology was? Did it end up being bought up and sat on or did it just fizzle out because of implementation problems?

I have the feeling there will be a place for IC engines, burning some liquid or gaseous fuel, for a considerable time, in the transport sector. This is simply because it is going to be very difficult to achieve anything like the energy density that can currently be achieved with existing liquid fuels. The question of which fuel and how it is produced is for another debate that I will start in a few weeks time so I will leave it alone for the moment.

In post #38 you expressed your concerns with the safety of light weight vehicles and stated;

"I have built composite airframes, and composites… Ah, no, not for me in an auto crash."

While I agree with you that in general the more massive vehicle in a collision will in most cases come off better it is still possible to make composite vehicles enormously crash resilient and many times safer than a similar vehicle constructed from metal. Just look at the level of protection that is achieved in a 600Kg F1 car. If I were in a 100 Km/Hr crash and had the choice of being in an F1 car or any other road vehicle I would choose the F1. Mind you if you don't bother to wear a seat belt any in built safety is seriously compromised.

Masu,

Saab basically did not have rights to the patent. The orginal inventor was elderly and died. A guy in Colorado bought the rights. I spoke with him a few years back. Saab spent ten million dollars on the project, which is amazing to me.

This was one of the encouraging signs that built my confidence that there was a better way to do it than "consensus" would have. I don't think his method is something I would use for several reasons. It does show how important the real expansion ratio is to the fuel economy. It is bascially an indirect way to get around the power changing method. I think the power changing method (throttle in the case of Otto engine and variable injection in a Diesel) is a big part of the problem.

The saab case shows me that if you always have high expansion, or basically always have a real 8:1 in an Otto cycle, you will get around 1.4 times the economy. Throw in what BMW did with an exhaust steam expander for 20% and some work on the combustion and you get another 25%. In total I think 1.75-2 is real world at peak performance (min BSFC). Factor in that a car cruises at around 2 times the fuel burn at low percent of power (throttle way back) over that min BSFC (throttle at 75%) because of the throttle and you get a 2:1 multiplier. 2x2=4, or 100 mpg.

Then factor in 40% for brake recovery where as you approach 100% and weight becomes a small issue, and things start to get to a point where fuel is such a small part of cost relative to wages that bigger gets bigger and cars are then tanks to smash the other guy.

To get the weight down without seatbelts (passive restraint), unlike in a full harness in a race car, a car needs a very different concept than a hard light weight cage. The airbag design becomes quite different to cover all weights, and is a topic in itself. I have done sled testing and know sensor decision design, and all this must be taken into account. Current airbags are totally not up to it and management refuses to wake up because of many factors. Ironically the airbag manufacturers did not even want to make passenger side bags...but I digress. Conspiracy? No just an engineering and business mindset. Did you know that a 100 lb girl is 8 times more likely to die from a passenger airbag than a 200 lb 6' male? Did you know the airbag is highly temperature sensitive? The engineer's response is "put the kid in the backseat." My response is if it is so safe back there then screw the bag and make the front seat as safe as the back seat... There are solutions, but current mindset refuses to see them, just like most refuse to see that an IC engine is not designed correctly. Fixing it is hard, but those who do not when the competition gets 4 times the mileage will soon find it very important.

I am not sure that all the gains in performance can be chained together as you are. For example you may find that by direct injection you get a 25% improvement and turbo charging gives you 25% but when both are installed together the final gain is something like 40% due to a certain amount of overlap.

None the less there is defiantly considerable room for considerable improvement. As for using it as an aero engine I wish you lick, the paperwork, as I'm sure you know, is an absolute nightmare. I was watching from the sidelines when a group attempted to get approval to use a heavily reworked V6 engine that was originally designed for a car approved for use in the tow planes use to launch gliders. The engine worked well, was more reliable., more economical, cheaper. Lower maintenance, longer lived plus a host of other benefit but the project ended up getting canned, primarily because of ignorance and pig headiness. The insurance companies were one of the biggest offenders and put so many obstacles in the way even thou it was more than likely going to save them money.

As I said earlier regardless of future technologies I can see there being a place for IC engines in transport for a long time yet.

"To get the weight down without seatbelts (passive restraint), unlike in a full harness in a race car, a car needs a very different concept than a hard light weight cage."

True but if you look at an F1 it's not just a super strong safe cage, the whole thing is, like a road car, designed to progressively disintegrate and absorb the energy before it gets to crushing the safety cell. The point is that the composite construction is capable of producing an extremely crash accommodating vehicle and there is no reason the same cant be achieved with a street vehicle.

Seaplaneguy:

You wrote:

Saab spent ten million dollars on the project, which is amazing to me.

This has got to drive you crazy, coming from someone who keeps preaching "keep it simple"... BUT, do you mean amazingly low or amazing high? I can agree either way, depending upon frame of mind:

On the one hand, car manufacturers can spend 300 million on a model update and accomplish absolutely nothing that would make an engineer turn his head, let alone say "Wow".

But then as a small biz guy, I'd have a hard time spending 10 million dollars in a couple years. I've modified plenty of engines -- it's simply not that hard, even if you have to make patterns and find a foundry.

So I can be equally amazed either way: "Wow, that's a tiny amount for any serious, real value." or "Holy crap! I could build ten or twenty engines for that!"

Dernit, keep it simple -- unless it's something that happens to catch my attention!

Mr. Fry,

I think they wasted at least 9 million doing it, put it that way. Considering they did not invent it, that is way too much, but that is how these companies opperate.

Overall a good analysis.

