This looks promising. It is basically a continuous combustion wave turbine. While not super powerful in this early design and not intended to replace a V-8 it can be brought to market for a hybrid vehicle application soon, according to the researcher. See the video below. While they’ve got a focus on CO2 for the usual reasons, I’ll take increased efficiency any day.
Schematic model of a wave disk engine, showing combustion and shockwaves within the channels. Source: Michigan State University.
Researchers from Michigan State University have been awarded $2.5 million from the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program to complete its prototype development of a new gasoline-fueled wave disc engine and electricity generator that promises to be five times more efficient than traditional auto engines in electricity production, 20% lighter, and 30% cheaper to manufacture.
The wave disc engine, a new implementation of wave rotor technology, was earlier developed by the Michigan State group in collaboration with researchers from the Warsaw Institute of Technology. About the size of a large cooking pot, the novel, hyper-efficient engine could replace current engine/generator technologies for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
The award will allow a team of MSU engineers and scientists, led by Norbert Müller, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, to begin working toward producing a vehicle-size wave disc engine/generator during the next two years, building on existing modeling, analysis and lab experimentation they have already completed.
Our goal is to enable hyper-efficient hybrid vehicles to meet consumer needs for a 500-mile driving range, lower vehicle prices, full-size utility, improved highway performance and very low operating costs. The WDG also can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 95 percent in comparison to modern internal combustion vehicle engines.
From ARPA-E
The Wave Disk Generator revolutionizes auto efficiency at lower vehicle costs. Currently, 15% of automobile fuel is used for propulsion; the other 85% is wasted. A Wave Disk Generator hybrid uses 60% of fuel for vehicle propulsion.
MSU’s shock wave combustion generator is the size of a cooking pot and generates electricity very efficiently. This revolutionary generator replaces today’s 1,000 pounds of engine, transmission, cooling system, emissions, and fluids resulting in a lighter, more fuel-efficient electric vehicle. This technology provides 500-mile-plus driving range, is 30% lighter, and 30% less expensive than current, new plug-in hybrid vehicles. It overcomes the cost, weight, and driving range challenges of battery-powered electric vehicles.
This development exceeds national CO2 emission reduction goals for transportation. A 90% reduction is calculated in CO2 emissions versus gasoline engine vehicles. Wave Disk Generator application scales as small as motor scooters and as large as delivery trucks, due to its small size, low weight, and low cost. This technology enables us to radically improve the atmosphere and human health of major global cities.
Last week, the prototype was presented to the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), this video was released:
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This seems like an annuncement which should have been made on April 1. I will wait and see on this one.
Ironically didn’t the “greens” emission standards doom the rotary engine?
well the video is ~2 years old (see the date in the lower right)? and the goal is to put it in a car in 3 years……….video was made in 2009.
IF if works, wonderful for the hybrid market.
Turbine cars have been done before, but weren’t enough better than piston cars to overturn the market. See Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Turbine_Car
According to Wiki, the turbine car program perished when Chrysler became the original Government Motors a generation ago.
I’m a bit confused, is this a comparison of apples to oranges? When we say that a conventional gasoline engine is 20% efficient, are we saying that 20% of the fuel’s energy capacity is turned into rotating energy? If so, when the driveline efficiency is taken into account, what is the final result: 15% or so?
This new turbine design is about 60% efficient – that is, it converts 60% of the fuel’s energy capacity to rotating energy at it’s output shaft. If that shaft drives an 80% efficient generator then it’s overall system efficeincy is is 48%. Now we have electricity to charge the batteries and assuming that the charging efficiency is 80% we now have a system efficiency of 38.4%. The batteries will then power electric motors to drive the vehicle’s wheels at around 50% efficiency giving an overall efficiency of 19.2%.
I have been very generous with the conversion efficiencies at each stage of the overall system and still seem to come up with no efficiency advantage for the new technology. Now I’m no MSU professor but, I do know that the laws of physics are very rigid and unforgiving and, as such, probably need reforming. A little nuance would be nice. Maybe “green” technologies should be given a fantasy energy conversion factor just because green is nice. If you gave this tech a GFCF of 4.0 then it would be four times more efficient than it actually is.
A new idea from NZ (well, actually, a very old one revisited) for higher efficiency and at least they have a real working prototype rather than just proto-hype.
http://www.indranet-technologies.com/investment/ngen.html
The woods are full of them.
This is just a thinly disguised plea for funding.
Not nearly as good as the Quasiturbine.
http://www.quasiturbine.com/
MikeH,
You are kidding right? The auto industry, like every other industry, is profit driven. This means it will accept any innovation as long it increases their profits.
a large coal fired plant achieves 40-45% efficiency and this thing claims 60? ROTFL!
seals in the Wankel work pretty well, the main rason for its low efficiency is the combustion chamber shape and its bad volume/surface ratio
the current IC engine design is not the result of some conspiracy of MIBs going around executing inventors of new engine ideas, is the result of 100plus years evolution. and government interference.
lots of better IC engine designs exist since ages. for example, the prius engine is a Atkinson cycle engine, which is more efficient that the Otto engine. so why other manufacturers dont use the Atkinson engine? once again, government intervention. Atkinson engine has lower specific power, and cars are taxes according to engine size. so if you dont see more efficient engines around is because of our stupid governments. the same ones that waste huge amounts of taxpayer money on pie-in-the-sky projects like this.
I am working on something similar powered by fairy dust, where do I apply for a grant?
