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Post by GTCGreg on May 17, 2014 3:18:31 GMT
I like the sound of the classic power stage selectors. Here is a recording of the sounds inside an engine room. At 1:07, you can hear the power stage selectors work. When I was in High School, I use to ride one of Chicago's electric trolly buses home every day. I loved the clatter of the contactors as the driver pressed down on the accelerator pedal. And did those buses ever have acceleration. The driver never had to say "Step to the back of the bus, please" All he had to do was hit the "gas". They ran on 600 Volts DC which they got from huge MG sets stationed along the route.  |
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Post by the light works on May 17, 2014 6:36:34 GMT
An all of this still has very little to do with the free piston engine. As we seem to be done with it. It's nothing but a step backwards. It's known for decades now and still not used in any commercial application at all. If you want to add obsolete technology into a modern car, try the Wankel engine. This one is doomed since it can't comply with modern standards at all but it is still used every now and then because it is very light. be sure to tell Wikipedia nobody has found a practical use for it. they seem to think several generations of them have proven useful. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-piston_enginehow about if I want to add obsolete technology to a modern car I go with ultra lean burn technology. you spend a lot of time bragging about how caustic your exhaust is and how you have to change your engine settings to pass emissions testing. |
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Post by c64 on May 17, 2014 12:33:44 GMT
Just name one product you can buy which makes use of this 50 years old idea. If it would be so good, then why nobody uses it? The only ones you can see in action are either home made or demonstration machines. But there is no single fruitful version on the market. I am even not aware of any machine on the market you can buy. how about if I want to add obsolete technology to a modern car I go with ultra lean burn technology. you spend a lot of time bragging about how caustic your exhaust is and how you have to change your engine settings to pass emissions testing. Actually, the lean-burn technology is back for many years! They now use direct injection which gives you much better results, the combustion is much more reliable, the efficiency is even greater but the NOx emissions are even worse. To fix this, a NOx filter is used. When the engine runs at high power, it runs normal and cleans the filter with CO₁. The trouble idriving inside the city for too long, then the engine needs to run rich wasting fuel to clean the filter which is creases the overall efficiency a lot. Also this filter is very expensive and very likely to break. There are plenty of those engines on the market right now, e.g. the FSI (Fuel Stratified Injection) or TFSI (Turbo or twin charged) offered by VW. It's just too expensive to have a significant share on the market. What I use is what is similar to the original "Version A lean burn" and I don't have a NOx filter. Even if the "Version A" is not as efficient as the modern "Version B", I save wasting fuel for the filter so I have a much better overall efficiency. It's not an obsolete technology as such, the problem is that the "Version A" is banned and the modern "Version B" is made highly expensive by environmental laws. The problem is the internal combustion engines in general, no matter in which configuration. They are a cheap, reliable way of propelling a car but real bad for the environment if there are too many of them around in the world. The long term solution can only be using electric propulsion and especially to use less cars. In the good old days, people lived right next to their workplace and moved when they switched jobs. Mankind must kiss the individual traffic goodby - or use alternate energy sources like nuclear power. |
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Post by the light works on May 17, 2014 12:41:46 GMT
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Post by c64 on May 17, 2014 12:55:03 GMT
I've did some research in English technology descriptions.
The modern "version B" lean burners are known as "ultra lean burn" in the English literature.
But I am not exactly using the common lean burn system either. The trick isn't a fancy shaped piston or an antechamber, the trick is to add fuel at the end of the intake stroke adding fuel only to the top of the cylinder using a classic indirect injection configuration. To make sure the fuel vaporizes and the lean mixture can ignite, a lot of heat is added to the intake air. This has three effects.
1. Hot air is thinner so there is less oxygen present
2. The fuel will vaporize even if squirted in at the last moment
3. more heat allows the leaner mixture to burn properly
The disadvantage is the need of a heat exchanger to heat up the intake air from the hot exhaust gasses and a very strong electric heater. Also you need a system that can add or switch to cold air to be able to have real engine power. Then there is a lot of thermal stress involved, especially from constant switching between cold and hot intake air. All experts who are briefed in my system think it is a miracle that the engine isn't ruined instantly. So far it has lasted almost 100,000 kilometers with minor unusual damage.