One thing that I observed was that about 45-65% of fuel consumption is associated with the ability to achieve 0-60 mph in less than 8 seconds compared to 13 seconds (downsized engine).

How many engines under 2 liters are being developed by USA manufacturers?

There is one engine design being investigated using much smaller displacement gasoline engine (undersized for the job) then precision controlling injection of ethanol on demand into the cylinders as a knock inhibitor under high load, ie, design the engine as "small" as possible for nominal loads and then provide a "boost" methodology for high load demand. This strategy is counter to the current practice of "over powering" the applications' maximum load demand by a factor of at least 1.5 and then "throttling back" to "normal" speeds and loads.

Your comment "A constant variable transmission will also not work because the power pulses will not allow it to operate at 100-250 rpm where it needs to in order to generate the low levels of power needed in cruise." I'm not sure that I understand your thoughts here. Could you please clarify?

How about the HYDRAULIC HYBRID VEHICLE technology. March 2004 a converted FORD SUV with series HHV configuration and a diesel engine demonstrated about 80% improvement in fuel economy. A FORD/GM/EPA parnership in the 1990's resulted in a 1.9 ton vehicle that got 80+mpg and accomplished 0 to 60 mph in about 8 seconds. Of course these vehicles do incorporate regenerative braking.
OOOh yea ... EPA estimates that the incremental cost of the hydraulic hybrid is about $600 in production volumes.
By the way production commercial HHVs (vehicles) will be available before 2009. FedEx, UPS, et.al. will be the primary first customers. These platforms could probabably be the the basis for small transit buses (25-35 passengers) for feeder routes (or school buses). I estimated this configuration could possibly cut fuel cost per passenger-mile by 50%. And I speculate the system capitol costs would be significantly less than the electric hybrid beses currently being built.

In fact, mainland China just put about 50 HHV buses on the road about 60 days ago.

For description of other project activities
http://www.harc.edu/Projects/Transportation/HydraulicHybrid

This technology is based on variable displacement hydraulic pump/motor pairing similar to what Volvo uses in its' heavy equipment (earth movers, etc).

Hello seaplaneguy

thank you for the site , i wonder how your post was lost from my site and no comments were added , the site you have given is quiet informative and also interests me lot , i to am working on fuel efficiency and astonished for so many years no big auto giants have found any solution regarding efficiency even though it is achievable atleast to 50-60% towards drive wheels . is it we have high BHP vehicles that tend to offer fuel economy for performance in return of fuel guzzling.

IC engines are here since automobiles enterd market and no other power source replaced it until now were hybrids , electricals , alternative fuels started cropping up due to rising fuel prices and environment concerns .If best Ic engine delivers 18.2% efficiency at its output it is here we have to improve forget transmission , drive axle , air, friction losses for time being . Most of the energy is lost in heat , driving conditions , drag,also it is well known piston crank to be highly inefficient , some time ago i donot remember exactly japanes honda demonstreted extremly light engine of alluminium to be able to achieve 72% efficiency with varieble fuel/air mixture control , waste heat management ,reducing oil drag supplying lubrication remotely , they did not bring it to market reason unknown , we have to redesign the concept of IC engine if we want this technology to stay for long , also transmissions also play vital role that weall know , ifengine is run at constant speed RPM and speed towards drive varied through transmission we can improve efficiency by as much 22% , diesels also don`t fair better , as you loose power for pumping fuel in the chamber

Electricals , hybrids have long way to go , as they are limited towards battery technology and don`t offer environment benefit as such , here you can recover most of energy while breaking , constant velocity and so

That Japanes engine offered 72% of the maximum theoretical Carnot efficiency, not 72% efficient as a heat engine.

The only way to get close to 100% efficient is to avoid the hot air expansion cycle completely. If you use a room temperature fuel cell at low electrode loading with hydrogen and air in a reversible manner you can get 95% plus efficiency.

Of course, getting hydrogen has an energy cost.

There are other fuels cells the consume ethyl alcohol and methyl alcohol and produce water and CO2. Sadly these cells are not reversible and have an efficiency in the 80-90% area, less the energy that is used for running the engine, etc, so they end up in the 50% area to the wheels.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=%22fuel+cell%22+%2Bethanol+%2Befficiency&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22fuel+cell%22+%2Bmethanol+%2Befficiency&btnG=Search&meta=

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22fuel+cell%22+%2Bhydrogen+%2Befficiency&btnG=Search&meta=

Hi vikas,

I don't believe I have corresponded with you previously so welcome to CR4. This thread was actually the first in a series that looked at a list of technologies as suggested by other CR4 participants, of technologies that may be beneficial in reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. We have now covered all the technologies on the list, but if you follow this link to the Blog Table of Contents you can view the list and follow the links to the discussions. All the discussions are still active and if you add anything to them all the participants will be notified of your addition

The blog has now been expanded somewhat and has evolved into MaSu on Machines, Meteors & Mozzies which covers a couple of my pet projects. However, I havn't dropped the theme of future energy completely and as new information on comes to hand I will be starting threads to cover it.

Regards,

MASU

Apply the Stirling Engine principle.

Guest,

In what way? Isothermal compression, constant volume heat addition, isothermal expansion? Great. I like part of the equation, but you are adding good heat to an expaned fluid, which is not good. Maybe if you added an adiabatic expansion on the end after the isothermal expansion it would help. If you look at a T-S diagram you will see an adiabatic would increase efficiency over a stirling.

Isothermal compression can be approximated by multistaged compression with intercooling; the constant v heat addition has very high peak pressures which needs to be dealt with; and the isothermal heat addition is adding heat that has little good. Isothermal, cv heat add, and adiabatic, ok, but not a stirling.

