Chen Engine, a more efficient and cleaner engine

[Chengine]

I have hijacked stirling engine discussion. Now I decide to create this new topic.

In a nutshell, Chen engine is any engine that use direct air injection into cylinders to purge out waste gas and oxidize CO and HC. Until now, all solutions addressing scavenging exhaust gas is incomplete, thus Otto engines can not optimize gas consumption through out the entire operating range. The operating range suffered the most(however ignored by most) is the low load region, meaning cylinder vacuum is high. This Chen engine concept uses injected air to purge out all waste gases and allows higher efficiency during idle and city driving. The reason for this inefficiency is the CO2 and H2O act as heat absorber in the combustion process, thus deplete the energy this could have been used to expand the gas volume, pushes cylinder down.

The physics is that H2O and CO2 have large vibration modes and rotation modes, The chemical energy go into these modes become useless as kinetic energy.

Modern car manufactures only concentrate on improving highway gas efficiency. But most of the cars are operating in city environment. Chen engine will improve the city MPG by a large amount. The improvement on Sports car will be most significant as they operate at highest vacuum in city driving, thus most inefficient at low load.

The second important benefit of Chen Engine is that it does not emit CO and HC pollutants. The injected air burns up CO and HC at high temperature. In this sense, it behaves like a diesel, only NOx is emitted. As we all know that gasoline cars emit CO and HC in first five minutes of driving until catalytic converter is warmed up to 300C. If all your trips are short, you are a big polluter using gas engine.

As this is a F1 forum, Chen engine will have flat torque from idle to maximum rpm. Thus, it is very similar to diesel but does not have the drop off of diesel. Chen engine has maximum low rpm torque.

There are many design considerations of this engine. I'll present them in coming days.

Regards,

Chengine

[Chengine]

Before I write for today I would like to say that if the reader likes to see a PPT presentation, please PM me. It includes the patent information as well.

The idea of improving Otto engine through exhaust gas management came to me when I started to ride motorcycles. It is common knowledge that when you remove the exhaust muffler, you gain several horses and fuel efficiency also improves.
Of course, this is illegal. However, it started me on this track.

I also remembered that when I drove my father's big Lincoln in Miami, I was shocked to find that that car has over 30 mpg in city driving. After I did some investigation the following facts, were, Lincoln was definitely heavy over 5000 pounds and the engine was tiny, 2.6 liters. I remembered that I had to make an effort even driving away from parking lots. I felt like driving a tank. Lesson, to get good gasoline efficiency, the engine must work hard all the time. Especially hard working in city driving.

The third fact is that Prius hybrid's gasoline engine is operating at least 35% from Peak power,, according to the patent that spefifies the Prius hybrid technology. By the way, at the present time Toyota is paying the inventor about $200 per car.
That is the royalty fee set by the judge when the case was in court.

From all the above evidences, I came to the conclusion for efficiency, engine must work over 35% of peak and exhaust gas must be expelled as much as possible. If residual gas is completely expelled, then you have efficiency and power.

We all know the current exhaust gas management is larger tuned exhaust, tuned header, scavenger(over lapping of input and exhaust valves. These are all partial solutions.

With modern magnets and precision machining and wide use of direct fuel injection, the day when direct air injection now can be implemented as all technologies are available. In fact, Camlessvalves engine just use such technology to build a new engine in Sweden. Direct air injection, Chen engine, is doable today.

Regards,

Chengine

[Chengine]

Hello Friends,

The first day I introduced the concept of Direct Air Injection, Chen engine, with many out rageous claims.
The second day I provided many existing evidences that I personally know to be true, pointing to the need for waste gas elimination and hight engine revolution for efficiency.

Today, I shall go into the most important aspect of discussion, that would separate this Chen Engine from many others since the Otto and Diesel engines. I shall discuss the fundamental thermodynamics of internal (OTTO) combustion engine, and how Chen engine fits in.

Otto engine efficiency is dependent on just two parameters, compression ratio and heat capacity parameter (This is derived in this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_cycle. Thus fundamentally with everything ideal we must obey this law. It is the limit. Heywood's book, on page 170 "Internal combustion engine fundamentals" has a graph of efficiency against compression with heat capacity as variable. I wish I had a view graph now to show it to you, but I do not.

