Cosworth, Xtrac and Ricardo win engine tender

[xpensive]

That's just it, way to go, discussions rather that one-sided statements.

What I hinted at in my posting of this morning, was that long-term, a turbo-charged methanol engine could be the "green" way to go, as:

"Methanol can be produced from the gasification of a range of renewable biomass materials, such as wood and black liquor from pulp and paper mills."
All according to Wikipedia.

In the context, the FIA are in discussions with Cosworth over future F1 engines, while said company happen to have 96 units of 2.6 l methanol V8s just standing by.

The way I see things, there is nothing wrong with technical speculations.

[WhiteBlue]

Point taken. I will elaborate on the two issues of 2.6 L engine and ethanol, as they are different options to have.

FiA and FOTA are conducting difficult negotiations all of which are related to the existing 2.4 L spec or a speculative future spec. The 2.6 L does not fit the current spec by almost all design criteria which are codified in rules for many years. Cosworth even have a 2.4 L design which perfectly fits the spec. It is therefore inconceivable that the negotiations would be complicated by allowing the 2.6 L design. F1 has very bad experience with equivalence formulae as seen in the turbo years and during the switch from V10 to V8. Nobody will be keen to get into such mess again if avaoidable. At least this is my considered opinion.

Ethanol is in reality mainly produced from monoculture crops which compete with food production. On a global scale that would be as unsustainable as fossile fuels. F1 is a global sport and the sensitivities against burning food for fuel would be quite unwelcome. There are by far better bio fuels than ethanol.

Biodiesel and methanol is produced by biogas converters from organic waste products that are normally deposited and can be converted to fuel. This concerns human and animal waste, food waste, agricultural and forrestial waste and sludge from water treatment facilities.

Bio diesel is largely kompatible in properties with diesel made from natural gas which is still being released to atmosphere in huge quantities at the oil wells of this world. Shell has just started to get into mass production of such liquid fuels by sophisticated processing equipment. There is huge potential for growth in the technology which will also prevents some global warming by avoiding the release of unused natural gas to the atmosphere.

There are safety concerns with ethanol and refuelling as the flames from ethanol are invisible and will make fire fighting more difficult. Finally charged Biodiesel engines typically have higher efficiency than naturall aspired engines. All of the above lead me to the conclusion that 2.6 L ethanol engines will be fairly unprobable for F1.

[xpensive]

Most valid points WB. But remember, methanol from cellulose waste is considered a renewable, green if you wish, bio-fuel, something we know Max loves to boast.

While having a higher energy content than ethanol, it's not high enough, why an atmospheric methanol V8 would have to be significantly larger than today's petrol versions to produce the same power, hence the turbo.
However a light and driveable boost of 100 kPa over the atmosphere should be sufficient.

The turbo concept, this time around carefully governed på the FIA, also offers plenty of room for performance adjustment as you go, such as "push-to-pass".

Finally, when you think about it, Mercedes (Ilmor), Toyota (TRD), Ferrari (Alfa Romeo) and Porsche all have experience of such powerunits.

[WhiteBlue]

The last time I looked at the fuel from cellulosis process they were using a pyrolytic proprietary process. Investors were having massive doubts that the claims for efficiency and profitability were accurate and kept avoiding this technology, which is very unusual at the alternative energy boom. hence my conclusion that ethanol will in the future still come from arable land and compete with food production and be a dead end for a global sport. The FiA is very much aware of the criticism connected to bio fuels that compete with food.

I would mention the initiative of Le Mans for biodiesel. They ran the last race with biodiesel that was completely made from waste in a synthetic process. I suspect that this initiative would attract much more interest from within the FiA.

[xpensive]

This is exactly why I keep talking of Methanol and not Ethanol.

Methanol is much more simple to extract from cellulose waste.

[WhiteBlue]

Sorry for the confusion. I wasn't aware CCWC changed to turbo Methanol as I have not been folllowing American Racing closely. I knew that IRL has used ethanol and somehow jumped to the conclusion that it was the same fuel. My bad!

[xpensive]

CART was always about Methanol, but you are right, IRL is Ethanol.

[Conceptual]

Point taken. I will elaborate on the two issues of 2.6 L engine and ethanol, as they are different options to have.

FiA and FOTA are conducting difficult negotiations all of which are related to the existing 2.4 L spec or a speculative future spec. The 2.6 L does not fit the current spec by almost all design criteria which are codified in rules for many years. Cosworth even have a 2.4 L design which perfectly fits the spec. It is therefore inconceivable that the negotiations would be complicated by allowing the 2.6 L design.

I may be wrong, but wouldn't changing the heads allow these engines to become 2.4L, and the injectors changed to use whatever fuel desired?