It all comes down to a real machine with real stresses and heat transfers.

One thing to remember is that after combustion the ratio of specific heats drops from 1.4 to 1.25. Water might help.

Do you have a reference of what you suggest?

There is a Whole other discussion to be having:

How do we increase the efficiency of the transportation

Improve the logistics of the movement of people & goods, Flexible work schedule, telecommuting...... less deadheading, just in time,

Increase the actual average speed traveled [ synchronized traffic lights & such ], if you've ever spent an hour to travel 10 miles in rushour traffic you know what I mean.

I'm not talking about things that won't happen. People will not use public transportation or car pooling, mostly because they don't want to ride w/the rif-raff & they won't be tyed to some arbitrary [ bus/train, co worker ] schedule.

I would suggest this topic for a future thread!

Garthh,

Ah, you have hit a very important point. The average speed of an auto is dropping. Our freeways are turning into parking lots.

I actually spent 2 months looking into this. The problem is "bandwidth" or the fact that we are limited by land. Freeways also load traffic into concentrated areas, which loads up roads coming off the freeway. When you are on a road you "rent" that space in time. If you go from A to B you rent the land via fuel taxes while you are on the road.

The solution is to take the car off the ground onto a track about 30 feet in the air. You can make a lane for around $1 million, whereas the typical road costs around $5-8 million per lane per mile. A four land freeway costs around $20 million per mile for a road, but only $4 million with a track, and you can go upwards with a track and double deck it for long haul commuters.

With a track in the air you can then hang the car below the track. The car can get power off the track for "zero" emissions. You want it to hang so that it acts like, well, a seaplane..., because as your speed changes a hanging car adjusts, more like a helicopter does actually.

The key is to make the track for a 2000 lbs car MAXimum. This makes it afforable and puts a premium on light cars and keeps trucks on the ground.

You then grid out the track system on a 2-4 mile grid in a dense urban area so that a person can get where they want anywhere within the grid. What this does is upload traffic and disperses it over a large area, unloading A to B traffic. Ground roads are used only for the last 2 miles. With such a system, most roads will have little traffic.

The important part is that a person then can "work" while they ride. Just tell the pod to follow the guy ahead, etc. A "pod" would comsume about 1 cent/mile, or about 60 cents an hour. You can charge a few batteries up and get you the rest of the way without an engine on board.

At no point is there a stop sign and all off ramps are after the ground intersection. Such a system could be made to grid out the USA on Interstates (like I 80,70 10) for about 1 trillion dollars and save about that amount in 1 year in fuel. Such a system would also allow light weight roadable airplanes to "hock up" and get the last little ways to a crowed down town, like New York.

The real cool thing is that a "car" could be sold at Walmart for say $500.00 that could go 70 mph without risk of a crash. Such a car would amount to an "airchair" much like a ski lift seat, but foldable, light weight, and with "roller blade" urethane wheels and some electric motors, all control by a small throttle. Total weigth under $30 lbs. You could store it under your desk at work. It would also be a lot of fun for the family to just cruise 30 feet in the air all over town at $70, with goggles on of course. At 30 feet you can see a lot more and the sense of freedom would be great.

The first metropolitan area to install one, which is less than a "commuter rail" piece of junk, would gain a lot of tourists. The key is to make a grid so most everybody can use it. At $1million per lane you could do a lot, whereas with "light rail" (160,000 lbs car???) costs $30 million per lane.

Such a track could totally change transit, making you able to "rent" your car to someone else while you are at work, providing income to you. You just tell it to go to such and such place and it drives itself there and waits for the renter, all done over the internet. The track would feed adds to pay for the track. Lots of cash flow models. They use it, and it shows up back at your job just before you leave. It would be on time, on demand, private, fun and you would be able to get some work done while you "drive" along making the commute very valuable. Some might even move their office to on the track since the view is much better. Why not?

So, there are a few ideas for traffic. It is THE #1 problem facing transit, and mass transit does not and will never work when your time is work anything.

Just some thoughts.

Seaplanguy

An earlt attempt at this was the El, or elevated railway. Created to reduce the cost of underground subways they worked, but all places then went through became inherently the wrong side of the tracks. A number of cities made them in the 30's. No-one makes them any more. The latter day concept is the monorail and in truth a monorail can be made quiet(as can an EL) with modern methods.

All mass methods like this suffer from high costs at low traffic times and are remiscent of the old elevators which had elevator operators and unions of elevator operators. How they fought what we now take for granted....automatic elevators.

Now BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) is much the same. it runs with no drivers and no car men. So what is the problem? Union vandalism was the main one. They would toss an empty box on the tracks and the system would stop until someone came to move the box. Another problem is gang presence.

I am not sure if it is still driverless. Another thing would be to have people exit from one side and enter from another. You have the first cost of a wider station and forver you have fatsre entry and exit.

Toronto has a horrible subway system. 2 men to run each car, one to drive from station to station...doing nothing in the station, and another to open and close the doors...doing nothing between stations. Go driverless and arrange station doors and car doors that open together, like elevators. No public access to tracks and make it load one one side and empty on the other. Needs a subsidy to run due to the over manning of the system at all level Over paid too

http://www.bart.gov/index.asp

http://www.swedetrack.com/eflwa01.htm

Seaplaneguy & Aurizon, both talk about a system along the lines of

"With a track in the air you can then hang the car below the track. The car can get power off the track for "zero" emissions."

I too have had this thought and think it shows considerable potential so I have included it on the list of technologies for future discussion.

