A New Lease On Internal Combustion 431
Somnus suggests we check out the latest issue of MIT's Technology Review, where researchers describe how they can dramatically boost engine output and efficiency by preventing pre-ignition, or "knock." How they do it: "Both turbocharging and direct injection are preexisting technologies, and neither looks particularly impressive... by combining them, and augmenting them with a novel way to use a small amount of ethanol, Cohn and his colleagues have created a design that they believe could triple the power of a test engine."
Hard to hide now (Score:2, Informative)
Any attempt to hide it will get as much bad press as Chevron's blocking of high-capacity NiMH batteries for EV's through their Cobasys venture. It will invite things like compulsory licensing.
brief review of article (Score:5, Informative)
This should be a lot more accurate than the original summary.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. Note that I don't actually believe the claim about tripling power, at least not with a whole lot of *very heavy* reinforcement of the block and heads.
For example: (Note: Numbers strictly pulled out of ass.)
2.4l conventional engine: 150 hp, 30 mpg
2.4l Super-Mega-Monster-Gas-TDI-Ethanol engine: 450 hp, 12.5 mpg
Your engine is 25% more efficient per hp and is generating 3x as much power.
Of course, the real application they have in mind is to create reinforced motorcycle-size engines that can power sedans, or small car motors that can power SUVs. If your 2.0l engine can create 360 hp, big torque, and get 17-18 mpg, you've reinvented a turbodiesel, except that your engine is (even with reinforcements) way smaller and lighter.
Re:Old (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. This sounds a lot like water injection, which has been around forever and does increase mpg by about 10% in turbo cars and allows lower octane fuel.
Here's what's going to kill the technology from TFA:
"Ethanol would be stored in its own tank or compartment and would be introduced by a separate direct-injection system. The ethanol would have to be replenished only once every few months, roughly as often as the oil is changed. A vehicle that used this approach would operate around 25 percent more efficiently than a vehicle with a conventional engine."
This is exactly like water-injection [wikipedia.org] and it's why we don't see water-injection in vehicles. No one wants to have a separate tank that we need to remember to fill-up, and the 10% increase provided by water just isn't enough. This is the same story except it's ethanol, not as easy to find as water, and it's 25% better mpg instead of 10%.
We will never see a production ethanol injection vehicle. Vaporware with a capital V
Re:Old (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA (and this goes for the reply above mine as well as the parent):
"Similar approaches, some of which used water to cool the cylinder, had been tried before. But the combination of direct injection and ethanol, Cohn says, had much more dramatic results."
Show me someone in the tuning industry using directly injected ethanol along with a turbocharger and regular gas. I've never heard of this approach.
Re:Pretty soon, you'll have a turbo Diesel (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Old (Score:5, Informative)
The "new" part comes where they are using ethanol direct injection. It's a new twist on an old idea. See also water-methanol injection:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_injection_(eng
Sure, it's not anything evolutionary. And the article might read like 1st Grade literature for anyone who is familiar with cars and tuning... but it's still interesting stuff.
Re:Why stick with petrol? (Score:5, Informative)
Check out the 07 MINI - it has this stuff already. (Score:5, Informative)
Add to that that the MINI has goodies like electric oil, power steering and water pumps that can actually be turned off (rather than merely bypassed) when not needed - so the engine reaches it's most efficient temperature faster and you aren't burning fuel circulating fluids that don't need to be circulated yet. It has computer controlled inlet and exhaust valves - so the timing is infinitely variable - and can be varied separately for each cylinder. For short bursts of accelleration, the car has an 'overboost' feature from the turbo - which won't help you much for prolonged hard accelleration - but is great for a rapid burst of speed for overtaking, blasting out of a corner (FUN!) or blowing away those bloody ugly Scion xB's at traffic lights (a personal mission of mine, I might add).
Turbo lag, premature combustion (Score:3, Informative)
Also: why would premature combustion still be a problem in a direct-injection engine? It should be possible to inject the fuel when it is needed, and not before. Or would that lead to timing problems?
1: turbo lag is the delay between pressing the accelerator and power output rising. It's affected by the size of the turbocharger, boost pressure and a few less important factors.