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Post by c64 on May 17, 2014 13:06:58 GMT
One product you can BUY! There are many systems that were announced as "the holy grail" and never had hit the market. To be fair, some did but had vanished very quickly. For example the Honda Civic. Not many people know that the name of this car came from the CVCC (Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion) engine this car was intended to be equipped with. So they called the entire car the "CiViC[C]". It even was produced in series, even available in 1974 on the US market. But there are no real Civics any more available. It simply wasn't that economic and people didn't like the feel of this engine at all. |
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Post by the light works on May 17, 2014 14:49:03 GMT
I've did some research in English technology descriptions. The modern "version B" lean burners are known as "ultra lean burn" in the English literature. But I am not exactly using the common lean burn system either. The trick isn't a fancy shaped piston or an antechamber, the trick is to add fuel at the end of the intake stroke adding fuel only to the top of the cylinder using a classic indirect injection configuration. To make sure the fuel vaporizes and the lean mixture can ignite, a lot of heat is added to the intake air. This has three effects. 1. Hot air is thinner so there is less oxygen present 2. The fuel will vaporize even if squirted in at the last moment 3. more heat allows the leaner mixture to burn properly The disadvantage is the need of a heat exchanger to heat up the intake air from the hot exhaust gasses and a very strong electric heater. Also you need a system that can add or switch to cold air to be able to have real engine power. Then there is a lot of thermal stress involved, especially from constant switching between cold and hot intake air. All experts who are briefed in my system think it is a miracle that the engine isn't ruined instantly. So far it has lasted almost 100,000 kilometers with minor unusual damage. that is 321,869 kilometers, nearly half of it under what most people would consider an extreme load. even in the "old days" when people expected their engines to have a pretty short lifespan, it was expected for your engine to last 100,000 MILES with NO unusual damage. really, you have decided for yourself that you don't understand the technology, so it must be invalid. the truth is, there are still people who consider it viable technology, or they wouldn't have put out a press release within the last 30 days about putting it in test cars. |
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Post by GTCGreg on May 17, 2014 17:18:32 GMT
A press release is nothing more than a piece of paper. Often similar to a piece of toilet paper for what it has on it.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting to this one.
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Post by the light works on May 17, 2014 18:14:42 GMT
A press release is nothing more than a piece of paper. Often similar to a piece of toilet paper for what it has on it. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting to this one. nor I; but then even if it is successful in passenger cars, the current rate of variable efficiency technology coming to commercial vehicles has it entering my market around the fifth of never. the fact of the matter is claiming free piston technology is invalid because it is over 50 years old, or because it hasn't had a commercial application yet is an invalid claim. the internal combustion engine technology we had 50 years ago is almost completely outdated and modern developments can certainly change the game. and as for not having a commercial application is concerned - the original roll of the glass used for your smartphone screen sat on a shelf in a warehouse for over a decade because nobody had come up with an application for it yet. I certainly don't see the free piston engine as the thing that will save the world and usher in a new golden age of prosperity and fuel independence. However to be having a knee-jerk reaction to deride it is ridiculous. look at how many years it took to make the diesel engine a useful automobile engine. |
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Post by c64 on May 17, 2014 20:34:01 GMT
that is 321,869 kilometers, nearly half of it under what most people would consider an extreme load. even in the "old days" when people expected their engines to have a pretty short lifespan, it was expected for your engine to last 100,000 MILES with NO unusual damage. When I had bought my current car, it had 189,800 kilometers on its odometer already. I picked that one because it had a very healthy engine sound. Also the engine was unusually strong. When the cylinder head gasket blew, I found out that the cylinder diameter is slightly bigger than normal. This is a refurbished engine! It took a long time, but I had found out the true history of the car. The engine was refurbished after around a quarter million kilometers and the odometer was reset to zero. And when I had bought it, the counter of the odometer was broken due to a worn clutch. There is no way to tell how many kilometers this car had absolved already but I think way more than half a million kilometers is realistic. When the car had 209,000 kilometers on its odometer, I have started to convert it. This was the mileage when the cylinder head gasket blew. Since regular gas was discontinued in Europe, why would I want to keep operating an engine with low compression? So I had beefed up the compression. And this was the start of a lengthy try and error process to make the car as fuel economic as I can. The 100,000 with some "unusual damage" is with all the major engine mods in place. Last month, the odometer counter became stuck at 309,999. I think the internal clutch is too weak to turn all the dials but one at the same time again. |
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Post by c64 on May 17, 2014 20:48:14 GMT