Gentlemen and Ladies: The chat about ridership is a side issue. I would personally prefer, if we haven't "exhausted" the issue, to continue a discussion re the more technical side of improving the IC situation.

However, aurizon has mentioned a particular bugaboo of mine, the Toronto Transportation Commission's subway administration. In fact, my bugaboo extends to the entire transportation infrastructure of that benighted city.

Now, Toronto is an interesting situation. Traffic planners there have almost certainly been instructed to treat automobile traffic as the enemy, and therefore they have installed impossible traffic control situations --an almost random traffic light system, stop signs that don't have any practical use, a recent rash of senseless 'no right turn on red signal' signs at intersections (right on red is legal in Ontario), new traffic lights that impede the former smooth traffic flow, the list is endless.

Amazingly, although Toronto has applied to host the Olympics a few times, the city's administration has not yet cottoned on to the fact the as long as it takes three hours for all the entertainment/sports venues crowded into the downtown core to clear out after the game, no Olympic committed in its right mind could seriously consider that city to be a host city.

Yet Toronto is still young enough and spacious enough to overcome most of its rush-hour (*guffaw, snort*) automobile traffic by taking it off the freeways and running it through the city streets in a one-way street system utilizing the city's main thoroughfares, such as already exist in two major downtown cross-streets and the entire nearby city of Hamilton -both with timed stop lights.

It also needs to get rid of the all pedestrian right-of-way crosswalks save those serving schools, retirement homes and shopping malls, replace most of the electric trolley streetcar system with (mainly) eco-friendly buses, teach children from the age of Jr Kindergarten onward how to cross the street properly, and get rid of all the above traffic impediments, including speed bumps.

Aurizon's ideas of gating the subway platforms and utilizing different on/off platforms are quite good; but try to tell that (or anything at all sensible) to a Toronto transit commission that has just this year begun literally to destroy several kilometers of businesses along what used to be one of its busiest east-west business sections by plugging the center two (of six) lanes up with a reserved pair of raised streetcar lanes with no accompanying sidewalk cuts to accommodate the former ability to park in front of the businesses, (or, where on-street parking is permitted, newly forcing a busy traffic situation into a one-lane dangerous crawl) as well as thus removing access to the businesses by automobile-bourne residents within a kilometer on either side of it; or instead of providing a redundant third moving walkway between two of the subway stations had removed the two that were originally installed there (since they occasionally ran into technical problems and had to be stopped for days at a time for repairs); or continues to purchase electricity at almost retail rates to run its various properties instead of building its own generating station.

As to the eventually fate of that street, look to find the businesses and homes replaced by high-rise condos over time with parking-lotted shopping malls dotted here and there off the main thoroghfare.

But now that I've vented, I apologize for digressing. (BTW Seaplane guy, when the supermagnet conundrum has been tamed, those automatic vehicles can be programmed by the occupants and guided via GPS controls to go anywhere at all at huge speeds and without crashing into one another, provided the anti-grav systems are strong enough to keep them a goodly distance off the ground and out of the way of the ground-dwelling population. Then we can convert our freeways and streets to gardens...although I don't know how we'll get enough spare CO2 to keep 'em stimulated.)

I shall now (mercifully) quote Blink:

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This space intentionally left blank.

Aurizon,

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but you completely missed the entire concept and confused it with mass transit, which I agree is totally a joke. I am NOT suggesting monorail or any large vehicle. I am not suggesting public ownership of the vehicle. I was talking about privately owned cars that you park at home that are light weight with a max vehicle weight of 2000 lbs that can be driven on a regular road, just like any car. Their top speed is around 45 mph or even 35 to avoid a lot of crash/airbag stuff. They would be two wheeled with "training wheels" with an enclosed cockpit. If you want to go fast, get on the track and 100-150 mph is your speed provided you have the power.

The track would be made out of Aluminum extruded parts, very clean. You would have a set of wheels on the bottom and an arm from which the car hung. The arm would have motors and wheels (4-6) and would swing up and hook into the track and up you go. Those wheels would be enclosed in the track that had a slit in the bottom virtually eliminating sound. There would be no union or station, other than to pick up a car, which would be a parking lot if that. In fact you could have the car just keep going around and around waiting ON the track until the renter showed up and called in on his cell phone with a coded number, or something (100's of ways to avoid the base thing on streets with the million dollar station). That renter could drive it on or off the track. The track is the power supply (the extension cord from the power plant) and small batteries get the car between places on the ground streets. Low on juice, just get on the track and you can go from New York to LA asleep if you want (overnight).

Freight, or small lots or pallets 1,500 lbs or so could be shipped long distance unmanned right to an industrial holding tank where a "lead" car would tow under there combined power to the factory or local Wal-mart requiring only one driver. You would plug each car into the one behind, like Disneyland does, but each has its own power and can brake away an be driven separately just like any car.

When you get near the place you need to go you just drive off and go to the final destination. You could add in a small IC engine charger to extend range. 5 hp is all that would be needed. Top speed is 35 mph.

The key is that when the car is light weight you have two major show stoppers. 1) you cannot stay on the road. 2) you are a fly on the window of a Mack truck. Once a Pod drops below 500 lbs, which is very doable with no ic engine or power source other than a few batteries and motors due to the very low drag cd, you cannot go 70-100 mph without being attached to something like a track or have wings. When you are on the streets you are at risk because of the low weight. Such a pod would not drive on interstate highways because of the max ground speed. It could go 100 mph safely though on the track hands free. Such cars or pods could be parked on the side of an office building spelling out some add, as far as I car.

