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Title: New engine 3.5 times efficient than conventional
Source:
Discovery Channel
URL Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4246054 ... nology_and_science-innovation/
Published: Apr 14, 2011
Author: Nic Halverson
Post Date: 2011-04-14 01:49:09 by Tatarewicz
Keywords: None
Views: 163
Comments: 10
Despite shifting into higher gear within the consumer's green conscience, hybrid vehicles are still tethered to the gas pump via a fuel-thirsty 100-year-old invention: the internal combustion engine. However, researchers at Michigan State University have built a prototype gasoline engine that requires no transmission, crankshaft, pistons, valves, fuel compression, cooling systems or fluids. Their so-called Wave Disk Generator could greatly improve the efficiency of gas-electric hybrid automobiles and potentially decrease auto emissions up to 90 percent when compared with conventional combustion engines. The engine has a rotor that's equipped with wave-like channels that trap and mix oxygen and fuel as the rotor spins. These central inlets are blocked off, building pressure within the chamber, causing a shock wave that ignites the compressed air and fuel to transmit energy. The Wave Disk Generator uses 60 percent of its fuel for propulsion; standard car engines use just 15 percent. As a result, the generator is 3.5 times more fuel efficient than typical combustion engines. Researchers estimate the new model could shave almost 1,000 pounds off a car's weight currently taken up by conventional engine systems. Last week, the prototype was presented to the energy division of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is backing the Michigan State University Engine Research Laboratory with $2.5 million in funding. Michigan State's team of engineers hope to have a car-sized 25-kilowatt version of the prototype ready by the end of the year. © 2011 Discovery Channel
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#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
Already posted. axio.matik 11:27AM (4/11/2011) I googled around a bit. Most of the reporting on this topic is very poor. The video is from 2009, when the researcher won the grant. At that point, it was purely conceptual. The grant money was intended to fund a working prototype. Now, the researcher has recently demonstrated a working prototype to the head of ARPA-e, hence its re-emergence in the news. Popular Science has the only article I found that is more in depth than just regurgitating the same thing over and over again that I found everywhere else. www.popsci.com/technology...funding-energy-revolution While it looks like a turbine engine, it appears to operate more like a wankel, but with integrated turbocharging. Combustion only occurs between a couple of vanes at any given moment. Fresh air/fuel is introduced through the center, it is compressed by the rotation until a shockwave forms, initiating combustion. The combustion drives the wheel. The exhaust gases are then recirculated back into another section of the wheel to use more of the waste heat to further drive the wheel, much like a turbocharger. I am not a combustion scientist, so I can't say whether or not it would be more efficient than other engines, but in the article I linked, the researcher gives an interesting analogy to the bumblebee. The bumblebee is too heavy and its wings are too small to support flight in the traditional sense. But the movement/shape of the bumblebee's wings generates shockwaves in the air that allow the wings to do more work than normally would be possible. It appears that the key to this engine is the generation of that shockwave, both to initiate combustion, but also to create more compression than the geometry of the vanes suggest. The key to its success is in fine tuning the geometry to generate the optimum shockwave. For those of you bemoaning pie-in-the-sky research or wild claims, I can guarantee that his application for funding was reviewed by a committee of researchers to verify that the concept is at least theoretically feasible. Researchers don't just write a letter and then get the money. They have to show the math to support their claims. It has to be reviewed by other scientists to confirm the validity of the calculations and the science behind it. Even after a proposal is found to be viable and worth further investigation, it still has to compete against all the other viable proposals, because not all viable proposals will be funded. There will always be more viable proposals than available funding. So the committee tasked with disbursing the funds has to decide that this project is more worthy of funding than other projects
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The relationship between morality and liberty is a directly proportional one. "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Ben Franklin
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The relationship between morality and liberty is a directly proportional one. "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Ben Franklin
Where's the other 85% currently go? First off, it's more like 13%, not 15%. The rest is given off as waste heat through the engine block, radiator, catalytic converter, brakes, exhaust, alternator, lights, etc. If it's hot, it's wasting energy. Thats just the nature of internal combustion engines. By contrast, the GM EV1 (actually Aerovironment), an electric vehicle, holds the record as the most efficient production vehicle ever made. I think the number was 93% efficiency. Regardless, it was way up there. The EV1 was also the aerodynamicly smoothest production vehicle ever with a Cd of 0.19, if memory serves. Electric vehicles would be, virtually maintennance-free, as well, if you would ever be allowed to own one.
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The relationship between morality and liberty is a directly proportional one. "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Ben Franklin
Second Law of Thermodynamics consumes about 70% energy input of common gas engines.
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The relationship between morality and liberty is a directly proportional one. "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Ben Franklin
Worthwhile to read some of discussions of other posters at the link site, if you're interested in investing in such projects. Academics seeking grants may be the same kind of hucksters as promoters pushing stocks. But without them we wouldn't be making much progress.
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#2. To: Armadillo (#1)
Interesting elaboration at:
#3. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
#4. To: Tatarewicz (#2)
#5. To: Eric Stratton (#3)
...standard car engines use just 15 percent[of the fuel's energy].
Mike Flaherty: Yeah, it's been there a long time. I wish I knew which corner.
My Man Godfrey (1936)
#6. To: Esso (#5)
#7. To: Eric Stratton (#3)
Where's the other 85% currently go?
"Satan / Cheney in "08" 
#8. To: tom007 (#7)
#9. To: Esso (#5)
#10. To: Tatarewicz, *Agriculture-Environment* (#0)
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