Re:Hard to hide now (Score:2, Informative)
"Cobasys, the First Name in Nickel Metal Hydride Battery Solutions, provides commercial NiMH battery systems for the hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), electric vehicle (EV) and 42 Volt transportation markets. The NiMHax brand for EV, HEV, HD HEV, and 42 Volt systems, provides flexible standardized architecture for a wide-range of vehicle solutions."
Doesn't look very blocked to me. Let's search for more info. The company is greatly expanding...
http://www.chevron.com/news/press/2005/2005-05-18
"ORION, MI, May 18, 2005 -- Cobasys, a leader in advanced Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) battery technology, today announced the grand opening of its new 84,000 square-foot headquarters in Orion, Michigan. The engineering, development, administrative, sales and marketing facility currently houses 175 of the company's 220 employees, and is expanding to accommodate anticipated employment growth of an additional 25 percent through 2006."
Further searches reveal that all sorts of cars are using Cobasys batteries -- for example, the Saturn Vue. Two companies also produce batteries on license from them -- Panasonic and Sanyo, which produce other hybrid car batteries. It looks like the negative press Cobasys has earned is because it aggressively enforces its patents against NiMH interlopers (one of which happened to produce the EV1's batteries). Looks, by all means, like they want to be the only ones selling NiMH in the US, and selling them in bulk -- not that they don't want anyone selling them.
From what I've seen, I have to agree with Wired.com's automotive blog [wired.com]:
"Chevron should be lauded for investing in technology that reduces the demand for its main products (gasoline). The company realizes that hybrids are a great opportunity, so following the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em), they are profiting from the growth of hybrids."
Oil companies will either adapt (by becoming "energy" companies) or die as the world slowly changes energy sources. That doesn't seem to stop the "it's a conspiracy to suppress energy-saving technology!" nuts.
Re:Why funny? (Score:3, Informative)
Audi RS4 (Score:4, Informative)
I'm intrigued to imagine what they could do if this ethanol based charge cooling works out. I'm already forced to put 15% ethanol in my Audi V8 (sadly NOT an RS4), living in NYC, but if this works out maybe I can support the farmers AND have a powerful car for the weekends (I commute on the subway).
Re:Old (Score:3, Informative)
What they are doing is different from old alcohol injection that merely mixed the injected fuel with ethanol before it went past the intake valve.
This method is using directly injecting ethanol similar to a diesel motor. The advantage seems to be the same effect but with way less ethanol. The article quoted having the ethanol refilled on the order of months.
While the effects of alcohol injection are well known and are not new, this method seems to make it way more practical, which is new.
Re:Check out the 07 MINI - it has this stuff alrea (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.eere.energy.gov/cleancities/blends/eth
Re:Old (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Check out the 07 MINI - it has this stuff alrea (Score:3, Informative)
The '07 MINI Cooper'S has a 4 cylinder 1.6 liter direct-injected twin-turbocharged engine - and since most fuel in the US now contains 10% ethanol, I'd say the "experimental" technology these guys are pushing is already out there in at least one production car
As the article notes, direct injection has been around for a while (since the '50s). Turbochargers are older than that. The idea here uses direct injection in a novel way.
. . . just about all modern cars have an anti-knock sensor that can richen the mixture if it detects signs of knocking - but with high octane gasoline - it only very rarely has to actually do that - so the "problem" of knocking isn't really there.
The problem isn't stopping current engines from knocking. The problem is to increase compression ratios or boost of an engine without introducing knocking. Increasing the amount of gas in the mixture only makes your fuel efficiency worse.
The key to this new idea is that the ethanol is injected separately from the regular gas (specifically, during the compression phase). Naturally, you'll need a separate tank of ethanol, which the article claims would need to be replenished about as often as a oil change.
As we know from thermodynamics, matter going through a phase change from liquid to vapor will suck away a lot energy. Ethanol has the nice quality that it will go through a phase change at a lower temperature compared to water.
Thermodynamics also tells us that as pressure increases, so does temperature. In a normal engine, the piston will compress the fuel/air mixture, thus increasing the temperature of the mixture. If the temperature gets too high, the mixture will ignite on its own. This is more likely if your engine has too high of a compression ratio or you're using some kind of boost system (turbo or superchargers). This is why cars with turbos often have intercoolers.
What they're doing here is increasing the compression ratio and/or adding a turbo. You can choose to slap on an intercooler if you wish. As the piston goes through the compression stroke, the fuel/air mixture gets hotter as before, but then some ethanol is injected, which vaporizes, thus cooling the mixture. The mixture is then ignited by a spark plug normally. Brilliant.
