Regenerative systems (KERS)

[WhiteBlue]

Ciro, I did not need to check because I have looked into industrial applications many times in comparison with hydraulics. It is always prohibitive. plus for an F1 you do need some 100 something kg because no way you can charge that in an 8s pit stop.

something that should be more interesting are the organic Rankine cycle steamers. what would be the best steam engine asuming you use a conventional direct petrol injection or diesel.


this is a twin screw expander like they use in stationary co generation ORC systems. would that not be better than an radial or axial piston expander for a rotational application. I just hate the idea to do one unnecessary linear/rotary transformation and that could be directly coupled to an electric generator/motor as long as you do only one driven set of wheels.
for F1 you probably make that co housed with the gearbox in a carbon fiber housing and have titanium screws.

[Carlos]

Ciro - Here's a quote from Autoblog:
"and the engine is made up almost entirely of aluminum. The air tanks hold 52 gallons of compressed air at 4,351psi, and refueling can take only three minutes at your local gas station. You can also plug in the vehicle for about four hours, so the on-board compressor can fill the tanks at a cost of about $2."


As you can see they claim a 52 gallon tank at 4351 psi.

Here's the complete article:
http://www.autoblog.com/2007/06/01/worl ... ntroduced/

Another type of motor/compressor - The Scroll-Type Air Motor: 6PG PDF
http://www.iaeng.org/IJAM/issues_v38/is ... 8_1_03.pdf

[Ciro Pabón]

Well, 4351 psi are exactly 300 bars (299.99), so I guess WhiteBlue had already made the conversion or this is some standard pressure for standard tanks.

52 US gallons, as every colombian knows (all our gas pumps sell gas in US gallons) are 200 miserable liters, that is 0.2 m3. Hence, this gives you a misery to move around: the equivalent of... wait a minute... no calculator, real engineers don't use one... less than 0.1 liters of gasoline? What? Even if those are imperial gallons (which I doubt. Who uses them?), from the top of my head this can't be more than 0.2 liters. Something is wrong here (probably my math).

Can anyone help me? C'mon, you bunch of lazy partners, how comes that a car can move around with enough gas to fill a cigarrette lighter? Any comments?

BTW, pit stops could be made in less than 8 seconds: you have a tank already filled. When the car comes in, you extract the empty tank and put in the new one, twist the conector and you're gone. Duhhhh...

[WhiteBlue]

http://www.sprintex.com.au/



here you see a twin screw supercharger which is just an inverted use of a twin screw expander. It is claimed to be the most efficient supercharger in use today in the automotive world. I beleive the execution of the helix geometry is poor compared to the stationary unit above but thats probably cost efficient engineering with an energy efficiency trade off.

for the scroll motor I havn't found good pictures to get an impression of the geometric shape. it appears to be a radial type of compressor/expander compared to the axial flow of air in a twin screw.

which of the two principle is more suitable will depend of usefull pressure ranges, mechanical efficencies and manufacturing cost. thats a tough call. in any case instinctively I would much rather use one of those than a piston system be it radial or axial.

waste heat energy reclaim is the way to go to increase the energy efficiency of internal combustion engines. you only have to look at stationary power generation to adopt the principles applied. of cause you need to weight optimise for mobile use but the principles of physics and engineering hold.

[Mikey_s]

Chris

There are already car prototypes that run off of compressed air, and actually can compress more than it uses. I'll try and dig up the link and get back to you...

Chris

http://www.theaircar.com/acf/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/automot ... 17016.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmqpGZv0YT4 <---VIDEO

I don't see why this couldn't be implemented. Imagine the level the technology would reach in 3 years of F1 development!

Somebody much more clever than me summarised the laws of thermodynamics in laymans terms as;

1st law; You can't win you can only break even
2nd law; You can only break even at absolute zero
3rd law; You can't ever get to absolute zero

QED; you cannot win!
Bearing in mind that we are always fighting the laws of thermodynamics, it is inconceivable that car prototypes could compress more air than they use, unless there is energy being fed into the system from outside; otherwise someone has created a perpetual motion machine and conventional science is bunkum. Furthermore, any mechanical system will have frictional losses which will scavenge efficiency and therefore obey the first law. A typical internal combustion engine vehicle runing on gasoline converts approximately 15% of the available thermal energy into forward motion - 85% (yes 85%!!) being lost in drivetrain, exhaust heat, other heat dissipation and braking losses etc.; it is inconceivable that any new system could be 600% more efficient than we currently manage, not even considering that when you compress a gas heat is generated that the compressor normally dumps to the atmosphere (thereby also obeying the first law).

@ Chris; I like free thinkers. You have some nice, elegant concepts, but compressed air is perhaps a solution to urban air quality, it is an energy storage device (just like any fuel) and it must obey the laws of thermodynamics. The probability that any compressed air system could achieve even close to 100% efficiency is so improbable that it can be discounted. Furthermore, the pressures that would be required would introduce such safety implications that the cars would be a) huge, and b) heavy.

