News of the Austin company that sold to Lockheed/Martin kinda fell of the planet once the SC was sold. Lockheed said it intended to use the product in military applications which may explain why it has not yet been developed for civilian use.

More likely (if the engine is real) that big oil will breath a sigh of relief, buy the rights to bio fuels, and let them be built...

They know how hard it is becoming to get oil.

Much less expensive to control the 'fuel' of the future.

When a smart person sees the effect of 'diminishing returns' they usually move their 'eggs' to a diferent basket.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Turbine_Car



http://www.turbinecar.com/misc/History.pdf

The new engine is not a turbine and, other than spinning, has little in common with a turbine.

The engine runs on a detonation cycle which is like a gas engine that knocks constantly. The engine actually has more in common with a diesel than a turbine.

When a gasoline engine knocks, the pressures and temperatures spike very high but for a brief period since the amount of energy in the fuel/air mixture is fixed. The detonation cycle takes advantage of this effect by using the blast wave to push on an impeller for a brief period. Since the efficiency of the engine is based on the difference between combustion and ambient, the net utilization of fuel is very high.

A turbine relies on the constant compression of the air/fuel mixture for laminar flow. The new engine relies on pulses of fuel/air compressed beyond the limit of detonation to create blast waves. The new engine far exceeds the efficiency of a turbine.

Very interesting. I had heard about the turbine engines some time back -
ultimately I would think that turbines could be the most fuel efficient
way to burn the gasoline to produce power since they are the dominant
technology in power generation. However if I recall one of the drawbacks
of the Chrysler engines was poor fuel efficiency at idle and low speeds
(along with noise and high NOx). According to Carnot's theorem turbines
should have the highest temp differential and the best efficiency overall
although they might be more demanding and expensive in production.

Presumably battery power could be used at low speeds and recharged at
higher speeds with a turbine now. It is not obvious to me that the
new technology will surpass the turbine in overall efficiency - at least
I didn't see that claim in the new work.

It is a notable criticism that the turbine engine car like the EV-1
were developed to very advanced stages early on only to be scrapped
right here in the US decades ago!

A fascinating story about why and how the turbine prototypes were scrapped
is given at this really nice website about the turbine Chryslers:

http://www.allpar.com/history/interviews/turbine.html

I am also very enthusiastic about Mueller's work - I just see it as
an important efficiency advancement over the piston engine because it
is more "turbine-like" and operates (intermittently) at higher peak
temperature differentials with improvements in manufacturing costs too.



Rock on Michigan State and Warsaw Inst of Technology!

with all the Oil the US sits on?

We are saving that for war!

Sadly, the US has already produced all of it's "cheap" oil. The middle eastern oil fields produce oil at about $10 a barrel while the production cost of offshore oil near the US is around $40 to $60 a barrel and rising.

If the US would mandate a change from gasoline to compressed natural gas for all it's government vehicles a systemic change would occur in our energy independence.

I guess we might see that when our politicians stop kissing the ring of a Saudi king.

compressed or Liquefied?

Compressed. Some commercial vehicles, especially in Canada, are already set up to run on Propane, a liquid. However, this is a more expensive and less abundant fuel derived from oil.

Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is far more abundant and Honda actually imported a civic already set up for CNG a few years back thinking that it was "obvious" America would embrace the technology. Some utility companies have used CNG vehicles for years. You can buy the compresser and conversion kit for you car at several locations. CNG costs about 40% less to run than gasoline last time I checked, but that has been awhile.

http://www.cngunited.com/

... and you can switch a fuel injected car from CNG to gasoline with the flick of a switch.

Also a lot of CNG buses.

Public transportation across the country has been using CNG for decades. Currently, about 12-15% of public transit buses in the U.S. run on natural gas (either CNG or LNG). That number is growing, with nearly one in five buses on order today slated to run on natural gas. States with the highest consumption of natural gas for transportation are California, New York, Texas, Georgia, Massachusetts and D.C.

Just some crude math!


If you drove a Prius that got 40 mpg and the new engine really was three and half times more efficient (let's just say 3) then you would get 120 mpg.

If it burned natural gas which is supposed to be 70% cheaper than $3.50 gasoline, (say $4.00), you would go 120 miles for $1.20. The air would be cleaner and no imported oil would be required.

Forty percent of all the oil we use is to fuel cars.

5.5 of the 11.1 billion barrels of oil we used in 2010 were imported.

The switch to natural gas to fuel cars would eliminate the need for imports from the middle east (although we would still get some from Canada and South America).

Big oil will pay congress to make sure this thing never sees the light of day.

Maybe not. It was developed in part with taxpayer money. Big oil is also big natural gas.

just keep waiting its coming

ha ha ha ha



get old copies of omni

and see everything that never happened

they even make electric lawnmowers today so they wont work

there was an engine out like this in the 90s

where is it?

wheres all Nikola Teslas inventions?

i guess they didnt work

ha ha ha ha

There have been several "detonation cycle" engines tried in the 90's but based on pistons and couldn't take the shock and heat.

This is the first rotary version I've seen. Where do you find information on a rotary version in the 90's?

Many (most?) of Tesla's patents were classified by the Government and are only accessible by government contractors.

ask the US-Government!
Even though he was an American Citizen,after his Death,his Estate was handled as if he were an Alien-Resident!
Lots of his Research was buried!

Tesla's inventions are hardly "missing in action".

From Wiki.

"Tesla's inventions and developments include the AC motor, the bifilar coil, various devices that use rotating magnetic fields, the alternating current polyphase power distribution system, the fundamental devices of systems of wireless communication (legal priority for the invention of radio), radio frequency oscillators, devices for voltage magnification by standing waves, robotics, logic gates for secure radio frequency communications, devices for x-rays, apparatus for ozone generation,[3] devices for ionized gases, devices for high field emission, devices for charged particle beams, methods for providing extremely low level of resistance to the passage of electrical current,[4] means for increasing the intensity of electrical oscillations, voltage multiplication circuitry, devices for high voltage discharges, devices for lightning protection, the bladeless turbine, and VTOL aircraft."