Automakers working on next generation of engines

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article this week about a new
type of engine that the major companies, including Daimler Chysler and
GM, are working on.

The new technology works by using the compression of the piston to
ignite the gasoline instead of a traditional spark plug. Personally, I
think this is called a "diesel" engine, but the big key here is that
gasoline is used, not a heavier fuel oil. It actually is called HCCI,
for Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition. It appears that HCCI can
yield a 30% efficiency gain over spark gasoline engines. NOx are very
low compared to traditional spark gasoline, and the soot associated with
oil diesel is not present. Challenges include making the HCCI engine
run smoothly and high and low speeds.

Another new technology includes directly and separately injecting
gasoline and air into the cylinder to boost effiency. However, so far
this has yielded higher NOx and HC emissions.

There is a lot more research that needs to be done to understand these
engines and the nature of how they operate, or could operate.

If you're the CEO of an automaker, in today's tough market conditions,
how much resources would you allocate to this type of research?

 

50 percent of my vehicle powerplant research budget. 5 percent would go to
alternative fuels (CNG, Propane, alcohol), and 45 percent would go into
hybrid and full electric.

In five years, 55 percent would go into hybrid (with the push-developed
high-efficiency combustion engines) and 45 percent into advanced
combustion engine research.

 

Why isn't there any mention of using turbines in pure hybrid drive
systems? (by pure I mean a system that has electric drive only, no
transmission, and the engine is only used to drive a generator). Ships and
airplanes use turbines not piston engines. I was under the impression that
if you don't need a wide power curve a turbine was a more effecient
engine. In a pure hybrid the engine can be optimized to run in a very
narrow speed band because it's used solely for charging the batteries.

 

Emissions.

 

And cost. The initial price of even a small turbine is more than the
entire cost of most new cars.


Matt

 

The auto industry needs to move towards liquid hydrogen. Hydrogen - the
most abundant element in our universe. When burned it produces water
vapor - no toxic emissions.

BTW - this is in use today - rocket fuel! When a rocket is launched those
huge, billowing clouds are not smoke - water vapor.

The major drawback with liquid hydrogen is the fuel oil companies would take
a terrible beating and millions of people would be out of work. Sure some
would go to work in the new industry but if liquid hydrogen be came a common
use fuel - automobiles, home heating, etc... it wouldn't be all that
difficult to build a molecule splitter.

Water - H2O - would be broken back down into hydrogen and oxygen molecules.
The hydrogen and the oxygen could then become fuel sources. Igniting in the
cylinder and exhausting as water once again. Close to a perpetual fuel
source. Water to gases and back to water again and so on and so on
and...........

We will now return you to your regularly scheduled program. GIANT.


Jim

 

I doubt that, since if hydrogen were profitable, those same energy companies
would have a nice business and they wouldn't need expensive refineries and
imports either.

That's great, but breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen molecules
requires a lot of energy. In other words, before you can utilize the kinetic
energy of burning H2 +O2 you first need to have them in the first place. Where
do you get that energy from, burning oil? I suppose that perhaps hydroelectric
(which we can't build for environmental reasons) or nuclear (which we can't
build for political and waste reasons) or wind power (which we can't build for
environmental reasons and it kills the birds) could be used to power this
process, but hydrogen doesn't appear for free.

Even if hydrogen was free to obtain, storing it in an economically viable,
compact, and safe vessel for a car presents a challenge as well.

 

Both quite wrong. When burned, Hydrogen produces NOX in addition to
water vapor. Liquid hydrogen also requires heavily insulated tanks due
to it's low boiling point.

Yah, sure. And so where exactly would the fuel-hydrogen companies come from
to replace them?

If hydrogen ever became viable the fuel oil companies would easily switch to
making hydrogen.

And run it how? By plugging it in?

Ah, I get it. Your now going to use 4 times the amount of electricity in
your
home as before you got your molecule splitter. That means now the power
companies
are going to be 4 times bigger when everyone else starts using their mocule
splitters. Who's going to work at them?

And where does the energy come from to break down the hydrogen?

Oh, I get it. We run our molecule splitters off the electricity produced
from
burning the hydrogen that the mocule splitters consume. Hmmm.. I wonder
if the power companies know this? Hey, maybe they could shut down that
coal burning plant. All they have to do is build a power plant and put a
huge
water storage tank in it with a mocule splitter. They burn the hydrogen and
make electricity to run the molecule splitter that makes the hydrogen and
then plug the rest of the city in. Limtless free electricity forever!!!

Can I patent this perpetul motion machine now?

Ted

 

And where does all of this energy to split the water come from?


Matt

 

Temperature is not an issue. You need to make it cold to liquify it, but
once it's stored in a vessel at high pressure in liquid form, it's not
going to suddenly become vapor (there's no space for the vapor to form).
The high pressure storage is one of the major problems, which is why
you see a lot of research on microporous matertials, such as carbon
nanotubes, for the storage of hydrogen.

There are other tactics, such as filling your tank with gasoline, which
is fed to a reformer (in the vehicle) to make hydrogen as needed. This
is a much safer alternative to storing a big tank of hydrogen. Again,
the problem is you are going to lose some of the energy of the gasoline
when you convert it to H2.

In the long run the real problem isn't going to be emissions from
vehicles, but running out of energy. Hydrogen powered vehicles do not
solve that problem.

