Adiabatic Engine

[bravekozak]

That Fiero was auctioned on eBay. I had approached Magna about stamping the head shroud in two halves, using the Cyb method for applying ceramic to the stamped steel, and then bolting the pieces together. That ceramic barrier will eliminate the need for cast iron. Smokey's patents are also online. Smokey told me that the GM executives said that his engine would be best if the supply to catlysts from Africa were ever interupted. They proceeded to fund other projects such as the Quad4. Magna International told me that they were working on a diesel engine that would be the future. The Magnesium engine block project from Pontiac Motorsports was abandoned. I saw the test engines in the cars and they all had broken bosses where they mounted. This could have been overcome with a different design and used the Saturn lost foam plant with a similar process developed by Peugeot. The engine block foam parts just snapped together and low temp hot melt was used to fillet the seams.

I was in charge of the melt operations for the entire aluminum diecasting plant. I was hoping and got quotes for a number of lost foam installations, but it never happened. They never had a parking problem. They only wanted to do cast iron brake rotors. However, my ARL spectrometer was magnesium ready. I was hoping they would make Smokey an offer. It never happened.

[Movin]

The doc says that the mixture is kept below 440 F to stop it auto-igniting before it gets to the CC.

That seems to agree with a page I found that says auto-ignition temp for gasoline is 475-536 F. If you get a combustible gas/air mix to 800 F, I would think nothing short of wizardry is going to keep the mix from exploding. Did Smokey say off the record or something, he was taking it to 800?

There are valves in the exhaust heated chamber just like a heat riser valve on a carbed chevy that control the heat, again just like the exhaust heat in the puddle area under a down draft carb.
Some of this is my beliefs, not text book exactly but maybe I can explain it better for our purposes.

As molecules are heated by coming in contact with a hotter surface the atoms speed up and the molecules expand. Different molecules such as petro sourced and air have a different structure and so they speed up and expand at different rates and to a different diameter. In this case fuel sourced molecules as a whole expand more than air molecules but not quite at the same speed. The result is air molecules get bigger first. This increases the distance between fuel molecules and a spark has difficulty igniting the mix and responds like a lean engine. Next the fuel molecules start expanding and pass the size of air molecules. Spark works real well as the distance between fuel molecules is close enough the spark can jump right through. ( I suppose some of you have felt the power of a two stroke right before they lose the piston ? ) When the fuel molecules touch together the flame of combustion become an explosion. If you hear it when only a few touch you might back out and save it but with in seconds the whole charge touches and it is a big bang the game is over lol. This is not to be confused with hot spots starting ignition before spark occurs.

The second source of heat is the heat of compression. I believe that as compression exerts heat to a molecule the molecules respond as above. In addition we have a dynamic second dimension. As compression increases the molecules respond to the compression by expanding slower...but some resist compression better than others. The result is intake vacuum will have dramatically different distances between molecules than those at peak pressure in the combustion chamber. Yes temps too.

Lets look at your text book number. Yup that is what it says. So..that is a test tube number. Does that number hold true when the fuel is atomized but not vaporized? Does it hold true when turbulent? How about when in the presence of quench? Does the length of time affect that value? What happens when the atmospheric pressure increases or decreases? Different value? What about when a flame front is nearby? What happens when combustion byproduct is present from the previous power cycle? Is that text book temp still constant when the amount of oxygen present changes? If the fuel molecules are kept moving fast enough when they are expanded and reach a temperature where they normally would join together and go boom, can that magic number start going up? How close were the fuel molecules to each other when auto ignition occurred? If they are far enough apart won't that number have to climb until they get close enough? How about if we lean it a little and add more heat? How far can we go?

Smoky was smart, use what they will believe.

[Movin]

Brave...I would so love to see what you have got to see, and on top of all that you got to talk to the man!

How come a V engine intake with super hot exhaust in one passage, next to it a cold intake passage and next to that a coolant passage will last forever in either aluminum or iron, but we cannot make a tubular exhaust manifold worth a darn?? And this level one engine needs some heat exchangers... most of us would probably construct something like a tubular manifold with a chamber welded about it somehow. idea's ?

[sketchman]

Does that number hold true when the fuel is atomized but not vaporized? Does it hold true when turbulent? How about when in the presence of quench? Does the length of time affect that value? What happens when the atmospheric pressure increases or decreases? Different value? What about when a flame front is nearby? What happens when combustion byproduct is present from the previous power cycle? Is that text book temp still constant when the amount of oxygen present changes? If the fuel molecules are kept moving fast enough when they are expanded and reach a temperature where they normally would join together and go boom, can that magic number start going up? How close were the fuel molecules to each other when auto ignition occurred? If they are far enough apart won't that number have to climb until they get close enough? How about if we lean it a little and add more heat? How far can we go?

Hmm. Good points. But if we can at least assume Smokey really was pressurizing with the turbo/"homogenizer" to 10psi as the doc says, instead of just mixing, then you're talking about a fuel/air mix (even though lean) compressed quite a bit, and then the distance between the molecules is not so far as it would be in just natural evaporation or atomization with no added pressure.