the fact of the matter is claiming free piston technology is invalid because it is over 50 years old, or because it hasn't had a commercial application yet is an invalid claim. Same for the flying car and the turbine powered car. How many of there are around nowadays? None! And there are several "small ICE to recharge the batteries" concepts which came and vanished already. Most of them died due to environmental laws. The same will happen to the free piston engine. How useful is such a small generator engine when it needs a catalytic converter and other stuff which makes it real bulky and expensive. If you pay more for the car than it will save you in fuel costs, why would you want it in the first place? And what is a super efficient engine good for when it needs to dump more fuel than it saves to meet emission laws? E.g. for this reason, Audi uses the FSI engine in the Stoichiometric mode only. They don't bother with the weak "green" engines and running a strong engine in ultra lean burn mode wastes more fuel to keep the emissions down than the engine itself will save. |
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Post by the light works on May 17, 2014 21:09:04 GMT
the fact of the matter is claiming free piston technology is invalid because it is over 50 years old, or because it hasn't had a commercial application yet is an invalid claim. Same for the flying car and the turbine powered car. How many of there are around nowadays? None! And there are several "small ICE to recharge the batteries" concepts which came and vanished already. Most of them died due to environmental laws. The same will happen to the free piston engine. How useful is such a small generator engine when it needs a catalytic converter and other stuff which makes it real bulky and expensive. If you pay more for the car than it will save you in fuel costs, why would you want it in the first place? And what is a super efficient engine good for when it needs to dump more fuel than it saves to meet emission laws? E.g. for this reason, Audi uses the FSI engine in the Stoichiometric mode only. They don't bother with the weak "green" engines and running a strong engine in ultra lean burn mode wastes more fuel to keep the emissions down than the engine itself will save. so once again, you have said that your engine model is obsolete. but yes - the definiion of obsolete is that there is something better. show me something better. fuel cell you say? I haven't seen one of those, though I prewired a house for one 15 years ago. gasoline and diesel fuel cells are at the same stage as the free piston engine - press releases. the truth is that this is a fuel injected two cycle gasoline engine with a blower outside the "crankcase" so it does not have to use mixed fuel and can completely purge the cylinder after each combustion stroke. it can probably be made so it can easily convert to burn any fuel, because they can completely control compression, mixture, spark timing, and pretty much every other variable involved - because everything about the engine can be controlled by the ECU. they don't have mechanical drivetrain losses, because there is no mechanical drivetrain, unless you count the piston rod that moves the linear generator. inverter technology in the US has reached a point where better quality generators produce DC power in the wattage required and invert it to AC power; so there is no reason not to use the same inverter technology on this. so, really, it has the potential to be a transitional technology between local fuel consumption and improved power storage technology. whether it reaches that potential is wholly dependent on whether there are people with the willingness to try; and on whether energy storage technology or fuel cell technology can leapfrog it. but the fact of the matter is that the ICE will probably become obsolete in my lifetime. simple drive ICE is currently only viable because of the cultural resistance we have to hybrid drive ICE. |
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Post by c64 on May 17, 2014 21:23:37 GMT
so once again, you have said that your engine model is obsolete. but yes - the definiion of obsolete is that there is something better. Correct, my engine is obsolete. My government says this and demands €300 in "stinker tax" per year because the governmental rated CO₂ emission of my car is extreme. Currently I save around €700 per year at the gas pump so I avoid about €500 in tax on fuel each year. So I think this is a very good deal  show me something better. fuel cell you say? I haven't seen one of those, though I prewired a house for one 15 years ago. gasoline and diesel fuel cells are at the same stage as the free piston engine - press releases. True, the problem is that an all electric car is currently way too expensive to be economic and adding a fuel cell won't help there. the truth is that this is a fuel injected two cycle gasoline engine with a blower outside the "crankcase" so it does not have to use mixed fuel and can completely purge the cylinder after each combustion stroke. it can probably be made so it can easily convert to burn any fuel, because they can completely control compression, mixture, spark timing, and pretty much every other variable involved - because everything about the engine can be controlled by the ECU. they don't have mechanical drivetrain losses, because there is no mechanical drivetrain, unless you count the piston rod that moves the linear generator. inverter technology in the US has reached a point where better quality generators produce DC power in the wattage required and invert it to AC power; so there is no reason not to use the same inverter technology on this. so, really, it has the potential to be a transitional technology between local fuel consumption and improved power storage technology. whether it reaches that potential is wholly dependent on whether there are people with the willingness to try; and on whether energy storage technology or fuel cell technology can leapfrog it. but the fact of the matter is that the ICE will probably become obsolete in my lifetime. simple drive ICE is currently only viable because of the cultural resistance we have to hybrid drive ICE. The system still needs a catalytic converter or they must change the law first. But no engine design is able to meet modern emission standards without additional gadgets. In Europe, your car could emit pure air and if it has no catalytic converter when running on Otto-fuel, it can't get a license to be sold in Europe. So the only way to get away with the free piston design is to change the laws - and this can take decades! |
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Post by the light works on May 17, 2014 21:34:50 GMT
and yet I am seeing more and more of them on the road.
