Skip to main content

Do car engines need to be so inefficient?

Car engines could be a lot better than they currently are. This is not some oil industry conspiracy, but a simple reflection that the design is pretty creaky. It has been around a long while. And, of course, cars are currently about as green as something that isn't very green at all.

It's remarkable that the internal combustion engine, the heart of travel industry still, is so impressively inefficient. Around 25% of the energy generated from the fuel is actually used to move the car.

Eventually I have no doubt we'll all be driving electric cars - we're just waiting for a shift in battery technology that seems pretty close on the horizon. (If I had the money, I'd be driving a Tesla right now.) But there are bound to be decades of gradual transition when we still need to make use of fossil fuels.

I've had pointed out this remarkable project to produce an engine that should increase efficiency of an internal combustion engine more than twofold. It's a turbine-like design, but a variant that reduces the complexity of technical problems with turbines, plus has only one moving part.

Will it work? To paraphrase Scotty on Star Trek, I'm a writer Jim, not an engineer. Clearly the claim in the video that this could 'reduce global CO2 emissions by up to 20 per cent in the next five years' is not viable. Given that a prototype doesn't exist yet, it's hardly going to change the world in five years. What's more, the website is somewhat vague about what fuel the engine uses, but I'm guessing LPG, in which case it's not just a matter of needing new cars with new engines, but also a distribution network for a fuel that isn't currently widely available. Even so, the prospect of an internal combustion engine that is so much more efficient than current designs is an impressive one.

You can find out more at www.tomorrowsengine.com


Labels:

Comments

  1. pjt10 December 2015 at 20:52

    Actually, diesel engines are reaching about 50 % efficiency. They are so efficient that around here, you have to burn extra fuel to generate heat so that the cabin is warm enough in winter and windows can be de-misted.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Brian Clegg11 December 2015 at 10:18

      Fair point, but diesel has never made much of a mark on the US market, and has its own problems with other pollutants.

      Delete
    2. pjt11 December 2015 at 21:54

      Well, in part that is an answer to your question "Do car engines need to be so inefficient?"

      When efficiency of combustion engines is increased by e.g. increasing the compression ratio, the result is higher NoX emissions.

      Those can then be reduced with other technologies (like urea injection) but that in turn increases the cost and makes the engines more complicated and more vulnerable to failure.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp
117 comments
Read more

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor
25 comments
Read more

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense
6 comments
Read more