The Brickley Engine
I don't know if Mike Brickley's engine is more efficient than others, but the animated rendering is pleasant.
In his younger days, Mr. Brickley made this cool steam engine powered bicycle. LinkThe Brickley engine configuration is projected to improve fuel mileage 15-20%. CO2 emissions are cut as well by 15-20%. This accomplishment is made through reducing engine friction: turning energy normally lost in heat into useful work. With petroleum prices increasing and global warming on the rise, there is an urgent need for us to provide a more efficient, less polluting internal combustion engine.
The Configuration
By changing how the pistons connect to each other and how they connect to the crankshaft, a great deal of friction can be eliminated. The configuration employs a combination of pinned linkages to determine the paths of the pistons to within a few thousandths of an inch of linearity, and thus basically eliminates the need for piston skirts. It connects the pistons efficiently to each other and to the crankshaft at a fraction of the losses incurred in a typical configuration. The top end of the engine remains basically the same and uses the technology available in current engines.
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That's a lot of reciprocating mass. It doesn't seem like it's going to lend itself well to tiny 9,000 rpm engines. It also looks like it might be pricier to manufacture. Totally elegant, though.
Who cares? I mean, seems like a nice invention and all, but we already have fully functioning electric cars. Seems kind of silly to continue to improve antiquated technology when we could just upgrade. Of course, that's never going to happen.
A steam-powered velocipede, you say? Why sir, the young feller has my backing to the hilt! wave of the future don'cha know. 'Antiquated', my foot!
a lot of reciprocating mass and a lot of extra joints to create friction. 15-20% is not enough - we need completely renewable energy that is CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN.
Focus all R+D on decent battery development - there's the rub. Electric motors are efficient and clean. There's just no decent batteries. When charge time = fill up time (at the pump)and you can get about the same distance out of a charge as a tank of gas, we will have succeeded in making electric power tolerable. Till then, everything else is just a bridge.
@Whitman: I'm not sure the power grid (at least in the U.S.) has capacity for a flash "upgrade" to electric cars, nor am I sold on the idea of electric cars really being an "upgrade".
It looks like this particular engine design could be well-suited to diesel engines. Liquid hydrocarbons, like biodiesel, seem to be a pretty good "battery" in which to store solar energy, too. We have a lot of energy already tied up in infrastructure to deliver and sell liquid hydrocarbon-based fuels. It seems to me like we haven't really reached the end of what the traditional internal combustion engine can deliver, in terms of manufacturing or operating efficiency.
The "antiquated" parts of automobiles I have problems with are related more to the size and lack of aerodynamics of the hulking steel behemoth vehicles on the road, rather than their means of propulsion. The _most_ "antiquated" thing, for me, is the lack of desire on the part of Americans to purchase and drive smaller, more efficient vehicles. A 50 MPG+ 3 ton SUV is a hard problem, but I've been driving a 50 MPG+ gasoline-powered car that was built in 1991 for years, so I know it's possible.
If the average American wasn't worried about having a car that was equipped to cross swamps and tundra (and is bigger than the neighbor's equally inefficient and hulking monstrosity), collective fuel efficiency would be getting better instead of worse.
Is this a Peaucellier cell? Are we recapitulating the history of steam engines?
Whitman, I second Specialist on the sources for power on electrical cars being renewable FIRST. Without that we are only transferring the problem elsewhere, no visible polluting, but someone somewhere is pumping oil to the system.
But beware, the day we all move -willingly or not- to electric motors not necessarely means that we'll get the same power levels. We might have to lower our expectations, and be "happy" with that.
I have to agree with several of the posters above who say that electric motors are not necessarily an improvement. The electric cars themselves are huge producers of bad emissions, but that electricity has to be produced somewhere. As of right now, most of our electricity is still being produced by coal-fired power plants. Just because you personally don't witness the emissions doesn't mean they don't exist.
Another downside to electric (and even hybrid) vehicles is the pollution created by the life-cycle of the battery. A variety of damaging chemicals and metals are used in the production of batteries, and the byproducts are not always disposed of in an environmentally friendly way. Then, once those batteries wear out, they must be disposed of. Again, that is not done as cleanly as it probably should be in most cases.
All in all, electrics and hybrids are still better than current hydrocarbon fueled vehicles in most respects, but they are no where near perfect, and shouldn't be regarded as a magic bullet. People never truly realized the pollution created by the manufacture and use of gas cars until they were mass-produced and widely adopted. I doubt that we will realize the potential negative effects of electrics until they are similarly implemented.
Anything that serves to lessen demand for oil is a good thing. If oil prices go down, the prices of EVERYTHING goes down. Of course, the longer gas stays at the $3 (and soon to be $4 range) the more cost effective alternative fuels become, especially at start up when the tech is always the costliest.
