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Enhanced Efficiency ICE

How to save energy through both societal and individual actions.
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Unread postby invest_in_politics » Thu 21 Jul 2005, 10:56:02

I forgot to address SolarDave's assertion

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')NY work done is done at the efficiency of the engine, including "powering" the contraption that "relieves" the engine of it's compression dutues.


This is contrary to the author/inventor's proposal. His idea is to not use the engine to perform the compression but, instead, to augment the engine by adding a spring or other conservative force that, in essence, does the compression work. In actuality, the conservative force simply counters the compression force so that they sum to zero net force so that the engine doesn't have to do any work (force X distance = 0).

It's really nothing more than putting a bucket on the end of a lever and lowering it into a well to get water. The user has to lift both the bucket and the water out of the well. If one puts a counterweight at the other end of the lever such that the bucket and counterweight are balanced, then the user only needs to lift the water, thus making the system more efficient. In the case of the engine, the compression work corresponds to the bucket weight and the spring mechanism corresponds to the counterweight.

IIP
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Unread postby invest_in_politics » Thu 21 Jul 2005, 11:04:19

Sorry for the intervening post!

Your assertion that

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')ompression work does not consume the level of energy the inventor claims to recover from it, even if 100% of it was recovered (impossible). The inventor is claiming to recover more energy than is actually used.


If this were true, then the efficiency relation resulting from the author's theory would not accurately predict experimental outcome. It does.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou can't "eliminate the compression work." It's nonsense.


Again, any conservative force, i.e., a force that is a function only of position, can be countered. That is obvious since you only need to provide a force that is in the same magnitude as a function of position but directed in the opposite direction. Since work is the product of the sum of these forces and the distance traveled and the sum of the forces, by definition, is zero, the work required is zero and therefore eliminated. It doesn't appear to be "nonsense" at all.

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Unread postby SolarDave » Thu 21 Jul 2005, 11:59:12

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('invest_in_politics', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou can't "eliminate the compression work." It's nonsense.


Again, any conservative force, i.e., a force that is a function only of position, can be countered. That is obvious since you only need to provide a force that is in the same magnitude as a function of position but directed in the opposite direction. Since work is the product of the sum of these forces and the distance traveled and the sum of the forces, by definition, is zero, the work required is zero and therefore eliminated. It doesn't appear to be "nonsense" at all.

IIP


If you are aiming the paragraph above at the work neeeded to move the piston - to change its position - then yes, theoretically, in a friction-free environment (impossible) with 100% conservation of energy (impossible) the work to move the piston "up" could be balanced by the work to move the piston "down" - but aren't you forgetting something? Compression of the air fuel mixture requires work ON TOP of the work to move the piston.

This is why air compressors need power sources. You can't eliminate that work.

The inventor claims the capture of energy from the power stroke is inefficient. That is all his claims boil down to, all the rest is typical inventor doublespeek and gobbeldegook. He claims additional machinery could capture that energy more efficiently than a piston traveling under the control of a connecting rod and crankshaft.

That may be true, there is no reason to believe that the velocity of the piston as it is pressed down by the pressure of the exploding air/fuel charge is ideal. For Pete's sake, just say so! Skip all the obfuscating nonsense talk.

But the fact remains, no matter how efficiently you capture the energy needed to compress the air fuel mixture on the next stroke, if all you do with that energy is compress the next air/fuel charge, that is the most energy you could recover. You would recover no more than the energy needed to do the work you put it to. And that is less than 30% of the work the engine is doing. Far less.

As I said, if there is a more efficient way of recovering the energy of the piston on the down stroke, drive the wheels with it! That makes sense.

Many inventors have tried different arrangements of cranks, levers, cams, rods, and other paraphanalia to change the motion characteristics of the pistons in combustion engines:

INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE FUEL EFFICIENCY BREAKTHROUGH Site is dead.

Split four stroke engine Excellent reading, details many previous theories that were tried and abandoned. This inventor splits the compression piston off from the power piston completely - which would totally invalidate the anaysis claimed by the inventor at the beginninig of this thread - and provides clear details. There is no claim of efficiency improvement.

