Alternative Engines & ICE Developments

[riff_raff]

There's three simple reasons the recip piston engine has been successful, while all others have not:

1. Adequate heat transfer from piston to cylinder wall. In order to keep an aluminum piston from melting, there must be a significant amount of heat conducted from the piston crown, through the piston rings, through the cylinder wall, and into the block's coolant jacket

2. Accurate and precise control of lubrication of piston compression rings. The modern oil control ring is a marvel of engineering design. Without it, piston engines would be smoky and burn a quart of oil every 500 miles, and the compression rings would have high friction and fail rapidly. The only reason compression rings work at all is because the oil ring creates the perfect oil film on the cylinder wall for them to ride on.

3. Low leakage rates of piston compression rings Loss of compression pressure is one of the biggest contributors to poor performance. Wankle never really solved this problem with his rotary, and it is an issue that has never been fully resolved with any other novel engine design.

[WhiteBlue]

I found the dual fuel systems from Australia.

http://www.alternativeengine.com/home.htm



Uli Krüger has found a way to burn gas in a turbo diesel engine. He uses very low amounts of diesel to ignite basically the gas which could be hydrogen, natural gas or ethanol. the thermal efficiency is improved by much colder running because water is introduced by most of the gas used. that way one could use bio diesel and biogas to run a car. the disadvantage obviously is the weight of the storage tank for the gas but the diesel tank could be reduced to do this. I wonder if this is a simple way to boost efficiency. biogas is a fast developing industry which uses mainly organic waste from farming, domestic organic waste, sewage and the food and catering industry.

[Carlos]

Honda begins production and sale of the first consumer car powered by a fuel cell.
http://www.japantoday.com/category/tech ... fuel-cells
Tech-Lite Description Brochure
http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarit ... arity.aspx
____________
Rand Gibbons

[Belatti]

Just wanted to say thanks to all that contributed in this thread, the regenerative systems thread, and others.

Check, Carlos, everyone, I´m deeply grateful for all the links and info you are posting in this thread. Sorry I don´t have enough time to read them all or even post something right now, as I´m limited to read the forum 20 min at work and then all my free time available is for studying...

Right now I´m getting prepaired for my 3 last final exams and also doing a research work asked by a teacher to contribute to the Mech. Eng. chair (apart from the final project) due to my interest in the subject and permanent questioning about the lack of R&D arround here. I´m starting with the ´R´ at least, we will see if someone helps us with the ´D´

[riff_raff]

Belatti,

Where are you attending school and what is the subject of your current research project?

I'm long past my school years, but I have a unique hybrid propulsion system I'm working on, on my own. If you're interested, send me an email, and I'd be happy to talk to you about it. I can't give you all of the intimate details of it because I'm still pursuing patents on it. But I am free to discuss some parts of it, and since you are pursuing an advanced level of education in this area, you might find it interesting.

If there's something this world's currently lacking, it's ambitious, creative individuals. And I try to do everything I can to help create more of them.

[Conceptual]

Belatti,

Where are you attending school and what is the subject of your current research project?

I'm long past my school years, but I have a unique hybrid propulsion system I'm working on, on my own. If you're interested, send me an email, and I'd be happy to talk to you about it. I can't give you all of the intimate details of it because I'm still pursuing patents on it. But I am free to discuss some parts of it, and since you are pursuing an advanced level of education in this area, you might find it interesting.

If there's something this world's currently lacking, it's ambitious, creative individuals. And I try to do everything I can to help create more of them.

I don't think that we are lacking those types of people, I think we are lacking an environment where they are welcome.

Chris

[Formula None]

Bumping 'cause this is the closest thread subject I could find.

IRIS (Internally Radiating Impulse Structure) engine:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb0pOKFr1fg[/youtube]

Similar to a piston engine in that it uses poppet valves and consists of an expanding cylindrical form, but in this case expanding radially instead of axially. They claim:

Surfaces exposed to combusting gases in an engine can react either productively, by moving, or wastefully, by heating. In traditional engines an average of less than 25% of the combustion chamber'ssurface area is productive. In an IRIS that average skyrockets to more than 70%of the chamber's surface area. Furthermore, because so much of the chamber is productive, gases can expand further than in an ordinary engine before openingthe exhaust valves. This means that an IRIS engine also captures energy that previously flowed out the exhaust pipe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIS_engine
http://www.irisengine.com/6901/6922.html

Interesting design, but its seems like a heck of a lot of surfaces to seal.