 

There's a lot of technical development yet to be done, but in theory one can
break down water in the presence of catalysts using sunlight. Another
possible source of energy would be floating platforms in tropical oceans
using the temperature difference between surface and deep water, which is in
fact another completely renewable form of solar energy. There are a few
experimental plants working in places like Hawaii, land-based and making
electricity for general use.

All this is a bit OT for an auto brand newsgroup, but there are many
interesting discussions on energy newsgroups and various websites.

 

A major portion of my R&D budget, but in concert with other companies to
share the costs and benefits.

We are so used to the conventional piston engine that we lose sight of the
fact that there are many other ways to convert chemical energy to physical
power.

 

No. Manufacture, transport and storage.

DAS
--
For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling
---

[....]

 

That would be taking over from the Almighty.

Hydrogen + oxygen = water (which is, of course, hydrogen plus oxygen) +
nitrogen/nitrogen oxides. That's good. How do you patent that?

DAS
--
For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling
---

[.......]

 

Yes, there is LOTS of development to be done. And getting enough energy
from solar to power all of the vehicles in the world with hydrogen is
far from trivial. I'm not saying we shouldn't be working on this
approach, but people who think this will happen within the next 30 years
are deceiving themselves.


Matt

 

The whole thing depends on the cost of oil. The technology to convert
solar-heated tropical ocean water to useful energy is neither exotic nor
untried. The technology to economically convert energy to hydrogen is at the
experimental phase but there are no known scientific laws to prevent it. So
given expensive oil, you may be surprised what can be done in 30 years.
Anyway, let's stick around and find out. Hey, I'll only be 91 ;<).

 

Liquid hydrogen is no warmer then about 20 K. (-253 C). It takes an enormous
amount of energy to cool the hydrogen to that point, about 30-40 percent of
the energy in the amount of hydrogen that is being cooled. Because nothing is
perfectly insulated, the hydrogen will eventually constantly be boiling off at
some rate in a container. This vapor must be vented after a maximum of about
3-4 days to avoid a large pressure rise and container failure. Lawrence
Livermore labs has been spending a lot of effort on this problem. BMW is also
studying liquid hydrogen.

Gaseous hydrogen can also be stored a higher density at very cold
temperatures, such as 80 K.

 

Turbines operate at fairly high speeds and require more exotic materials to
withstand the temperatures and rotational speeds inside these engines. They
also require much more precise machining & tolerances then piston engines. For
these and other reasons, such as size, turbines would be far more expensive then
many or most cars today. Even in airplanes, turbines are not seen that much in
aircraft that cost less than 1 million dollars new. Turbines ARE extremely
reliable though, and well suited for airplanes and high end generators.

 

Most vehicle hydrogen schemes I've seen take atmosphere in and burn it with
stored hydrogen. Rockets don't because there isn't air in space, you have
to carry the oxydizer. Believe me in a vehicle, a pure oxygen spill during
a collision would be even worse than a hydrogen leak.

With a hydrogen leak, it rapidly disperses and so you might get a flame
at the escape point, but that's about it.

With an oxygen leak, EVERYTHING in the vicinity that is even the slighest
bit burnable, ie: the vinyl or cloth seats, the carpet, the plastic, the
asphalt,
the rubber tires, etc. will in the presense of 100% pure oxygen, immediately
burst into extremely hot flame with the slightest bit of ignition.

You do NOT want to be carrying pure oxygen in a vehicle!!!

When you burn a mix of Nitrogen, Hydrogen and Oxygen (atmosphere is
about 80% Nitrogen, and 20% Oxygen) some of the energy will bond some
of the nitrogen atoms to some of the oxygen atoms and you get NOX. You
do not get perfect combustion unless you use just Oxygen and Hydrogen
in the vehicle. Note of course that other than some of it getting tied up
into NOX, the rest of the nitrogen does nothing for the combustion process.

Ted

 

I hate to break it to you but if the cost of vehicle fuel (whether hydrogen
or oil) rises too high, and there is no cheap
substitute, it will make it uneconomical for private automobiles to be
used in this country and we will all be riding mass transit.

What I don't think most people really understand about this debate is
that the only reason that the average Joe can afford to own and operate
a personal car is because EVERYBODY has one, (or nearly everyone)
thus the economies of scale allow mass production of automobiles to
even occur at all. And the only reason that everybody has one is
because fuel is still affordable.

If fuel costs quadrupled to the point that hydrogen or other alternative
fuels would be economically competitive against gasoline for vehicle
fuel, then you would probably lose a quarter to a half of all vehicle owners
in the country, simply because they couldn't afford to drive. Once that
happens then demand for vehicles drops which is going to put a lot of
automakers out of business - for a while there will be an oversupply of
vehicles and prices on them will nosedive - but once the extra manufacturing
capability has been cleared away due to bankruptcies, etc. the economies of
scale will not be as good as they were before, and vehicles will become even
more expensive than they are now.

The other thing is why generate the electricity to break down hydrogen
just for vehicle fuel when you can just take the generated electricity and
use it in a battery in the vehicle? Much less losses due to conversion of
energy from 1 form to another.

It is most likely the 'car o the future' will be an electric car that you
charge up
at night in your garage, and is only usable for short trips in the city, and
for
commuting to and from work.

Ted