Gallery, Projects and General > The Design Shop
A better diesel engine
John Hill:
If I remember correctly the DC6-C was the first aircraft to make commerical airliner crossings of the Atlantic practical and they were able to do this because the engines where fitted with exhaust turbines which helped to drive the propellers through a hydraulic device.
Now consider all the loads that the typical car has in addition to just moving it along (fans, water pump, air conditioning, alternator) and imagine how much more power (or economy) there would be if these were driven by some other means.
Well I am thinking that those ancilliary loads could all be electric and they could be driven from an exhaust turbine driven alternator and quite a bit of the energy used would come from what is presently wasted.
Of course it might be difficult to design an alternator that would hold together at turbine speeds but how about a Faraday Disc? I think a suitably motivated Madmodder could just about make one of those.
Tinker:
Hhhmmm...
Anybody here up to building a Tesla Turbine suitable for insertion to a cars exhaust system?
Seems like it'd work. Little to no extra back pressure to confuse modern ECMs. Can drive an alternator without necessarily overdriving it. Sounds like an idea with potential...
Stefan Pynappels:
Hey Arnold,
I like where you are going with your contraption! A friend of mine who is a hydraulic engineer with a large multinational corp told me of a project someone he dealt with was working on. It involved making a large displacement but heavy float which went up and down with wave action. This movement was transferred to an inner sliding weight using hydraulic cylinders and the oil being forced through the pipework drove some manner of turbine/wheel which generated electricity. The rig could be tuned to wave frequency and amplitude by varying the oil pressure and aperture sizes etc.
It sound a bit Heath Robinson, but in tests it looked like it was a very promising idea. And because it is anchored miles offshore, nobody can see it and complain. Must actually check up on what happened to the project....
But it does show that there are environmentally friendly ideas being developed out there which use wave and other natural energy sources.
Bluechip:
Spynappels ... 'Nobody can see it and complain' ... nice thought.
You can bet your last shilling that some crackpot outfit like eg. 'Friends of the Plankton' or the like will start squawking ...
Look at this ..
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Severn-Barrage-Tidal-Power.htm
A simple old sod like me can come up with a simple solution ..
Eat the freakin' ducks.
Build the Barrage.
QED
Dave BC
kellswaterri:
This is a shot of one of the test beds for the big diesels...this particular one almost killed the guy on the right....to enlarge a bit, this engine had almost finished its run in period and was being run up for its test load to check horse powerwhen the rings seized on one or more pistons...compression immediately shot into the sump thus blasting boiling hot oil all over the test area just as this young lad was walking past the sump oil filler, had it hit him full on he was toast...lucky man...
Just spotted the Commer bit in J hills post...this engine was the one I dreaded testing ...a more vicious pernickity sod of an engine I have rarely seen, it had a nasty little habit of shucking one of its connecting rods through the crankcase when least expected...my job and that of the guys in the photo shot taken about 50 years ago
was to overhaul and test run the diesel engines for the transport system in our country.
John.
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