There is no suffering from mass transit low traffic because the owner is the driver, just like a car. Most people would just own one like a car. Renting would be rare. The reason you don't rent your car is because you cannot get it to the renter and back. If you can, and you work near a track, then you can get it to a client on the other side of town at 1 cent/mile. Most people would not rent their car out, but those on min wage might to cover the cost of the car making it FREE. No more complaining that poor people cannot get around. The cars could be very simple to very luxurious, all the way to a flying armchair to a pullman coach in style, minus the weight of course.

There would be no need for Bart or the New York subway. The key is PRIVATE ownership, not public. People use their cars to store junk and store things they buy while shopping. Mass transit does not allow a person to go shopping and bring home 500 lbs of water softner salt, or drywall, or 1 month's worth of dog food. Mass transit is a total joke and waste of money. This is NOT mass transit. It would totally make mass transit obsolete and remove all the arguments for mass transit. The rats are not going to like it but :) the rats.

It could be funded by cell tower, internet advertising and a host of ways. The fricken government's job is to keep a Gates jerk out of it so that all can innovate on a common operating system. Small companies could make cars, not just big monolpolies run and supported by Kireitsus or central banks, like Toyota, and GM. The electronics could be in components, the track parts as kits, and the body, well, that is something of a matter of style that any body shop could dream up with a few minimum standards, not some GM guy with the latest box.

Now do I make myself clear. I seem to be terrible at explaining simple ideas. Sorry.

I think such a system would fall prey to the "tragedy of the commons". The cars would be vandalized, puked in etc if unrestricted access was allowed. With restricted access there are a number of small systems that do this with small cars parked here and there in Toronto for $9.50 per hour. I am not sure how well they do economically, but they are able to rent you a car in seconds versus the 30 minutes wasted at a car rental place. I doubt a system like your could be made in a random uncontrolled city. It is probably doable in a huge factory for moving workers.

The big problem with mass transit is the fact that it has always been shoe horned into an existing cityscape whereas if they had only created the right of way when the city was a woody glen it would be a lot cheaper to build mass transit. Of course who knows which woody glen a big city will someday be. This huge cost means mass transit cannot ever cover all the main streets. In toronto we have one east west line and we need 6 or more, but the cost of digging up all the major east west streets and movings the exissting sewers and gas/water/electrics is totally impossible to manage financially at this time. I can envision a city created for mass transit withsmaller cars that are unmanned and only run one way in a number of long loops with the opposing sides of the loops just a few blocks apart to minimize walking.

Actually

think of monorail type system the rail being cast in place concrete. You may have seen a construction crew pouring a divider between the opposing lanes of traffic. the techniques are strong & cheap! the whole thing could be elevated & run along existing roads [ as seaplane guy suggests ]

the cars could be both privatly owned & open access rental.

Cars could be magnetically coupled, to form train like configurations for the longer trips [decreased drag], traffic density.

switching lanes would be a bit tricky, trains stuff but @ a higher speeds.

Communication & logistics could be integrated, using a continous solar powered computer, using circuits printed on mylar & stuck to the side of the rail. Think of it as a very lg network.

All manner of propulsion systems could co-exist, as long as they fit the profile of the rail.

sorry Masu couldn't wait

Garthh,

Drag... you have a sensor that has your car follow the next car. The car in front controls your speed and so on to the real front car. It is now a train each car is drafting each other and each is powered. "Weak" cars could then be pushed by others to high speeds. It would be a lot of fun. You power to drag ratio would INCREASE as you "collect" friends on the track. On long Wyoming transits I could see 100's of pods linked going 150 mph slowing (gliding and letting air slow them down--computer could figure this and set a speed limit at the on ramp, just like the Autobahn does) to pick up other pods at on ramps.

You can break off and get off track by disengaging the car in front via distance and then YOU, not the track, set your pod to "off next exit" by flipping a hook or something that slides you over at the exit. If the car hangs down, that slide is not felt by the car directly. That car that was in the middle of the "train" can then leave at will. The cars rejoin and speed up to 150 mph. It would be a lot of fun, fast, slow down, fast, see how fast, slow down.

Seaplaneguy

Exactly

Well maybe not exactly but along those lines!

that would be mass transit, I would use.

own your Pod rent your pod, freedom you chose!

strings of trucks 100's of yards long

gas, diesel, hydrogen [fat chance], electric, makes no difference.

wake up calls 10minutes before your exit

Now how about a electric pod, w/a 1/4 scale turbine model helicopter motor, running a generator for long trips.

maybe a composite frame, layered w/film capacitors for energy storage....

Garthh,

I also think any such system should allow many types of technology and not just electric.

A thermal engine that is 60% efficient at the crank that can use the waste heat is a lot more efficient than pure electric where the heating must come from the electrical source and dumped to resistance heat.

In a very low drag pod, thermal loads are 50% on hot or cold days. Electric is 25% at the shaft (30% from the plant) and at 50% of that you are at 12.5%. In a thermal engine the heat is already available as waste. The thermal engine could be 4.8 times more efficient! (60/12.5=4.8) Electric car advocates just seem to think the world lives on the coast like LA, San Fran, or Miami, where the temperatures are moderated by water, hot and cold. In land, temperatures can drop to -30 C or go to 40C, or worse. Just to unfog the window takes a lot of heat. Seat and local hand heaters can make a cold or hot cockpit seem comfortable, reducing thermal loads.

On the other hand an electric pod does not need to be refueled which is a good feature going from New York to LA or unmanned. But if you can get 250 mpg, you would only need ten gallon of fuel to go that far, which is only 60 lbs. If it only got 25 mpg, then it would cost 100 gallons or 600 lbs, or a huge portion of the cargo capability when a pod is limited by weight to 2000 lbs.