Re:Check out the 07 MINI - it has this stuff alrea (Score:2, Informative)
Injecting ethanol separately from the gasoline is different than mixing it, and it's nothing new. Oldsmobile made turbocharged cars with alcohol injection 40 years ago and people have been adding it to turbo Buicks for a long time as well.
Direct injection's time will come, but I'd wait at least a decade for the industry to be ready to handle 1000psi gasoline rails.
Electric water and oil pumps are a suckers bet. Don't plan on a long life for that engine.
Re:What new technology? (Score:2, Informative)
Lithium is no panacea. It is:
* Quite energy dense
* Reasonably power dense
But it also:
* Is a major fire hazard (if you've seen what a burning laptop battery can do, consider that a laptop battery is only a few dozen to a few hundred watt hours)
* Has a sadly short lifespan, irregardless of usage patterns. NiMH batteries keep performing well even a decade later, but as any laptop owner knows, Li-ion charge rapidly degrades over just a few years of usage.
* Is expensive.
Works well for laptop batteries. Not as well for cars. I don't relish the thought of a car that's *more* likely to burn in an accident (or even normal usage, due to defects), and burn much hotter, and for which I have to change its expensive batteries every few years. I hope tech improvements change all this, but I wouldn't want present-day Li-ion battery power in my car.
Preignition is NOT knock (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, THAT Cobasys (Score:5, Informative)
Other people have different things to say about Cobasys [evworld.com]:
And this [ocweekly.com], which killed the electric RAV4:There's plenty more, just perform the search suggested at the first link.
It appears likely that the advances in Li-ion and carbon-backed lead-acid will make it far more difficult to keep the next round of batteries out of vehicles. Regardless, the delay in availability of mass-market PHEV's and EV's has meant many billions or tens of billions of dollars in additional revenue for the oil companies and oil exporting nations. (The current administration shares responsibility for e.g. terminating the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles [wikipedia.org], which would have delivered 80-MPG sedans about.... now.)
The take-home lesson? Don't believe everything you read.
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Informative)
The simple example for this is the motorcycle: An 1100cc motorcycle is insanely fast and gets kick-ass fuel economy where the same 1100cc displacement in your run-of-the-mill Suzuki econobox means you're insane to drive it on the highway.
Re:brief review of article (Score:4, Informative)
Undoubtedly because Jiffy lube makes a lot of money from people wasting oil this way.
"The manufacturer says 5,000 or six months."
Unlikely. I think 7,500 miles is more common. BMW suggests 15,000 miles, but does use a simple computer that estimates gallons burned and tells you when the oil needs to be changed. The result is cheaper for the owner and better for the environment.
I only bring this up because Consumer Reports debunked the 3K oil change rule about 10 years ago with actual engine teardowns. Globally, imagine the effect if people are changing oil twice (or 3 times) as often as necessary. Even if everyone was recycling the old oil, but when you figure a decent percent just dumps it and it winds up in the water, or soil. It's just terrible for the environment.
Re:brief review of article (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.rjcracing.com/SMC_Alcohol_Injection/sm
--
Re:Old (Score:3, Informative)
Despite its "lower" Horsepower figures, and so on, in the Real World it competes well with Larger Petrol Engines. The main reason? Its Torque is available very low, and remains constant throughout. This is what is needed in the real worl, not nessasarily high RPMs, but sufficient power at ALL RPMs. Most 4 cyl petrol cars I have driven only start providing real Torque at 4000rpm, and peak at about 5500, running out of steam at 7000rpm, increasing cylinder count can improve the point at which the torque arrives, but lowers the overall torque output, compared to a similar displacement, lower cylinder engine.
My Diesel, starts providing torque at 1500 reaching max at 1800/1900, and remaining at that high point up to its max rpm of 4500rpm. Combined with an appropriately built 6 speed Gearbox, It certainly doesn't feel like I am about to run out of RPMs whilst driving.
And all this power, does not come at the expense of fuel economy, I have been able to get nearly 60 Mpg, on a motoway at 60mph, and nearly 75 to 80 mpg in the slipstream of an Articulated Lorry (Semi-Truck for US folks).
MAkes you think, diesel has come a long way since the old days, and is a very popular option here in Europe.