A few months ago the invention of the "wave disk generator" type rotary engine was all over the news, but I've never heard of it again. Instead of only being 15% efficient like current engines, it was 60% efficient, resulting in dramatic improvements in fuel economy, emissions, size/cost/weight, etc.

 

Wave disk engine? Never heard of it. Anyway, i'll search it and check it out.

 

I've seen this on Youtube.. It's a winged rotary engine, apparently the guy hasn't actually created it yet though.. Not sure if this is what you're talking about or not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6i4CVrcEJM

 

Here: http://green.autoblog.com/2011/04/08...-future-video/

 

what do you mean "Whatever happened to the wave disk engine?" its only been since april. did you mean you thought it would have taken over by now? or there would have been new news by now?

 

They had planned on having a full scale (for cars) prototype available by now. Everything has been quiet for months though after a lot of hype, which usually means they ran into a problem. Was just wondering if anyone has heard anything.

 

thats not accurate. they said a car sized(25kw) working prototype by the end of this year. they still have 4 months. they also said they'd need additional funding after that.

 

this doesnt look promising

 

Seriously? Its been 4 months, give them more time. These things don't happen overnight.

 

I read about Dr Norbert Mueller's (MSU) wave disk engine in 2013 and I've been wondering why there hasn't been much info about it on the net. It looks like he got some funding (~$3M USD, I read somewhere, from ARPAe project). There is some info online, most of it is dated pre 2015. I found these articles. There is more on youtube too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_disk_engine

https://www.arpa-e.energy.gov/?q=sli...ockwave-engine

 

 

Is that a typo? It's been 8 years...

 

Because it was posted like 8 years ago?

After reading around a bit, it doesn't look like it holds any water. There was never any video showing it running, just the guy holding the disk and talking about it.

And an ICE that doesn't need any cooling? Yep, sounds legit.

Another thing to consider even if the idea behind it works: real world conditions are pretty cruel and can affect an engine's efficiency by quite a bit. For example, Sterling engines work great on paper, but I remember doing an experiment in a thermo course for it, and the calculated efficiency was under 1% with real life data we recorded. Yes, I did the math right. Most of other students got similar numbers and we are all pretty shocked.

 

There's a video of it running. It reminds me of anti-lag systems that dump fuel into the hot side of the turbo to keep it spooled, but up-scaled and used as the spinning element of a generator.

 

Well, then I stand corrected, but still, it only ran in a lab, just like the Sterling engine I did the experiment on. At least there were Sterling engines outside of labs in the past.

And if it's really that game-changing, where is the technical data? Where is any information I can read and not raise an eyebrow?

60% thermal efficiency doesn't sound too outside of the realm of possibility, but if it's theoretical then that's not too helpful.

 

I'm at work, so I can't really dig into googling it too much. Just meant to be helpful. The thing sounds like it's spinning at a pretty good clip. With how generators work, is faster also better? Or is there a tipping point?