Quote from the patent: "Many rather exotic early engine designs were patented. However, none were able to offer greater efficiencies or other significant advantages, which would replace the standard engine 10 exemplified above. Some of these early patents included: U.S. Pat. Nos. 848,029; 939,376; 1,111,841; 1,248,250; 1,301,141; 1,392,359; 1,856,048; 1,969,815; 2,091,410; 2,091,411; 2,091,412; 2,091,413; 2,269,948; 3,895,614; British Patent No. 299,602; British Patent No. 721,025 and Italian Patent No. 505,576"

Some have even tackled the problem on non-internal-combustion engines:

Engines Under Development

Results so far: Your're driving it.
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Unread postby Caoimhan » Thu 21 Jul 2005, 12:28:39

The counterweight analogy is the best yet.

You see, in the paper by Tinker, he starts by pointing out that there are 2 sides to a piston... 1) The compression chamber side and 2) the crank-case side. The crankcase side in a regular engine operates at how much pressure? You guessed it... 1 atm. But the compression chamber side works best at high compression... ideally at 17:1.

Right now, engines are designed so that some of the work on a previous cycle must be retained (such as in a flywheel), to help provide compression for the next cycle. Every cycle, the engine has to work from a "baseline" pressure of 1 atm to achieve whatever compression is desired in the compression chamber.

What if the baseline pressure were 10 atm instead of 1? What if you had 10 atmospheres of pressure "pushing" on the crankcase side of the piston? With the higher baseline, less energy needs to be retained from cycle to cycle to achieve the target compression on the compression side.

That's what his "conservative force" is doing. It's a force that's completely unrelated to the engine power. It exists whether the engine is running or not. It's just a force that raises the baseline... just like a counterweight.
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Unread postby SolarDave » Thu 21 Jul 2005, 12:34:48

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Caoimhan', 'T')he counterweight analogy is the best yet.

What if the baseline pressure were 10 atm instead of 1? What if you had 10 atmospheres of pressure "pushing" on the crankcase side of the piston? With the higher baseline, less energy needs to be retained from cycle to cycle to achieve the target compression on the compression side.


If the pressure in the crankcase were 10ATM the engine power output would be reduced because you would have to overcome that pressure (consuming some of the power of the engine) every time you wanted to move the piston DOWN. Right now, the pistons are moving DOWN against 1 ATM, and you suggest moving DOWN against 10 ATM. A quick guess is that 10 times as much energy would be required to move the piston DOWN, compensating for the reduced effort to move it UP. Exactly compensating it. Amazing.

No progress.
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Unread postby invest_in_politics » Thu 21 Jul 2005, 12:38:28

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')ompression of the air fuel mixture requires work ON TOP of the work to move the piston.


The author's proposal is to counter the work of compressing the fuel-air mixture. I cannot discern what you are referring to as the "work to move the piston", so I'll simply enumerate all of the work required to "move the piston" with the exception of friction. The Newtonian equation of motion for the piston is

F(V) = ma + p0*A*(z0/z)^g

where m is the mass of the piston, a is its acceleration, p0 is the pressure at bottom dead center (BDC), z0 is the enclosed length of the cylinder at BDC, z is the instantaneous enclosed length of the cylinder, and g is the ratio of specific heats of the fuel-air mixture. The work to move the piston is given by

W(z) = Integral(F(z')dz',z0,z)

The author proposes to add a separate force on the piston to counter the p0*A*(z0/z)^g force. This eliminates this term from the force equation thereby reducing the work integral. It is simple, mathematically robust, and conceptually realizable.

This has nothing to do with the post-ignition motion of the piston and is completely true if one never ignites the fuel-air mixture. If one is simply turning the engine over with the starter motor with such a counterforce device installed it will take less current to turn the engine over since the starter motor does not need to provide the p0*A*(z0/z)^g force. Note that the inertia of the piston must still be overcome (ma) which is really your "work to move the piston".

I have found nothing in the author's paper that is mathematically or thermodynamically unsound and the result, again, is an efficiency equation that correctly predicts the outcome of experiment--a feat that no other theory has succeeded in doing. The theory properly includes all work that is evident in the PV diagram and, contrary to your assertion that

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nd that is less than 30% of the work the engine is doing. Far less.


the compression work, i.e., that area of the PV diagram below the enclosed curve, is approximately 30% of the area inside the enclosed curve (by a MathCad computation) which, again, supports the authors derivation.

The references you supply do not propose to or attempt to do what is suggested by this author nor are the endeavors of those inventors supported by a theory that duplicates measured efficiencies of internal combustion engines.

The compelling evidence in this entire discussion is the ability of the theory to nearly exactly duplicate experimental results obtained by researchers entirely unrelated to the author. It is impossible to counter this success with gedanken experiments involving coasting in one's automobile.