Trouble is, many of these things just never make it to market. Take the Bottoming Cycle Engine for example:
http://books.google.com/books?id=wAEAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA82&lpg=PA82&dq=%22bottoming+cycle+engine%22&source=bl&ots=tr4x-X2RqA&sig=ZGEuH36XyqjmLgSVkJ7rTyQrLAE&hl=en&ei=-QmjTc2XLoP2tgPl0-T6DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22bottoming%20cycle%20engine%22&f=false
>>polistra says: April 11, 2011 at 4:49 am
>>@Ralph: A little unfair.
>>In every decade you could find a small American car that would
>>get 30 with careful driving.
That’s exactly what I mean, Polistra, thanks for confirming my claim. I get 60mpg if I drive carefully, and that is with a big 5-door saloon. Last week I got caught in slow traffic for nearly 200 miles, and did 67mpg. (UK mpg, of course).
European turbo-diesels are in the 35-40% efficiency bracket.
.
I would be more impressed if they said that it would reduce operating costs and left it at that, instead they are really trumpeting the claim of reducing CO2. This is so they can sell the idea of funding it to the department of transportation (read dept of anti-CO2). If this was really as efficient as they claim they should have no problem in selling it to public and car companies.
This is the type of program the Republicans should have cut. It is hard to see how Democrats could demagogue cutting this as wanting to kill women.
Great concept. It has earned $2.5M already! It doesn’t look as though it would work but that may be of little concern to the conceptors.
Why does my mind stray to 100-mile-per-gallon carburetors and other automotive dreams when I read articles like this?
IanM
How about the Carnot’s theorem and Carnot efficiency… What is the maximum theoretical efficiency of this engine? Real world efficiency? Probably less than stated in the article.
A type of glorified Wankel rotary engine perhaps? Or scaled-down turbine engine?
Great idea.
Best of luck to the inventors.
Stop using handouts from Uncle Sugar.
Show me a working prototype or nothing. I appreciate that many people have great ideas but very, very few make it to market.
This technology is going nowhere fast. Big oil will shut them down like they have done with every other idea that promised big efficiencies!
/sarc
Thanks, Anthony! I can’t help but smile….
Remember the kerfuffle about fuel-cells not long ago? I was a scientist at the Gas Technology Institute in 2001 at the height of this feeding frenzy. Folks working on fuel cells were perturbed because they couldn’t match the efficiency of natural gas engines with their prize technology! This reminds of those happy times!
These things seem to come & go, especially when gas prices start to climb. I’d like to believe in it, but others have brought up good points regarding design etc.
By tweaking the Otto cycle with direct fuel-injection, better spark control and other tricks, it seems to have a few years left on it. I’m also fond of hybrids, but haven’t taken the personal plunge yet. It’s easier to simply reduce driving on “honey-do” type missions, if you catch my drift….hope your wife is doing well BTW.
http://www.coatesengine.com/technology.html
There is already in (beginning) production, the Coates engine. Not a Wankel. 20% less fuel, 30% less emissions, high efficiency. Generates carbon credits. Going into California and the heavy oil production areas. Used now for power generation. Can handle up to 30% H2S without stripping. Also waste gas as in sewage plants and landfills. But well known right now?
We don’t need much new technology, just the wisdom to use the current stuff. But there is no grant system or tenure for being practical. I don’t see Gore or Suzuki praising people for doing what is already available.
I really question that 60% number when you consider that their wave-generator hybrid goes through two more stages of entropy before reaching power to the ground than a normal gasoline engine.
Gas engine:
1) Chemical Fuel -> Heat/Kinetic Energy
2) Heat/KE -> Torque
3) Torque -> Ground
Their Wave-Generator hybrid:
1) Chemical Fuel -> Heat/Kinetic Energy
2) Heat/KE -> Torque
3) Torque -> Electrical Current
4) Electrical Current -> Torque
5) Torque -> Ground
It becomes seven steps if the generator is charging the battery:
1) Chemical Fuel -> Heat/Kinetic Energy
2) Heat/KE -> Torque
3) Torque -> Electrical Current
4) Electrical Current -> Chemical charge storage
5) Charge storage -> Electrical current
6) Electrical Current -> Torque
7) Torque -> Ground
Yeah, Entropy is a b*@ur momisugly#&!
for a real world improvement on the tradional ICE see these guys …
http://www.ecomotors.com/
prototypes built and tested … not a lab experiment … could be as high as a doubling of mpg …
Put your wallet back in your pocket. Keep the cheque-book closed.
It’s an interesting idea, but then so was the Sarich Orbital Engine. One which shared the Wankel rotary’s inability to seal, but also had the bonus of poor mechanical efficiency. The Sarich orbital engine was a technological failure (despite winning an award from a TV-science “Inventors” program), but produced a seredipidous offshoot; a fuel injection system with some commercial use.
Conventional turbo-diesel engines achieve >45% efficiency. Way better than the 15% stated. Such convenient errors sound the alarm bells. This sort of PR is “grantsmanship”. It helps if ze professor ist shpeaking mit a Tshermun aksent. Alas, now seen as a legitimate method for getting research funds into a University.
Müller mentions the Brayton cycle, which applies to turbo-machinery and also the optimum operating point, which’s be at a particular speed and load determined by the engine. The research seems to go back to at least 2004 with the roots of the design in pressure-wave superchargers. (operating principle by Janusz Piechna and David Dyntar)
Pressure waves and shock waves through the air-fuel mixture and the end-gas have catastrophic effects on internal combustion engines. That is because the spontaneous combustion of the mixture as a result of the elevated pressure leads to super-sonic flow speeds which strip the thin, insulating boundary layer of “cool” air from the surface, exposing the metal to the full temperature of the combustion.