If one considers the ICE as an exotic air pumop (and perhaps not the most efficient one of those!) - a 2.4 litre engine at 19000 rpm is displacing 22800 litres of air per minute at normal temperature and pressure (not taking into account ram air effects and thermal effects). Assume that efficiency is doubled by some new system, you will still need an enormous volume of air to drive around for 90 minutes - and don't forget that F1 is not about efficient use of fuel, it's about generating power...

[Conceptual]

Chris

There are already car prototypes that run off of compressed air, and actually can compress more than it uses. I'll try and dig up the link and get back to you...

Chris

http://www.theaircar.com/acf/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/automot ... 17016.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmqpGZv0YT4 <---VIDEO

I don't see why this couldn't be implemented. Imagine the level the technology would reach in 3 years of F1 development!

Somebody much more clever than me summarised the laws of thermodynamics in laymans terms as;

1st law; You can't win you can only break even
2nd law; You can only break even at absolute zero
3rd law; You can't ever get to absolute zero

QED; you cannot win!
Bearing in mind that we are always fighting the laws of thermodynamics, it is inconceivable that car prototypes could compress more air than they use, unless there is energy being fed into the system from outside; otherwise someone has created a perpetual motion machine and conventional science is bunkum. Furthermore, any mechanical system will have frictional losses which will scavenge efficiency and therefore obey the first law. A typical internal combustion engine vehicle runing on gasoline converts approximately 15% of the available thermal energy into forward motion - 85% (yes 85%!!) being lost in drivetrain, exhaust heat, other heat dissipation and braking losses etc.; it is inconceivable that any new system could be 600% more efficient than we currently manage, not even considering that when you compress a gas heat is generated that the compressor normally dumps to the atmosphere (thereby also obeying the first law).

@ Chris; I like free thinkers. You have some nice, elegant concepts, but compressed air is perhaps a solution to urban air quality, it is an energy storage device (just like any fuel) and it must obey the laws of thermodynamics. The probability that any compressed air system could achieve even close to 100% efficiency is so improbable that it can be discounted. Furthermore, the pressures that would be required would introduce such safety implications that the cars would be a) huge, and b) heavy.

If one considers the ICE as an exotic air pumop (and perhaps not the most efficient one of those!) - a 2.4 litre engine at 19000 rpm is displacing 22800 litres of air per minute at normal temperature and pressure (not taking into account ram air effects and thermal effects). Assume that efficiency is doubled by some new system, you will still need an enormous volume of air to drive around for 90 minutes - and don't forget that F1 is not about efficient use of fuel, it's about generating power...

I didn't make those claims, the Air Car did.

It obviously works. Why is it impossible to improve?

I believe that the rules of thermodynamics are very likely affected by chaos in the same way every other rule of the universe does, and that is the appearance of amomalies and exceptions. Probability tells you that not even mathematics is 100% in accordance with reality. There are always exceptions, and I believe that eventually, someone will find it!

Chris

[WhiteBlue]

I wondered whether this is really about regenerative systems or about alternative drive technologies.

I keep coming back to these issues and get frustrated that I do not find on topic contributions.

Perhaps you guys do it that way here? wouldn't it makle more sense to discuss radical and out of the box ideas in a separate thread? it could be dedicated to real paradigm shifts and brain storms.

I think that even fuel cells are a more exciting prospect than regeneration but regeneration will probably cover a lot of mileage in automotive engineering and investment for some years.

[Conceptual]

I wondered whether this is really about regenerative systems or about alternative drive technologies.

I keep coming back to these issues and get frustrated that I do not find on topic contributions.

Perhaps you guys do it that way here? wouldn't it makle more sense to discuss radical and out of the box ideas in a separate thread? it could be dedicated to real paradigm shifts and brain storms.

I think that even fuel cells are a more exciting prospect than regeneration but regeneration will probably cover a lot of mileage in automotive engineering and investment for some years.

Well, I guess to be completely on-topic for your demand for more intense discussion:

The teams are going to use a flywheel to capture brake energy, and then feed it back into the drivetrain through a CVT. The primitive device was originally concieved directly following the discovery of the wheel, and its original round shape. It is nice to finally see such an artifact be the main driving force behind the top 1% of all engineers on the planet for 2009.

I can't tell you how sorry I am that the original concept only took like the first page of this thread to completely explain all that could be digested, but maybe we can start re-gurgitating the same info using different metaphors so we can all get a good perspective of what this ancient technology is.

When the flywheel starts incorporating windmill style alternators to generate 50 amps of 240V 3-phase electricity to actually DRIVE THE CAR, then we can start talking about my design.

Unfortunately, your thermodynamics rhetoric keeps getting in the way of the talk of future regenerative systems, which is really the only place for this thread to go from here.

Thanks for your time,

Chris

[WhiteBlue]

Hi Chris,

I believe that thermodynamic theory has been pretty helpfull in the evolution of engineering solutions to mobility, air conditioning, energy storage, power generation and a bunch of other essential applications not to talk about motor racing.

Nevertheless theoretical boundaries should be challenged and new thinking is always an opportunity to overcome inherent limitations to old thinking.