As it stands now? If I recall, 1,000 miles a month isn't an outlandish basis for driving. Now, the new H3 gets 20 miles to the gallon. Gas here is 3.19 so that means it costs $1914 a year to run a hummer. A hybrid Ford Escape (to not downsize from an SUV) gets about 31 MPG. That costs about $1235 a year to run. Close to $700 less. If everyone were just FUEL conscious it would help. When I see people driving the monsters that get MPG of 16 or so? I just want to tear out my hair.
Yeah, they pay for the gas, and increase demand, so *I* pay more for MY gas too.
too little, too late...
I won't get into the misinformation posted above about battery disposal and gasoline engine vs. coal powerplant emissions for EVs in this post, but just about the engine itself... This design already has a superior competitor, Carroll Shelby's OX2 engine.
While Brickley boasts of an almost linear piston travel, the OX2's piston travel is completely linear. The engine is designed for high torque at *low* rpm and very low parts count, an extended dwell time and in fact what appears to be a completely customizable piston movement instead of the simple sinusoidal reciprocation of crankshaft-driving engines including Brickley's. The images that are on the site now don't really depict that part of the mechanism very well, but a while back they had better diagrams showing a wave-shaped ring that the pistons pushed on.
I just took a look and unfortunately their website hasn't been updated in ages, but they still answer the phones. Don't know what the status is right now; the receptionist told me to call back tomorrow.
I'll believe it when I see it. As for the comment on being on the heavy side - I can how this could have a weight reduction. Which of course would help their output a tiny little bit.
For the people saying things against it - I think we will still be using oil for a while, even for high mileage cars like the Aptera (hybrid version) (How I wish I could buy one).
New technologies in batteries are being discovered and tested - i.e. Standford nano tech battery. They don't know what the downsides are to that battery, if there are that many.
High efficient multi-junction solar cells are still pricey. (Would be nice to have an Aptera hybrid that has a shell covered in multi-junction solar cells).
And I think people will start looking at the motors and generators too. Experimenting in windings and materials used might end up yielding higher output for one configuration for a motor and another configuration might yield higher output for generation.
I think in the next 2 years we will see some amazing things starting to emerge, in 5 I think it will be cost effective and in 10 it will be "antique"
...devils in the details....all those little pivots and linkages would deteriorate quickly in real life conditions...
....the piston is transferring its power to the 'rocker arm' thru a very fragile set of linkages
..at the time the piston is firing, the linkage is never actually in line with the rocker arm, and the resulting small angle, while very, very clever, will be under great force and would be the first part to fail
...I do wish however, I had this gentlemens ability to see these types of inventions...I encourage his continued efforts....
It's about time there's a new design for an engine. I'm not an engineer or mechanic, so I'm not sure of the details, but if it's really "better", I'm looking forward to change.
Okay, so I really came in here to comment on how... suggestive the animation looks to me.
jesus fucking christ you guys are a bunch of sanctimonious assholes. the deal here is a hybrid system could become 20% more efficient, not that the dude's patent provides and end-all-be-all solution to global warming - it's an incremental step! go spew your 'let's all kill ourselves and save the planet for the worthy whales' crap for the other chest-beating bullshit chartreuse-green sites - where all the contributors flunked physics, just like you.
We don't need that kinda nonsensical hysteria here - this is the gadgets site for pete's sake! go be fuckwads elsewhere!
If you want to reduce reciprocating mass, why not just use a Wankel rotary engine? It's got low reciprocating mass and is very simple. Mazda has already solved most of the engineering problems.
Too many moving parts, if you ask me. Clever but expensive.
#5, the grid has enormous amounts of spare capacity at off-peak hours. A substantial advantage of EVs is that they can be charged at home, while you sleep - which just happens to be the lowest-demand period.
#8, battery disposal is a non-issue. The materials used in batteries are not used up; most of them can be reclaimed. Given the value of the batteries contemplated for electric vehicles, not reclaiming the materials would be unthinkable (and unaffordable). The "core charge" would insure they'd be recycled.
And it works. We already have systems in place for lead batteries; they are 96% recycled. These can be easily extended to other types of batteries.
#7, while it's true that some areas of the US are mostly served by coal fired power plants, others use hydropower already. PV and wind are growing sources. The efficiency of EVs is so much higher than fueled vehicles that even when powered from coal plants the emissions are mostly reduced (see http://www.radix.net/~futurev/pwrplnt.pdf). There's certainly no reason to hold up EV development until the nation is at 100% RE.
Besides, an electric vehicle can be powered by energy harvested from your rooftop while you do other things. You don't have to mess with caustic chemicals or create potentially hazardous waste. Try that with a gasoline-fueled vehicle.
Back to Brickley's claims, a fuel economy improvement of 15-20% by reducing engine friction is impossible, because engine friction only accounts for 10% of fuel consumption.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/deer_2007/session9/deer07_fenske.pdf
See slide 2 at the link. You can find more interesting work by googling:
friction site:energy.gov
Another possibly interesting engine configuration:
http://www.eurekamagazine.co.uk/article/12465/Engine-reaches-the-turning-point.aspx?u=92080