Is it at all possible that these 2.6L Ethanol burners are simply the 2.4L F1 engine from 2006 that got a head change?

[xpensive]

Again and for the record, the 2.6 l mildly turbocharged V8s in CART were running on Methanol, while the 3.5 l atmospheric all Honda units in IRL use Ethanol.

Engine volume is decided by bore and stroke, why i believe that the cylinder head design has little to do with it. Moreover, the Cosworth, Mercedes, Honda and Toyota 2.6 L CART V8s were around long before today's F1 2.4 l V8s were conceived.

CART is of course since a year ago defunct and the series 750 Hp Cosworth standard engines are just standing by, why myself and somebody else speculated in a logical way of making F1 both greener and extremely cost-effective with one rock.

Long-term, I see anything possible as to get out of 300 MEUR per season and team madness that F1 has become.

[WhiteBlue]

What I would like to see in F1 is somehing similar to what they describe here:
http://gas2.org/2008/06/26/low-cost-gas ... l-economy/





If you specify a long life for manufacturing cost saving, rebuildable engine blocks and a given power output you could allow basic development to go for radical fuel economy changes basically changing the input side. All the competition would produce results that would help fuel economy of road cars.

I'm not saying that the above claims are true but who would have thought in 1980 that an engine with 22.000 revs would be possible? Today we know that they would have easily reached that and higher if the development had not been terminated. What is the point of reclaiming energy if you do not have to throw it away in the first place.

So I am convinced that regulated output engines could be a fantastic opportunity for F1. You just have to do it in the right way.

[xpensive]

Strange looking contraption the Australian fellas have put together, three strokes of each piston per revolution?
Any idea where such power savings are coming from, in theory I mean?

[Conceptual]

Again and for the record, the 2.6 l mildly turbocharged V8s in CART were running on Methanol, while the 3.5 l atmospheric all Honda units in IRL use Ethanol.

Engine volume is decided by bore and stroke, why i believe that the cylinder head design has little to do with it. Moreover, the Cosworth, Mercedes, Honda and Toyota 2.6 L CART V8s were around long before today's F1 2.4 l V8s were conceived.

CART is of course since a year ago defunct and the series 750 Hp Cosworth standard engines are just standing by, why myself and somebody else speculated in a logical way of making F1 both greener and extremely cost-effective with one rock.

Long-term, I see anything possible as to get out of 300 MEUR per season and team madness that F1 has become.

Well,

I know that my first car had a 2.2 turbo (Dodge Daytona) and later their minivans ran with a 2.5 turbo. The engine blocks were identical, the only difference was the heads.

So in that case, there catually IS a .3L increase simply due to the head design.

Does anyone have any info on this?

PS: Unless the V angle is 90degrees however, and the pistons round, and 4 valves per cylinder, then they couldn't be used in F1 anyway.

[machin]

That engine is interesting... but I think the 3 strokes per revolution is a red herring... assuming it still works on the Otto cycle then this just means it has integral gearing... so there'e no efficiency gain there....

I hate myself for always falling into this "trap"; but when I see new things like that I always think "if that's so much better why has nobody done it before?"... maybe nobody HAS thought of it before... but surely a standard crank with circular bearings, rather than the three-nosed cam "crank" shown here, is much easier to manufacture and hence the bearings will be more efficient?

However, I looked at their explanation and bascically the main gain appears to be because the shape of that "crank cam" means that when the pressure in the cylinder is at its highest (i.e. near TDC on the power stroke) this is when the effective "stroke" of the crank-cam is also at its highest... in a conventional engine at TDC the crank and con-rod are in-line so the leverage is very low.... in this engine at TDC the leverage is at its greatest...

The BSFC figures on the website look good, but not exactly amazing..... still its early days and they might be able to improve things further

...interesting....

[xpensive]

Conceptual wrote:

I know that my first car had a 2.2 turbo (Dodge Daytona) and later their minivans ran with a 2.5 turbo. The engine blocks were identical, the only difference was the heads.

So in that case, there catually IS a .3L increase simply due to the head design.

Sure thing, it those heads somehow changed the bore, stroke or both.

[Shaddock]

Did anyone think it odd how cosworth apparently pulled out of the engine race the other year?

Cosworth didn't pull out of F1 voluntarily their last customer Williams dumped them in favour of the weaker Toyota engine.

From Williams point of view it was easier to sign up sponsors with the largest car manufacturer on board than Cosworth. Williams-Toyota has more Kudos then Williams-Cosworth.

They probably lost 40hp in the process but it helped secured their future in the process.

Cosworth have had a few owners in the past few years, it would be interesting if a car manufacturer re-acquired them as this would be a cheap(ish) way into F1.