IIP
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Unread postby Caoimhan » Thu 21 Jul 2005, 13:06:40

Oh, and by the way... once the starter motor has overcome the inertia to achieve a certain RPM in the engine, it only needs to have enough juice to overcome friction... because in a multi-cylinder engine, the energy needed to reverse the momentum of a single piston at either end of its stroke is provided by the inertia of other pistons in the middle of their strokes.

If you attached a hand crank to the crankshaft on an engine without the cylinder heads bolted down, you have equal pressure on both sides of the pistons. Turning the engine with that hand crank would be easy, once you got it going. Getting it moving in the first place would be the hard part.

By having a "conservative force" counterbalancing the compression in the cylinder, we achieve the same thing. Pressures are balanced on either side of the cylinder... and once again, with a hand crank, we should have a smooth, easy rotation through the complete cycle. It should feel exactly the same as with the engine head removed.

One nice side effect of using Tinker's suggested method in an engine would likely be greatly reduced vibration and noise.

I understand that this is all a bit tough to understand at first... but reading the full article and discussion on greencarcongress.com as well as Tinker's whitepaper (even if you don't follow all the math) should give just about anyone enough to go on.
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Perhaps you don't know how engines work

Unread postby SolarDave » Thu 21 Jul 2005, 16:44:49

Engines are air pumps.

What you say is nonsense. Take the cylinder heads off and they are no longer air pumps. Of course they spin easier! Taking out the spark plugs accomplishes the same thing.

Go grab a socket wrench, go out to your car, and turn the engine. It will not "get up to speed" and it will not subsequently need less effort. Stop arguing theoretically. Go try it.

Your idea of a counterbalancing force would resist downward motion of a piston, reducing engine power.

Here is an experiment a 6 year old can understand.

Get a tire pump. Don't have one? Go buy one, it's worth it for the education.

Hook it to a tire. Start pumping. Hard work, eh? Here's an idea! Put a brick on the handle at the top of the stroke. Genius! It's a "conservative force" - look how much easier it was to push that handle down. But wait!?!?!!? WTF?? It's HARDER to lift it back up again! Nothing has been gained at all.

You guys are dreaming - the piston, rods and crankshaft are like the brick. In the absence of friction and compression, they would spin forever once set in motion. OK, pretend there is no friction. Now - where is the work going to come from to compress the air - it actually is moving THROUGH the engine, you know, not just sitting there like an air spring. Think a bigger brick will make filling the tire any easier? Try it and report back.

The work to move the piston is given by

W(z) = Integral(F(z')dz',z0,z)

Yawn. That is not the whole story. That equation only calculates the work in one direction.

Here is the equation to move it in the other direction ("A" term is negative):

-F(V) = ma + p0*-A*(z0/z)^g

resulting in (surprise!):

W(z) = Integral(F(z')dz',z0,z)

Get it now?
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Unread postby Caoimhan » Thu 21 Jul 2005, 17:46:41

No, I don't get it... YOU don't get it.

Yes, an engine is an air pump in reverse, if you want to put it into those terms. Instead of putting mechanical energy in to compress air, you're using heat to expand the air to get mechanical energy. But this is an air pump that works at its most efficient in a certain range of pressures within the chamber. To get up to the minimum chamber air pressure for optimum operation, you can either use a portion of work from the engine, or you can have that pressure be its natural, at rest state.

Let's go back to the counterweight on the pole with the bucket... from what you're saying, we're better off without a counterweight, and fighting the bucket's weight all day long.

With a counterweight that balances the bucket perfectly, when the bucket is empty, all the work we have to put in is to overcome the inertia as we move it around... not the weight... and when the bucket is full, ALL we're lifting is the weight of the water instead of water+bucket, because bucket weight is still cancelled out.

It doesn't get much simpler than this. In this analogy:
bucket = base chamber pressure
water = work done by the engine during the power stroke
counterweight = "spring" (or other conservative force).
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Unread postby invest_in_politics » Thu 21 Jul 2005, 19:19:38

I believe that what we have here is a phenomenon primarily associated with theory known as an essential disagreement, i.e., a disagreement which cannot be resolved through argument. The reason that such disagreements are usually theory-related is that experiments do not frequently provide fertile ground for debate of their findings (although debate over the explanation of experimental results is another story!). I have learned over time that essential disagreements are simply a waste of time to debate beyond some reasonable cutoff point. That cutoff, for me, is now.

