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Another lightweight valve-less IC engine candidate
(thanks to Ron Wormus for sending me this), for use in a plug-in serial hybrid
as back up - which will allows several hundred pounds of un-needed
engine/transmission weight to be shifted to batteries, and also allows for easy
multi-fuel and hydrogen conversion (after-market) is the direct-injected
two-stroke.
This is NOT your ordinary two-stroke. A major part of the air pollution in Asia and Africa is generated by vehicles with traditional two-stroke engines such as those used in India because the engine is dirt cheap to manufacture and it will burn biodiesel (spark combustion) or even rancid ghee and probably duck-butter as well. This engine is cheap, light, multi-fuel, and NOT acceptable for the USA. But one major change remedies that situation. The CSU redesign is direct fuel injection, but
is still cost-effective, lightweight two-stroke technology which has the
potential to significantly reduce pollution throughout the developing world ...
and maybe has a use with plasma-sparked Aquanol.
Here is the info on Star Rotor which as Fred
mentioned some time ago can be used in Brayton mode as an alternative to the
Stirling:
This is another light engine for longer-term consideration - for a multi-fuel generator to be used in conjunction with a hybrid serial configuration. StarRotor which looks a little like the Wankel, but is actually better used in a Brayton cycle, so maybe with compressed air which is also heated slightly it would be doubly cost effective: http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=85550 Even if this StarRotor 'hype' were to be totally accurate (reminds me of the quasi-turbine), it would probably take a decade to get it into mass production and all the bugs worked out. Here is the reference for the possible Wankel to be used in a dedicated genset - 75 hp and 80 pounds. It is half of the two-rotor - which is in production now. You need two rotors for the circumstance of variable speed. For a constant speed genset - one rotor will suffice. Freedom is a subsidiary of Moller - the sky-car people: This predecessor of this engine was in production for motorcycles 35 years ago - so it is not new. Mazda makes the ceramic seals, I am told. BTW this design can burn diesel, or gasoline, or ethanol, or hydrogen, or biodiesel or any mix of them so there is more flexibility in fuel sources. |