The curve's extremity is of particular interest. At compression ratio of 10, the efficiency is about 50% for normal air fuel ratio. However for very lean operation the efficiency is close to 60%. Here is the bottom line, for exhaust gas loaded operation, the efficiency drops down to 40%, on the graph this corresponds to heat capacity ratio of 1.25, where pure air is 1.4 and fuel air mixture is 1.3.

If you examine the graph for low compression operation, where it corresponds to low load operation, The graph shows that the efficiency of the OTTO engine is only 30% at compression ratio of 4 and the waste gas loaded mixture has efficiency of 23%.

What does all this mean? It means Otto engine is best operated at high compression ratio, meaning full power and worse at low compression ratio and the worst when it is loaded with waste gas CO2 and H2O.

The graph does not go below compression ratio of 2. But at low vehicle load, and cylinder is in high vacuum, the compression ratio could become 1, meaning that the compressed air at ignition point is at one atmosphere pressure and if majority of the gas is waste gas, it is reasonable to assume that there is a factor of two difference between the efficiency of idle for normal engine and Chen engine. Let me repeat, Chen engine will consume gas at only 50% of the rate to maintain basic vehicle operation, running at idle. It will operate probably a little smoother also, as there is no "extinguishing" gases.

This discussion is fairly long, I hope that I have convinced you that Otto engine must be operated at high compression level, as all hybrid car engine does now. But also, if the car MUST be in low load mode for extended period, such as traffic jam and city traffic. One MUST develop Chen engine to improve gas efficiency. Thus, I justify my 30% gas improvement claim.
Of course, for high power sports car, this would be 100% improvement, while for a Lincoln with 2.6 liter engine, it will show the smallest improvement.

Regards,

Chengine

I have about a book of material. I'll try to condense as much as I can into this discussion.

[flynfrog]

How would the end result be any different than a super charged engine with direct injection. Your earlier post don't build much confidence that you have any idea what you are talking about. What does Toyota paying some one a $200 royalty per car have to do with an engine design. How lacking is a current tuned exhaust system at scavenging?

I don't see how you can make such claims and not have any math to back it up with let alone running engine. Surly a small scale test isn't that hard.

[Chengine]

Flynfrog,

I have a prototype being designed using Honda motorcycle 4 valves single cylinder engine. I just configure one of the exhaust valves into injection valve. Due to limited fund and space, I suspended that effort. I am welcoming any one on this forum to pursue that, with or independent of me. The only test need is fuel consumption in idle, A vs B test. I expect air injected engine to have 50% saving.

Yes, total cost is under $1000. It is an easy project. For those with motorcycles, return on investment is only 3 months. Just a compressor $100 in the US and some machining. It is Chen engine C model.

There are loads of design and efforts. Let me finish this to a suitable end.

Turbo charging does reduce substantially the Chen Engine advantage. There are still enough for this to be worthwhile.

In the future all engines will be adaptive. One should just buy small engine car for everyday driving at high load factor. When the need arise to go over a hill, then turn on the air injection(not turbo) and additional cooling for power that is needed only rarely.

Regards,

Chengine

[bill shoe]

Draw PV diagrams of a regular engine cycle vs the engine cycle you propose. Then explain where the difference comes from. Don't waste more time and words until you do that.

[Chengine]

The engine cycle is exactly the same as Otto cycle. When air injection is used and waste gas purged. The peak of the Combustion temperature/pressure will be higher and the PV curve will be above the original PV until the maximum volume.

I hope this explanation is clear enough. When I gave my first presentation on this subject, I drew the standard one. Then use different color to raise the left hand peak and then drew a sloping line about five inches higher over the original one. When it reaches max volume it drops down to close to atm.

Is this clear? If not I'll try to get PDF file attached.

Regards,

Chengine

Thank you for the interest. I assure you that this concept have been through many high level presentations.

[Chengine]

In this post I would like to address the power and torque issue of Chen engine.

First let me take care of previous questions I did not quite answer. The super charger is an energy hog. I am not interested in power, instead Chen engine is more efficient engine than without.

Having said that still the efficiency of an engine is closely correlated to its power. The higher the efficiency the higher the power. This forum is F1, thus we must concern with the "responsible power"

Twenty years ago, well many years ago, people realize that the best torque is obtained when the waste gas is "sucked" out or pushed out by scavenging and the best result is obtained by both together. This sweet spot is where the peak torque is. This corresponds to when the residual gas is completely eliminated, which is the goal of all engine engineers. However, the purging of the residual gas can only accomplished in just small band of rpm, typically around 4000. And we all know driver wants to ride the peak torque. However, the rest of the rpm ranges are not anywhere as optimized and especially low RPM ranges, they suffer from poor power and poor efficiency.