Essential disagreements are not bad, they just are. Fortunately in this case it will be quickly dispelled by experiment. When the author of the theory or someone else configures an engine as the theory dictates, either it will exhibit improved efficiency or it will not and the debate will be academic. Until then, I will be a proponent of the theory and I suspect SolarDave will be equally unswerving in his opposition. Whatever the outcome, I look forward to the results of such an experiment.

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Unread postby SolarDave » Thu 21 Jul 2005, 22:27:32

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Caoimhan', 'N')o, I don't get it... YOU don't get it.

Yes, an engine is an air pump in reverse,

It doesn't get much simpler than this. In this analogy:
bucket = base chamber pressure
water = work done by the engine during the power stroke
counterweight = "spring" (or other conservative force).


Please explain how the spring and the flywheel are storing different energy and doing different things with it. I say they are not. You are simply "adding a bigger rock" to the top of the bycycle pump. No gain, no benefit.
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Unread postby SolarDave » Thu 21 Jul 2005, 22:31:05

Well said, invest_in_politics. And I should lay off the coffee, I know :-)

Proof is in the working model, as you say. Theories are, well, theories.
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Unread postby SolarDave » Fri 22 Jul 2005, 03:31:11

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('invest_in_politics', ' ')The Newtonian equation of motion for the piston is

F(V) = ma + p0*A*(z0/z)^g

where m is the mass of the piston, a is its acceleration, p0 is the pressure at bottom dead center (BDC), z0 is the enclosed length of the cylinder at BDC, z is the instantaneous enclosed length of the cylinder, and g is the ratio of specific heats of the fuel-air mixture.


The remaining terms are:

A - area of the piston
V = velocity of the piston?
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Unread postby invest_in_politics » Fri 22 Jul 2005, 08:36:22

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he remaining terms are:

A - area of the piston
V = velocity of the piston?


A is the area, V is the volume of the gas in the cylinder. One should identify V=A*z so, really, the force is a function of z. I originally wrote the equation as a function of volume, but changed my mind and forgot to change the F(V) -> F(z).

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Unread postby Caoimhan » Fri 22 Jul 2005, 11:56:40

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')lease explain how the spring and the flywheel are storing different energy and doing different things with it.


One significant difference already mentioned is that the flywheel doesn't provide counterpressure in a consistent curve against the pressure curve it is counterbalancing.

The other is that the energy stored in the spring does not come from the engine. With the engine OFF, the spring is exerting the counterforce.

Let's put it this way. The counterspring is not really doing any net work over the course of the cycle. If it was doing work, then I could understand your confusion, because the energy for the work done must come from somewhere.
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Unread postby invest_in_politics » Fri 22 Jul 2005, 12:09:27

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')lease explain how the spring and the flywheel are storing different energy and doing different things with it.


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')ne significant difference already mentioned is that the flywheel doesn't provide counterpressure in a consistent curve against the pressure curve it is counterbalancing.


The technical response is that the flywheel stores kinetic energy while the spring stores potential energy. This being the case, the force provided by the spring is, by defintion, a conservative force where that of the flywheel is not. Since a conservative force is, by construction, a force dependent only on position, i.e., the gradient of a potential energy, it can do what Caoimhan correctly suggests. What is more, the kinetic energy of the flywheel is obtained at the efficiency of the engine. The potential energy of the spring is obtained by setting its configuration during manufacture of the compression compensation device it powers.

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Unread postby Caoimhan » Fri 22 Jul 2005, 12:37:48

Thanks.

I knew I was understanding it correctly, but wasn't using the formal language for these concepts quite right.

I'm in the process of making a graphic illustration using the "lever to lift water with a conservative counterweight vs. using lifted water as the counterweight".
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Unread postby Caoimhan » Fri 22 Jul 2005, 14:09:50

Here they are:

http://members.dslextreme.com/users/cao ... stroke.gif

http://members.dslextreme.com/users/cao ... stroke.gif

These are extremely simple illustrations of the principle.
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Re: Enhanced Efficiency ICE

Unread postby invest_in_politics » Wed 07 Mar 2007, 12:10:57

I thought that there may be people interested in the status of this. Dr. Tinker has just had a paper published in the "International Journal of Energy Research" entitled "Occult Parasitic Energy Loss in Heat Engines". You can find it here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/er.1312

IIP
Last edited by invest_in_politics on Wed 07 Mar 2007, 15:59:29, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Enhanced Efficiency ICE

Unread postby kmann » Wed 07 Mar 2007, 15:26:54

IIP,
Your link doesn't appear to work.
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