And the other points, I have no idea. I guess it just needs tested in the real world, again, till it works or explodes.

[bravekozak]

Those "inventors" of the plasma sprayed ceramic coating live in Michigan. We should give them a phone call. 411 lookup time.

[bhearts]

So the purpose of this engine was hp numbers, or fuel economy

[bravekozak]

Fuel economy. The goal was a 5% increase in the efficiency of the internal combustion engine.

[bhearts]

Sorry I'm special

[Movin]

The original engine had , what was it, 1.8 HP per CI ? That just came with the package. From there as you know there are all kinds of tricks to gain HP. Smoky knew that the technology he did not talk about kept detonation from happening. Once this is understood then HP tricks can be used as long as they did not upset what was happening ...and I am not rewriting that long post at the end of page 2!!

When pushing uncharted territory you make small or one change at a time. Smoky eluded to this being used for racing but made it clear that this was a driver, not a racer. It would be crazy to develope a race engine with out the worry of race fuel or detonation but that is the possibility here!

[Icedawg]

I don't think this patent at the start of the thread had much to do with making a real system. They state they want to hit 400 deg F in the mix chamber, and avoid 450 deg before delivery to the combustion chamber. And one of you has done the research to find auto-ignition of the mix is around 575 deg. So as soon as the piston starts to compress, the heat of compression is going to drive it well above the ignition point and it will detonate before the piston gets close to tdc. I don't think that problem can be overcome within the technology in the patent.
Read claim 9, that is what the patent is about. At the time it was issued in the late 80's many auto manufacturers were already using coolant passages in the intake manifold to heat the gas/air charge. In 1979 the Mazda RX7 used both exhaust gas and coolant passages in the intake manifold to heat the intake charge. There were no shutoffs once reaching operating temperature in most of those systems, despite what is claimed in the patent. Yet somehow claim 9 was allowed in the late 80's. There are a lot of games played in the patent world around the idea of "freedom to operate". The holder of this patent was in a position to claim infringement on automakers around the world once it was issued, and then maybe make a few bucks to shut up and go away.
I think all the rest is plausible but unrealistic smokescreen to allow a few interfering and problematic claims to get issued, to the benefit of the patent holder.
The thread has drifted off into talking about the water cooling injection concept, and I am not referring to that in my discussion, as that is certainly a technology that is realistic, though it may be challenging to implement with good long term reliability.

[Movin]

One thing I have proved out is Smokys claim that normal car parts could be used because heat was not a problem as in to much, it is a problem to get enough to work with. As more energy in the fuel turns into downward pressure on the piston less is available to help vaporize the fuel. Unless we look for ways to capture the loss. The potential power in a gallon of gasoline compared to how much power we create using that gallon in an engine is still pretty poor. There is lots of room for improvement to Smokys engine and he spoke of that.

Brave, Smoky thought it was funny that the engineers did not figure out what was happening even though they could drive the car and it was right under there nose. He knew the technology would be a big time game changer with easy further improvements to his idea...not the engine. But I think he turned some important people against him by laughing at there text book knowledge and stupid inability to use there own head and think. You have a different somewhat inside perspective, do you feel that is what happened ?

[FB71]

[QUOTE=sketchman;676446]My thought was that if you could inject water directly into the cylinder you could create an adiabatic power stroke so heat never leaves the CC. All the heat would get used because you'd have the water injected after ignition to absorb the heat generated by the gas/air mix burning. Turns out I found they have tested this a long time ago.

This is the Crower cycle. Requires virtually no cooling.

[FB71]

and a true adiabatic engine would not surrender heat to the surrounding material, or exhaust gasses. What Smokey did was use existing tech to approximate true adiabatic function. He also had a VW Rabbit with a similar setup. There are several threads over on www.fordsix.com about heat recovery and water injection. Some of these guys have been using/working on these systems for years already, if you'd like to save some time.

[Movin]

There are lots of chemicals or substances that can be added to turn more waste heat to power. This thread is about the level one Smoky's engine , evading the red herring patents, extracting the real secrets he was using to make his test bed work so well and re applying this to our cars.

I should repeat some of the discussion from the other thread, Smoky played with many ways of recovering heat or using heat in clever ways. FB71 I know you know all of this, but hoping some of you guys back there in the know may have played with true super heated vapor ..I know many of us have in other ways.

The level one is the entry into adiabatic combustion , Smoky alluded to that by calling this level one. FB71 , there could be a gold mine of info about this subject where you work ? You may have run into the Fiero and checked it out? More on the rabbit ?

[Movin]

Before this thread is left behind there should be some discussion of the reasons this technology did not become experimental to the point like natural gas powered cars, hydogen, hybrid or propane. Some of those may become mainstream if electric battery power does not do so. So far injection of liquid gasoline, diesel and alcohol for the sole source of power is not threatened by anything except hybrid electric.