Such a pod system in Europe would work very well and completely unclog th downtown traffic that is now at 10 mph or less.

Seaplaneguy

Yes if you reuse the heat generated by the Internal Combustion, instead of just blowing it out the tail pipe or wasting it @ the radiator, you would have to increase the efficiency! recovering any % as power is a goal to be aggressively pursued.

I was just musing on ways to reconfigure existing tech. The plant I work in has toyota electric forklifts. 2yrs ago when the new lease started, all the lifts went to ac motors & regenerative brakes. The time between charges increased around 25%. The only way this is possible is through the use of electronics & software. We are just @ the begining of the improvements.

bad hardware [design] can be masked w/good software

good hardware can be ruined w/bad software

put the 2 together then you have something

Better data yeilds better testing yields better design yields better machines. Skunkworks type design teams [design by comitiee ] is replaced by 1 [seaplaneguy ] & a pc or 2. There is only 1 glitch, you still have to be able to reconize a good idea/design when you see it & be able to pitch it effectivly. Sounds like you are the right track[s]

any electric system starts @ a deficit due to transmission/conversion losses.

there have been some promising trials of superconductor motors, but the weight penalty of keeping the system close to absolute 0⁰, precludes such a motor from being practical for vehicles smaller than ships.

Garthh:

Not sure I understand the allusion to absolute zero. Haven't there been several superconduction materials developed recently that operate at ambient temperatures. Seems to me I saw something in an article on conductive ceramic materials, or somewhere.

Mark

yes

but have they run any lg scale tests, yet on multi 1000 hp motors ?

Aurizon,

Again, you totally missed the concept entirely.

1) you the private citizen owns the car/pod.

2) you maintain it like a car

3) you do not have to rent your car

4) you can rent your car if you want to, or want to buy 20 cars, rent them for a retirement income.

5) the ground footprint is a pole every 100-200 ft. You can put it in a backyard. It can have one lane going north, then move over a few blocks and have a south track, or you can combine a north and south. It would be very quiet. I would guess that if you shared some cash flow or rented the space around the ground from a land owner they would love to have it in their area, like a cell tower without the microwave (perceived) health issues. Nobody is getting off in their backyard.

6) You drive the pod to your home/work/shopping center when you get off the track. No walking, no carring groceries, just door to door service that you privately own. Your car does not have grafiti on it, does it? Neither will these because you own it. You park it at home. It is just like a car, but it has a wheeled hook on the roof that swings up and hooks into a track. The hook has power to its wheels. Understand?

7) A co-op owns the track. Manufacturer of cars, not the government, share in upgrades and improvements. The track is non profit with a salaried guy and maintenance. Manufacturers have the contolling say and can fire the non profits. (Not an engineering issue, but you can see how it "might" work, 1 of 100 possible ways.)

8) The renting part is to replace Hertz rental and current rentals. If you want to rent your car to someone from out of town, then you can be in the rental car business. You don't need a booth at the airport. Cars just wait like a taxi at the airport. They return to your local exit where you park it, which may be your house, or it may be a shop, or whatever. Size does not matter so much.

9) This can go into ANY existing city without ANY prior "planning" of the city. No need to dig tunnels, no need to condem buildings or buy up real estate. The show stopper will be government employees who want a welfare cut of the action. The mass transit mob will fight it because of "jobs" even though more jobs might be created by small guys.

10) This track system could cover most places for less than the cost of a ground road, and the pod gets you the rest of the way on existing roads. It would start with major interstate highways and then branch out to other areas. It could even cut across wilderness lands and the deer would not know the difference. Put it this way, for the cost of one commutor rail line I know of ($640 million) I can put it in most of one State where you could get most places on the track to within 4 miles. You get your electricity from the track (if you have an electric drive) and a small battery gets the mile or two to home. Most populations center around current roads. This can add a lane for less than the cost of adding another ground built lane, but much better. I cannot get electricity to a ground based random lane, but I can with this track.

Put another way. If you don't like smog, this system would eliminate smog from cars and allow virtually 10 times increase in traffic. Speeds could be 100-150 mph because of the lack of collision safety issues. This is better than flying! (Wow, coming from a pilot...did I say that?) An airplane has the drag of a wing, this does not. A pod would be less to run than an airplane yet have the speed ability of high speed train systems costing 50 times as much (mag lev is around 50-100 million/lane per mile if I remember right as compared to 1 million per lane for this system).

Now, with my engine, you can run it without electricity and get the power to the small wheels in the hook. So, if you want to buy electricity you can, or if you don't want to buy electricity and you don't have electric motors then you can generate power on the car and run air or hydraulic motors at the hook wheels. Why? Because my engine will be MORE efficient than electricity on average and such a car is, well, just like any car in range, and it does not have batteries.

So if you get electricity you pay for it. The other cost is actual miles on the track. Currently you pay around (42cents /25 mpg=1.68 cent) 1.-3.5 cents per mile road tax on fuel (40 mpg-12 mpg). Electricity is 1 and tax 2 cents or about 3 cents per mile. Now, if you have internet and watch add, the cost of transit is zero. 1 add costs 3 cents / minute. Now you have transit as affordable as an internet connection. That is well over 1/10th the cost of a road car, and you can actually get something valuable done, like post on CR4...hmmm. The key is keeping the government out of it.

Our future is bright and there are solutions that make transit progress just like computers have progressed, where it becomes almost free on a byte basis. You pay for it in the advertisements, which are a waste otherwise.

Understand it now?