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Post by c64 on May 17, 2014 21:41:28 GMT
and yet I am seeing more and more of them on the road. That's like it had happened with computers, cell phones and PDAs. At first nobody would want nor need one and those were highly expensive and now everybody - including teenagers - have at least one and they are very inexpensive! Even my 5 years old niece has an iPhone (without SIM) and she had it before she started to talk in full sentences. She was unable to tell you what she wanted, but able to take a picture and show it to you on her iPhone! |
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Post by the light works on May 17, 2014 21:57:21 GMT
In the time I have been buying my own fuel, gas prices have quadrupled, while wages have merely doubled. that trend makes electric cars sound more appealing. economies of scale make central power production more cost effective than local power production. anyone with a home standby generator can tell you that. I can buy electricity for around a hundred dollars a month. I can manufacture my own in similar quantities for about a hundred dollars a day.
granted, part of that is because my generator runs a 15 HP motor (.5L M/L) at 3600 RPM regardless of the amount of power actually being used.
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Post by c64 on May 17, 2014 22:12:32 GMT
granted, part of that is because my generator runs a 15 HP motor (.5L M/L) at 3600 RPM regardless of the amount of power actually being used. Also the power plants on the grid won't buy their gas with vehicle taxes on it using a portable gas can at a gas station. They buy their fuel in shiploads. The efficiency of a power plant is very poor! The most modern coal power plants have 43% in efficiency. At home, you can reach up to 60% with reasonably priced equipment. You can also reach 100% but this is only true if making electricity is not your only purpose to burn th efuel. |
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Post by the light works on May 17, 2014 22:30:27 GMT
granted, part of that is because my generator runs a 15 HP motor (.5L M/L) at 3600 RPM regardless of the amount of power actually being used. Also the power plants on the grid won't buy their gas with vehicle taxes on it using a portable gas can at a gas station. They buy their fuel in shiploads. The efficiency of a power plant is very poor! The most modern coal power plants have 43% in efficiency. At home, you can reach up to 60% with reasonably priced equipment. You can also reach 100% but this is only true if making electricity is not your only purpose to burn th efuel. Oregon doesn't burn coal for electricity. the plants that DO buy fuel to burn, burn natural gas. - at up to 54% efficiency and then use the waste heat to produce steam for steam turbines. and that's just the plants that buy their fuel, not the ones that burn methane discharge from landfills or use wind and hydroelectric sources. |
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Post by c64 on May 20, 2014 11:13:06 GMT
Also the power plants on the grid won't buy their gas with vehicle taxes on it using a portable gas can at a gas station. They buy their fuel in shiploads. The efficiency of a power plant is very poor! The most modern coal power plants have 43% in efficiency. At home, you can reach up to 60% with reasonably priced equipment. You can also reach 100% but this is only true if making electricity is not your only purpose to burn th efuel. Oregon doesn't burn coal for electricity. the plants that DO buy fuel to burn, burn natural gas. - at up to 54% efficiency and then use the waste heat to produce steam for steam turbines. and that's just the plants that buy their fuel, not the ones that burn methane discharge from landfills or use wind and hydroelectric sources. 54% is the overall efficiency IF you use a second stage of turbines for using the waste heat of the main gas turbine. In the Netherlands, they use the waste heat to grow shrimps and to heat greenhouses. |
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Post by GTCGreg on May 20, 2014 13:52:24 GMT
but the fact of the matter is that the ICE will probably become obsolete in my lifetime. simple drive ICE is currently only viable because of the cultural resistance we have to hybrid drive ICE. Unless you are Methuselah, I think the ICE will probably be around long after you're gone. We just have no viable alternative and none looking good in the near, or even not so near future. Electric? Not even close. We just don't have the battery capacity and even if we did, we don't have the generation capacity or distribution infrastructure to charge those batteries. Even a small electric car takes more energy than an average home does. And I mean a home under full power. Air conditioning, washer and dryer, dishwasher, water heater, everything all working at once. So even if we solved the battery problem overnight, we still couldn't totally eliminate the ICE. Electric fuel cell powered car? Again, not going to happen anytime soon. If we had the fuel cell tomorrow, we still need a totally new distribution system for the hydrogen to fuel those cells. To say nothing of the capacity to generate all that hydrogen. And the reason people are rejecting ICE-Hybrid has nothing to do with culture. In fact, the only reason this technology is as popular as it is, is because it was culture driven. It was a fad. You weren't considered environmentally friendly unless you drove one of these over priced and under preforming vehicles. Fortunately, that's changing now because people are coming to their senses and because new ICE technology has gotten to the point that small ICE's are just as fuel efficient as ICE-Hybrid designs and much cheaper. |
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