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The article is sketchy on details, but Mr. Crower is trying to eliminate the need for a radiator, and instead use that heat for productive work instead of wasting it. If I am reading it correctly, it would go: intake, compression, expansion, exhaust, direct injection of water which flashes to steam, steam expansion...and then repeat. It also keeps the exhaust valve cooler (they don't explain how), which means you can run higher compression, which also means more efficiency.
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While the BMW system does add performance and better gas mileage, it also adds weight. This systems looks like it can increase performance, give better gas mileage AND reduce weight. I'm all for that!
Well the million-dollar question of course is: Could you design a rotary engine to take advantage of this concept (IF it works, Mr. Crower doesn't know yet for sure)? Turning some of the rotary's prodigous amounts of underhood heat into more power would be nice. Plus the steam would help with carbon deposits, wouldn't it?
It would take a completely different design though; you can't just swap out a cam like on piston engines. Someone on another forum claimed that Mr. Wankel worked out other rotary designs with more than 3 sides on a rotor, and that might work...but I never heard of that.
Oh and speaking of the BMW turbosteamer, I wonder what the exhaust temps are on the Crower prototype. I wonder if you could use it in conjunction with the turbosteamer.
Last edited by BaronVonBigmeat; 03-01-2006 at 08:25 PM.
would this be possible on a rotary engine? Some things to think about , lubrication, how would you inject water into a rotary if your injecting oil to lubricate seals? If you could somehow lubricate the seals in another way this could make the rotary way more efficient dont you think? Rotaries are known to produce a lot of heat so It would seem that you could cool them off with this form of water/steam better than the tipical water jackets...........hmmmnm....thinking
Well the million-dollar question of course is: Could you design a rotary engine to take advantage of this concept (IF it works, Mr. Crower doesn't know yet for sure)? Turning some of the rotary's prodigous amounts of underhood heat into more power would be nice. Plus the steam would help with carbon deposits, wouldn't it?
It would take a completely different design though; you can't just swap out a cam like on piston engines. Someone on another forum claimed that Mr. Wankel worked out other rotary designs with more than 3 sides on a rotor, and that might work...but I never heard of that.
Oh and speaking of the BMW turbosteamer, I wonder what the exhaust temps are on the Crower prototype. I wonder if you could use it in conjunction with the turbosteamer.
never even thought of that, you could use the steam purge system to power a turbo also maybe?
The steam is going out the tailpipe along with the exhaust, and you have a water tank alongside your gas tank, basically. You could still run a turbo but I don't see how it would lag any less than before.
Of course, the whole premise behind a turbo is to use otherwise wasted energy in the exhaust...but something like this or the turbosteamer would have less wasted energy in the first place.
It sounds like it might work, but the engine reliability would be complete *****. Fuel and steam generate pressure in different ways. As fuel combusts, the pressure quickly spikes and then comes down as the stroke reaches BDC. With the water, its going to build sowly and then spike towards the end as more water is converted to vapor. This is going to be going on across 4,6,8,12 cylinders. All these different forces acting in different ways... Can anyone say stress fracture? Personally I think the engine would clog up with sediments and minerals from the water within 10000 miles unless you were using ridiculously purified water.
Also the wiki sounds like it was written by Bruce Crower himself.
Sediment build up should be avoidable using distilled water. It seems to me that the way to implement it on a rotary would be to have every other rotor face see either combustion or steam. It seems to me that it should reduce the peak temperatures on the rotor housings and side housings, given a margin of error on mechanical stress. The downside I see is that it turns the waste heat into useful mechanical work, so our heaters wouldn't work very well; but our fuel consumption would be cut, possibly even in half. I'm not clear on how to avoid the system being a total loss cooling system, however.
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Driving the RX-8 is never about the numbers, it's about the experience and the experience of driving it is the best selling point in favour of it. If you drive it and there is a heart beating in your chest, I believe you WILL buy it. The tragedy is that too many talk themselves out of even trying it because of the numbers.
It seems to me that the implementation of this system in a rotary should be similar to the Direct Injection that Mazda is developing for the 16X.
Having every other face of the rotor see alternate modes, first internal combustion and then on the next face of the rotor steam, and so on, should give the desired result. The peak temperatures for the rotors and housings should be kept down, which should do some nice things for forced induction applications.
My concerns are:
1. whether the pressure curve is compatible with our seals as they currently exist
2. this system seems to be a total loss cooling system, essentially transferring the weight from the radiator to the storage tank (wherever it might be)
3. what do we use for a heater?
4. don't we lose fuel tankage space in order to accommodate the water tank, if we don't position it where the radiator currently is?
__________________
Driving the RX-8 is never about the numbers, it's about the experience and the experience of driving it is the best selling point in favour of it. If you drive it and there is a heart beating in your chest, I believe you WILL buy it. The tragedy is that too many talk themselves out of even trying it because of the numbers.
Is there a provision in the board's software to allow merging obviously related topics? Both this one and the one noted above are talking about the 6-cycle engine concept, and particularly how it might be adapted to the rotary. I posted in both because I wasn't sure which one might be more likely to garner further discussion and was hoping for feedback on my questions/concerns by those more knowledgeable than myself.
__________________
Driving the RX-8 is never about the numbers, it's about the experience and the experience of driving it is the best selling point in favour of it. If you drive it and there is a heart beating in your chest, I believe you WILL buy it. The tragedy is that too many talk themselves out of even trying it because of the numbers.
Interesting, longpath. Much better approach than that mentioned above of adding additional lobes, which would garner some heat from the rotor but not really address the rotor housing differential heat. Your approach would also reduce the temperature differences around the rotor housing.
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Thanks, Robrecht!
"When all is said and done, it's possible that Mazda will find a few more ponies in there than they've been alluding to. I would imagine that after the faux-pas over horsepower with the 2001 NB8B Miata, Mazda is being conservative on power output announcements." - bwob, 2/2/02
From what I saw on the wiki, and knowing what we know about the rotary, I would say that recycling the water via a condenser would absolutely require a water/oil separator; but I don't have enough knowledge of these devices to know if they are thorough enough for this application.
The other thing that occurs to me is that technically the variant I suggested (alternating IC/steam on adjacent rotor faces) isn't a 6 cycle, although it is derivative.
__________________
Driving the RX-8 is never about the numbers, it's about the experience and the experience of driving it is the best selling point in favour of it. If you drive it and there is a heart beating in your chest, I believe you WILL buy it. The tragedy is that too many talk themselves out of even trying it because of the numbers.
__________________
Driving the RX-8 is never about the numbers, it's about the experience and the experience of driving it is the best selling point in favour of it. If you drive it and there is a heart beating in your chest, I believe you WILL buy it. The tragedy is that too many talk themselves out of even trying it because of the numbers.
. i didnt at the time because i wanted others to see the strangeness of the same "brand new thing" topics 2 years apart.....
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