16X Engine – Possible Technology Applications
 

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Will we see it in new RX-7?

Very good read. I'm just worried about the outlook of rotary engines with current and future fuel price levels....

I think you should send this tome directly to Mazda so they can look it over and perhaps provide comment on your thoughts, and if you're not doing anything more fun, maybe apply for a job there as well.

People like yourself who think about rotary engines a lot should be given special consideration in our IC world lol!

Thanks for the interesting and fun read - very thought provoking to say the least :)

Mazda already knows all of this.

Not sure why you would limit the 16x to gasoline if your goal is fuel economy. Mazda's already put out a hydrogen model rx8 and I can't believe that they aren't considering alternate fuel source applications for the 16x if they're looking at a 2011 model timeline.

If they can push out an engine that can run on gas or hydrogen with decent power and as great of a ride and look of the current 8 then they've got something unique on the market. That'll sell a lot more of them then a good FI 16x that allows the 8 to just fit in the current niche. It's also the current emphasis at Ford which has to be looking at leveraging the technology unique to Mazda in the auto world. The infrastructure may or may not be in place in time for the car but if it's capable of handling multiple fuel sources it can make it to the market before the infrastructure is set.

Just my $.02.

I'm sorry, I wanted a sports car, not a tree hugging hippie alternative fuel car.

I know they already know all of the technical information, but do they know what we as customers actually want? I question Ford's influence in their decision making process. If they were to ask most people about the upcoming RX7, how many people would actually say individual things that they want that are clear and usable for an engineer? Most would just say they want it to look cool and have X number of horsepower. If Mazda could see that not everyone would die from having to pay for 6 sparkplugs, maybe they might consider implementing it. :)

Heh. Sure. Because alternative fueled cars = Prius, right? Everyone knows that:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/blog...s/4265910.html

Maybe that's not real. After all they're not due to have a prototype out until Sept. and production until '11. Probably no such thing as a sports car that uses electricity either as a hybrid, full electric, or hydrogen and getting 300+hp:

http://www.soultek.com/clean_energy/...50h_hybrid.htm

And of course you can't have something with similar characteristics (weight, hp, etc.) as the RX-8 that isn't powered by gas that is actually fun to drive:

http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/...ter/index.html

Nope.

There's nothing magical about gasoline that makes it the only way to make a car go fast. It's just cheap and there is a lot of infrastructure supporting it.

When it becomes expensive and when alternative fuel infrastructure becomes viable car companies will start getting away from gas with all their models - sport, compact, suv, etc. It started with compact because people who <3 mother earth are idiots and don't mind paying 10k more for a crappy driving experience as long as it impresses their friends and it was easier to get better mileage on cars that weigh 1500lbs then 3000lbs.

I'm hoping that the 16x is taking that into consideration. If they've built it to be more flexible (aka more tunable) I don't know why you'd be against that unless it's just a reflex. The RENESIS was supposedly a good candidate for alternative fuels which is why the hydrogen based 8 made it to some car shows.

I'm against it because of the reason you stated, there is an expansive infrastructure supporting gasoline. In the city I live in there are several stations that do alternative fuels, but as soon as you're not in the city, you're not going to find anything like that. Just like if I wanted to take a tesla roadster from Texas to California, good luck finding a free socket every 220 miles and sitting for a few hours in the sun while it recharges, unless you can find a small business who likes loiterers who don't buy gas... Remember that we're talking just a few years, not 20 years, cause someday yea I'm sure some little filling station in middle of nowhere New Mexico will have alternative fuels but in the next few years, you're going to be limited to driving your population centers.

The other reason is because coal fired powerplants and factories are alot larger producers of pollution than most passenger cars are with the current emissions standards. Legislation targets the individual vehicle owner because they are an easy target that doesn't pay lobbyists to fight back. I'd rather see alternative power sources than alternative fuels anyday of the week. Don't you feel anything when you hear and smell a bridgeported turbocharged 13B running on race gas?