When turbo charging became available the scavenger operation is much improved as high pressure input gas can push out high back pressure exhaust port easier. In fact, a lot easier. Thus, there is a great improvement in the width of peak torque.
For normal 2 ATM boost, the flat peak torque can extend from 2000 rpm to 6000 rpm. But still we have a gap from 500 rpm idle to 2000 rpm.

This is where direct air injection, Chen Engine will solve this problem. As the residual gas is completely purged even at idling thus the peak torque curve can be from 500 rpm (or whatever) to the maximum engine speed, as long as injector can keep up.

What this means is that Chen engine equipped car will have the driving characteristic of a electric car, such a tesla. When you floor the gas pedal, full torque is instantly available and no turbine need to windup to provide the boost a few moment later(Turbo lag).

A Chen engine equipped race car will have high instant torque as well as better efficiency than not so equipped race car. As soon as the racer step on the brake, not only regeneration works, but also the inefficiency at low load is eliminated, thus this race car would have both power and efficiency advantage over the others.

Chen engine, or direct air injection, is compatible with turbo powered engine as well. Just add injection port and air compressor, even turbo charged air(I shall discuss this issue in design section later). As long as the additional power needed for compressor and actuators are covered by efficiency gain. Typically the expanded power is only 10% of the saved power (to be proven in later post).

Thus, Chen engine is in between OTTO and DIESEL. Like Otto, it is small light weight and can rev up very high. But it also like Diesel, that it has maximum torque at very low rpm.

This concludes my discussion of torque and power of Chen engine(direct air injection)

[flynfrog]

lots of claims no evidence.... The flynfrog engine does every thing you say only 10% more better. Because the prius gets worse mileage than my TDI and real motor cycle engines are two stroke thats twice as many power strokes plus a pipe to clear the waste gas and purge the battery. If you came here looking for investors without any real work on your part you might want to try some where else. We usually get an all new engine thread once a year. They are all the sames lots of claims a few patents from the 50s not math no running prototype they just need some one to pay them to develop it.

[langwadt]

lots of claims no evidence.... The flynfrog engine does every thing you say only 10% more better. Because the prius gets worse mileage than my TDI and real motor cycle engines are two stroke thats twice as many power strokes plus a pipe to clear the waste gas and purge the battery. If you came here looking for investors without any real work on your part you might want to try some where else. We usually get an all new engine thread once a year. They are all the sames lots of claims a few patents from the 50s not math no running prototype they just need some one to pay them to develop it.

yeh anyone who thinks a minor tweak can magically make a combustion engine substantially more efficient is at best naive
A lot of people have tried for +100 years

[wesley123]

Why would you even need an engine?

[Chengine]

Friends,

Let me address your concerns indirectly. This is not my first innovation. My first innovation is a device called Wavelength locker. In 2000, world wide telecommunication was undergoing revolution and the vehicle is called DWDM fiber optics.
The technology need a device that keep 80 separate wavelengths stable so they can propagate through optical fiber without interference. The precision required is "impossible". All the world's leading labs were working on it for years involving hundreds of Ph.Ds. I said that I have the right solution. Of course, just like now, NO ONE believed it is possible. To cut it short, I delivered the product in time. Those of you enjoying wide bandwidth TVs must thank me for it, as I played a major role in it. Thanks to that technology we enjoyed almost free long distance telephone and internet connections.

This is a forum on Chen Engine, so I will not dewell on my past. I just want to make it clear that to me nothing is impossible and Chen Engine is much easier innovation than my wavelength locker.

I shall address cleaner engine aspect of Chen engine tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Chengine

[monsi]

Can we have illustrative diagrams and graphs please ?

[Chengine]

Can some one take a picture of "internal combustion engine fundamentals" fig. 5.5 and post it here, please?
I tried to paste picture taken using iPhone. It did not work. Sorry. I'll work on it.

Chengine

[Greg Locock]

Yup, the guy who is going to reinvent the engine can't figure out an iPhone


Here it is https://www.mediafire.com/?apa758d68ihjuax