The way I see to improve mass transit is to make it modular. Small on demand cars that link up for efficiency but are quite capable to travel on their own.

This will allow semi private on demand transportation. If a large group wanted to contact the transit dispatch for a club car it could meet them at the departure point.

possible but not probable due to lobbying factions.

Brad

G'day U V

You may find the thread on Personal Rapid Transport Systems in my An Engineer's Look at the Future of Energy blog interesting. The thread is about 18 months old but the information, concepts and iteas it addresses are still valid.

Regards, masu.

That is it, but I'm also adding that they link for longer travel for reduced energy consumption or increased speed, maybe both. No gridlock, emergency services could even use it to transport directly to the hospital. The inital cost would be high but with the goverment wasting currency it may be possible.

Brad

Sorry for the slackness in replying.

· The inital cost would be high but with the goverment wasting currency it may be possible.

A recent report into Sydney's future transport systems developed and estimate of how much it would cost to upgrade the city's roads in order to cope with future increases in traffic. The really surprising thing was that and Australian based company that has been working on personal rapid transport systems revealed that for less than the cost of the road upgrades they could install a working system that could not only remove the need for upgrading the roads but reduce the congestion to levels not seen for several decades.

Unfortunately governments and many business are totally blind to anything that requires long lead times so even though the best solution is construction of a PRTS it never even managed a mention.

The real problem behind global warming and the mess we are in is the short sightedness of the people with the authority to make the hard decisions. Until that attitude changes we are never going to be able to solve the big fundamental problems we are facing. My only hope is that the current global economic down turn will finally produce the impetus to facilitate a fundamental change in the way we do things.

The real problem behind global warming and the mess we are in is the short sightedness of the people with the authority to make the hard decisions.

I can't speak for elsewhere but the problem with the people with authority here is they are bought by the parties that are profiting from the mess we are in. Lobbyist and foreign banks control the purse strings of America with too many greedy lawyers/politicians at the feeding trough.

Of the 4 trillion $ already spent here, so little has went to failing infrastructure you would think everything was new. Of that 2 trillion $ of the American peoples money was lent out by the federal reserve(foreign bank) and the refuse to disclose any credible information about it. Like will it be paid back and who gets the interest.

Brad

Seaplaneguy, I have noticed that you have several threads going along the same line and you end up needing to answer the same questions over and over. A technique that you may find helpful is to link the threads using the thread links at the top or each thread. You can cut them and paste them into your answer and they become an active link from one thread to the other.

Seaplaneguy:

Very cool ideas. I'll buy one of your transport modules.

While watching a small roller coaster of the size that's more-or-less portable, (for county fairs, etc.) I was struck by how small the motors were: I couldn't see the name plates, but they seemed to be 220 VAC, and maybe 3 hp, possibly 5. Suppose you had sloped tracks, and you started by being lifted up a hill (or elevator), and then coasted to work? When you're ready to leave, you jump in the elevator to move to the return track, sloping the other way, and coast home. You could substantially reduce rolling friction, and by lifting the module slowly, you'd have negligible aero losses... If the module generated electricity (charging batteries) on the way down, and used that energy to get back up, then you'd only have to supply enough energy to make up for inefficiencies.

It would be interesting to build a planned city with flexible efficient transportation. If it were planned, it seems there would be all sorts of ways to transport people safely and efficiently. Eliminating the need for crash-worthiness would reduce vehicle costs dramatically.

I wonder if it would make sense to lease transporter space from THE AUTHORITY rather than owning the things (so you wouldn't be tied to a particular vehicle) Seems like the logistics of having your vehicle at the right place at the right time might be easier.

For transport inside cities how about rope tows and glorified roller blades. Use special "gloves" with acceleration control clutching device to get you up to maybe 25 mph without yanking your arms loose.

Hmmm.

Garth you said that

There is a Whole other discussion to be having:

How do we increase the efficiency of the transportation

Improve the logistics of the movement of people & goods, Flexible work schedule, telecommuting...... less deadheading, just in time,

I agree so I have added a new section in the list of Possible Technologies for Future Energy and Power Production in An Engineer's Look at the Future of Energy blog.

I will start a discussion on it some time in the future. In the meantime it you have any suggestion on a topic that you believe is worth discussing pleas send me an email via the links in the blog preamble.

Masu,

Solar during the day, engine during the night. This would be interesting.

Hi! Interesting blog and one that does deserve an in depth discussion. I had suggested the air car as the car of the future it can be seen at this thread , but it turns out it is far from being a solution so it turns out that my own invention The Rotary Pulse Jet Engine , is by far the best solution.

In case anyone is wondering Heh! Why is this guy posting the same thing over and over again, I do have something new, that should prove even just by looking at it that the RPJ (Rotary Pulse Jet) will be far more efficient than the IC piston engine.

Incidentally present day IC piston engines act as factories for the production of particulate pollution, one of the main causes of global warming. I appeal to Masu to second this statement. Think about it, the combustion does not even get under way, before it is choked off, add to that all that oil being burnt! And talk about friction each cylinder is like a miniature machine demonstrating Carnot's theory. Compared to that the RPJ is mean, lean, powerful and clean.

Where's the something new?

Looks the same!

why would this be any better than a multi stage jet motor?

& you added the inefficiency of compressed air to your creation.

build a scale model

accurately document the ins & outs.

lets see some data!

Hi DDjames,

Over the next few days I will have a detailed look at the site you provided the link for and if there is enough information I will consider starting a thread on the RPJ under the auspices my MaSu on Machines blog.

In the meantime if you have any further information or links that you can provide it would be greatly appreciated if you could pass it on to me via the CR4 Internal E-Mail system.