For me the proof is in the pudding. I believe in driving innovative products more than in promotion of various break throughs that claim to be based on novel interpretaion of the laws of physics. I will gladly devote some time to explore the radical ideas though.

Regenerating kinetic energy seems to be a workable solution. in the wake of that regenerating heat to jack up the efficiency of ICEs is another logical step.

Next we expect electric cars with fuel cells converting chemically bound energy to electricity. that will be an excitng thing to watch and I hope I will be around when it become main stream.

In the end we will nor be content until R.A.Heinlein's dream of a space going and universe shifting craft with zero energy consumption is reality. in the meantime it makes sense to kind of sort out the road map to sensitive levels and discuss the issues in a consistent way.

I look forward to your input on the matter.

whity

[carvetia]

Hi everyone (i'm new) , i've been following this site/forum for a while, thought i'd finally sign up, and just wanted to put a few thoughts out there which, in my reading, i don't think have been covered in particular (and i hope aren't stating the obvious ).

OK, so with kers we have two basic options, mechanical or electrical, and the general idea is to make F1 more efficient and 'green' through using these systems. However, i get the impression (though i don't know what the exact regulations are/will be) that the systems could be (ab)used for quite the opposite effect. I think the only way for this to be a 'green' technology is if it is mandated that energy stored can only be obtained under braking. Will this be the case?

If it isn't then would the following system be plausible? In the case of a mechanical system; when the engine is no longer engaged under braking, rather than simply disconnecting the engine and allowing the revs to fall, would it not be better for a team to simply maintain the engine revs while braking and send that surplus power to a flywheel instead? That way the car can accumulate power it would otherwise have been unable to utilise during the corner. Once the driver accelerates, the engine is (obviously) sending power to the rear wheels again, but with the assistance of the energy it stored during the turn, recovered from the flywheel. Naturally, the flywheel is acting as a capacitor so replace it with an electric motor and a few real capacitors and you have the same effect.

With such a system, you could have the engine running at full power for pretty much the whole lap, which in my mind would give an obvious performance advantage. However this is anything but 'green' as these systems were intended. Or am i missing the point entirely?

[scarbs]

Hmm tricky one. The 2009 regs limit the amount of energy that can be stored, I imagine that it won’t be a problem to recover this from normal engine braking.

If energy recovery was unlimited (as it should be) then your theory would be a benefit, if perhaps it is strictly not energy recovery at, simply powering a secondary power source with the primary one. This would come at the loss of engine braking which is still influential on chassis behaviour.

[WhiteBlue]

welcome carvetia! there are actually existing threads on regenerative systems which you might enjoy to read as well. perhaps a moderator will shift this post to an older thread.

I do not think that this is an issue. Kers ared not allowed to load from the engine. only from kinetic energy during braking. and continuing power during braking woold defeat the objective wouldn't it? plus you would consume a lot more fuel which then becomes a weight penalty.

[Mikey_s]

Whity,

thanks for dragging the thread back to the original topic! (or at least trying to).

Our universe is (I believe) governed by the laws of thermodynamics, and therefore in respect of improving the efficiency of the current vehicles it's probably best to concentrate on the areas which which yield the biggest potential gains. On thw basis that the dear old ICE is probably at best 35% efficient in using the potential thermal energy in the fuel that would be a fine place to start, using the waste exhaust gases is known technology (but more power doesn't seem to attract Max) then I guess that heat recovery from the radiators, and brakes would be next up. I still have an uncomfortable feeling about flywheels; my sense is that if they are (and they are!) capable of holding a significant amount of energy they must generate some serious gyroscopic effect - straight on at the corner anyone?

Of course the biggest gains would be if the engineers were permitted to consider alternatives to the ICE, which might open up some more sensible solutions for recoverning energy, or at least using the energy in the tank more efficiently ... but that's drifting off topic again!

[WhiteBlue]

unless I'm very mistaken the top teams are all aiming for electrical KERS. at least at BMW Theissen has given some very robust hints in his launch presentation to that direction in January.

http://www.motorsport-total.com/f1/news ... 11418.html

translation of relevant part:
Theissen 14.01.2008

With the introduction of KERS - scheduled for racing in 14 months - we are very busy. we are combining the ICE with the electric motor and the battery and this work is exciting for the engineers.

we also know that the bimmers and Honda are doing basic research into heat recovery systems based on the Rankine cycle which is largely used by the high efficiency stationary gas turbines to push the efficiency to over 60%. this is pretty impressive if compared with efficiencies of 25-30% in F1.

I expect them to use organic fluids with lower steam point than water which makes it an ORC (organic rankine cycle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_cycle

[carvetia]

@scarbs: Ok thanks for the input

@WhiteBlue: Thankyou, and yes you're right i probably should have put this at the end of another topic rather than starting a new one, noted for next time

If anyone could direct me to a resource detailing everything that has been made official regarding regulations for KERS systems (as opposed to speculation) that would be great. I'm not sure where to look for these things and searches haven't been particualarly fruitful.