LD wrote:
"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...
Keith Nuttle wrote:
J. Clarke wrote:
Lee Michaels wrote:
"J. Clarke" wrote
Right now it looks like he's got a cute little air motor. If
it
actually runs on fuel, doesn't overheat at high power, holds
together
for a few thousand hours, gives reasonable throttle response,
passes
emissions, and if it really achieves the efficiency he claims,
_then_
he's got an engine.

The air is used in public settings to meet fire codes. He has
run
them on fuel for awhile now. The easiest fuel for it to use is
deisel. All of his initial offerings will be in deisel. He can
make
a few changes to use other fuels.

Does he have a video of it running on something other than air?
I
didn't see one on his site. I know he _says_ that he has, but
where's the meat?

Again, he has to build something beyond prototypes. I wish him
the
best. It is a real creative feat. But real life has a way of
dashing
dreams.

I wish him well too, but don't really expect him to deliver. In
engineering when someone comes to you with something that looks
too
good to be true, it generally is.

People including those in Washington do not understand there is a
fixed amount of energy in the Carbon bond. When the Carbon
molecule
is oxidized it release a known amount of energy that can be
calculated. (This energy can be found in any Handbook of
Engineering,
Physics, or Chemistry and probably hundreds of sites online)
Regardless of what you do, you can only recover 100% of this
energy.

The trouble is that current cars (or base-load power plants for
that
matter) do not come anywhere close to recovering 100 percent of
that
energy. 30 percent is very good for an internal combustion
otto-cycle engine, so there is considerable room for improvement.

Hence with cars to get higher miles per gallon you have to reduce
the
size of the car.

Or increase the thermal efficiency.

A roller skate should be able to get a couple of
hundred miles per gallon.

Like Bigfoot, I have heard of the supper carburetor for years, but
it
still is not real.

I'm not sure how relevant that is to the engine in question. He's
claiming that it gets the performance of a really good diesel or
maybe a wee bit more in a much smaller and lighter package--if
that's so then in addition to the thermal efficiency benefit the
car
could be smaller and lighter due to the smaller, lighter engine,
which would again provide a gas mileage benefit.

The question is whether he can actually deliver that thermal
efficiency in an engine that passes emissions and is reliable and
driveable. If he can the world is going to beat a path to his
door,
but if their engineers thought that he could the car manufacturers
would have engaged in a bidding war to get the rights to his
design.

The car manufacturers, particularly in the US, are victims of NIH
Syndrome.

You really think that if Ford could reduce the size of their engines
by a factor of ten while doubling the efficiency in these days of CAFE
they'd ignore it because of "NIH"?

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)