Where's the something new? Looks the same! why would this be any better than a multi stage jet motor?

Well I had posted a thread on the difference between reactive and expansion forces, and unfortunately it was inconclusive, with all sorts of conjectures being made but no explanations being given.

Many comments were made such as that the two types of force were qualitatively different, which is not exactly correct, a force is a force. If you have an object with a huge weight and the slightest imbalance in force then that object will move.

Further a study of the recoilless gun, shows that a reactive force is able to propel a shell with almost the same power as a cannon using expansion forces, thus reactive forces are effective even under conditions where the force takes the form of a single impact, such as is found in a cannon or an IC engine. Then I got to thinking why this s difference should exist, why is the reactive force in a recoilless gun almost as good as the expansion force in a cannon and not as good as it. It turns out that there is a reason for this. The recoilless gun is neither using pure expansion force nor pure reactive force, it is a compromise between the two because the propellant is put in the barrel of the device. If the explosive were to be put inside the shell instead of inside the barrel, the performance should improve dramatically. But if you do that what you have is no longer a recoilless gun but a rocket launcher!

Coming to the physics of the thing, since work = F x s ( force x distance) it follows that if the propellant were put inside the shell the force would act over a longer distance and so the reactive force would be more effective, fuel for fuel, than an expansion force. This is why one sees the difference between the performance of the super-gun and a missile and it is also the reason why the Rotary Pulse Jet Engine will be more efficient than an IC piston engine.

recoil-less is still subject to the same laws. If you fire a projectile with the same amount of powder in recoil type and recoil-less type, the energy into the projectile is less in the recoil-less type as you have wasted a % to the rear.

Recoil-less are not recoil free, which a pure rocket launcher is.

Well I had posted a thread on the difference between reactive and expansion forces, and unfortunately it was inconclusive, with all sorts of conjectures being made but no explanations being given

Your duty is to provide the explanations!

Conjector & generalizations are not proof.

Where's the data?

I've been scannig the other thread, your RPJ is an interesting idea, your biggest hurddle is going to be the shapes & volumes of the combustion chamber[s] & nozzles. as the rpm's increase you will have waves reflecting back out of phase & cancelling out the power pulse, the shape of the nozzle will determine how [&where] the flame front [combustion ] propagates.

What information do you need?

How can the members help you in your endeavor?

What can we do to help you realize your dream.

If you're looking for money, better refine your pitch.

@ least come up w/some more animations illustraiting the connection to what ever device you are planning to power.

ps how do you do that cool yellow box thing to the quotes?

I thought there would be no harm in discussing the concept, as a matter of fact I have already received a lot of help just from hearing different opinions and views in this forum. To put something in quotes you just have to cut and paste between quote and /quote enclosed in square brackets.

"[I thought there would be no harm in discussing the concept, as a matter of fact I have already received a lot of help just from hearing different opinions and views in this forum. To put something in quotes you just have to cut and paste between quote and /quote enclosed in square brackets.]"

No worries.

cut & paste I get [dragging is easier], still not getting the yellow box

The engine has all ready been built,its been runninr a 36kva genertor for 12 years,and does not use wind,fossel fuel,solar input.It's taken 29 plus years and untold amount of money,s to perfect.

The original topic was increasing the efficiency of an IC engine.

If a small gas turbine is made with ceramic turbine blades, the turbine inlet temp can be drastically increased, resulting in a significant improvement in efficiency.

Further efficiency gains could be obtained in a stationary engine using waste heat recovery to power a steam cycle. The extra weight and complication could be hard to justify in a vehicle, but some waste heat could be used to power air conditioning via an absorption cycle.

However, turbines are not very well suited to part load operation and operate best at constant revs.

If the turbine was then coupled to a generator and this used to drive an electric motor, we have an electric transmission with similar overall efficiency to a mechanical one, but the problem of part load efficiency remains.

A good method is needed for energy storage. This would also allow regenerative braking.

Batteries are heavy, and can't store multi kWh quantities of energy in a reasonable volume/weight.

A possibility is to store energy by electrolysis and use it to run a fuel cell, recycling the water from the cell. Significant improvements are needed in fuel cells, both in cost and efficiency, for this to be a proposition.

For short term storage, flywheels are a possibility. With this system, the turbine runs up the flywheel, then shuts down until needed again. The flywheel runs a generator and which runs an electric motor. Regenerative braking speeds the flywheel up again.

On parking the vehicle for any length of time, the power stored in the flywheel would be lost, which would be a disadvantage of the system compared to battery and fuel cell storage.

Flywheel storage seems to be comparatively light and reliable for the power stored.

Restarting of the turbine could cause thermal shock problems with ceramic turbines, but solutions seem possible. Cermets seem promising here.

Another possibility is a Zn/Br battery http://www.electricitystorage.org/tech/technologies_technologies_znbr.htm

I believe multi megawatt hour units have been built for use in a stationary situation. I'm not sure I would be keen on millions of vehicles driving around with tanks of bromine on board. The consequences of a spill during an accident are not nice.

Finally, compressed air could be generated by the turbine and used to power air motors. While the technology is proven and simple, I find the claimed efficiencies hard to believe because of the inefficiencies involved in compressing the air in the first place - adiabatic compression heat is lost. While multi stage compression can get a better approximation to isothermal compression, this brings with it weight, cost and complexity penalties.

I think a cermet or ceramic turbine, with flywheel storage and electric drive/regeneration has considerable promise for at least doubling the present efficiency of the IC engine in transport applications.

A similar system with waste heat generation is promising for stationary applications.