Yea, but how would you feel if you could drive a 640 horsepower AWD mini cooper from Texas to california on 1.75 tanks of gas?
http://www.autoblog.com/2006/07/21/p...c-horsepower/2

Rotaries do evoke quite a bit of pleasure from most owners here, but the fact is that combustion engines are just too inefficient and the power they provide, while readily available can be matched and exceeded by current and upcoming electrical counterparts, and it can be done for a lot less money and a lot less maintenance.

Think about it.. no brakes, no more transmission, little to no emissions, longer range, all the performance, more safety... I don't see a downside, other than the fact that our electric power grids need a huge upgrade.

That's fine, and all very valid points that I agree with. But then why drum out the gasoline engine with legislation? If the electrical car is so great, it will win out on its own all that needs to be done is remove the protections for the gas companies.

I remember some of the activist groups came by my house here in Austin not too long ago and were talking about pollution in Texas. Something like 80% of the total pollution produced here is from coal fired powerplants (and if Texas was its own country it'd be the 7th most polluting country in the world). Crazy stuff.

Ever see a lithium fire before? They are very hard to put out because the reaction is self sustaining, providing both fuel and an oxidizer for itself. Lithium Ion batteries are scary when they explode, and they are the only energy storage technology we have right now that provide good energy density for their volume and weight.

I agree with you though. The future is electric, or hydrogen powered. Once we figure out a good way to produce hydrogen cheaply, I'm sure we will see conversion kits appearing to let you run IC engines on it, the same way you can run your car on propane.

I'm not opposed to developing new technologies and alternative fuels, etc, but don't pin too much hope on the hydrogen RX-8. It does not have as much power as gasoline and its range was something like 60 miles per tankful. The bigger problem has been how to produce hydrogen in an overall efficient process. Some glimmers of hope on this front perhaps with a microbial process.

Isnt the issue with hydrogen that it just doesnt provide the power that gas does? I forgot all the details but this has been debated before and I seem to remember a lot more cons than pros to it (unfortunately enough). If RG cares to chime in and restate the math and facts behind it, we can move on from that.

Makes sense to me, 6 ports, 6 injectors, 6 spark plugs, not to mention 6 oil injectors in the 16x, and I only had 1year and 2 days of engineering! :mices_bla

Good Read Bmonkey. I have one thing to suggest on the alternative fuel front.

There is simply no way , in the foreseeable political future, of getting around the fact that all the gasoline we are going to be purchasing will have some ethanol content, at least e10 by various state mandates. This lowers overall fuel economy at standard gasoline-fueled engine pressures.

But, as i have related in previous discussions, the epa and several academic bodies have shown that the use of alcohol fuels allows for increased compression because of the anti-knock capabilities of the ethanol. Increasing the compression actually can offset the loss of fuel economy and actually even make a gain over straight gasoline at the normal compression.

Previous attempts at Diesel fueled rotaries have resulted in interesting "L" shaped apex seals that actually use the force of the compression and combustion forces to provide the necessary seal pressure.

If these types of seals were included in the 16x and the compression increased to 12 or even 14 then it could actually realize economy AND power increases from the use of the e10-85 fuels.

Possibly even Diesel rotaries emerge for those Euro-guys;)

Well, without turning this into a political and philosophical debate, it's not the technology itself that I'm against, it's the way we're implementing it and the reasons we're implementing it.

yes thats why i wrote "the forseeable political future"

the reality is there is ethanol in our gasoline and willl be for some time. with the 16 x there are chances to address this and turn it into a positive. change the shape of the apex seals to allow for higher compression which in turn will at the least recover the loss of economy from the addition of the alcohol and quite probably offer an actual economy(and possible power) increase which is unattainable at the near 10:1 we have now.

Yet the chances of fire with lithium ion batteries is much smaller than the chances of fire with a gasoline engine. Totally agreed they're hard as hell to control, and they burn really freaking hot too, but the reality is, the internal combustion engine is still much more dangerous.
Industry will address these issues and here's how i know:
When we built our electric car at texas tech, we built in an internal fire suppression system just because of the threat of battery explosion. The entire system was good for 1-2 uses (of course we couldn't even justify the second use) and added approximately 22lbs to the weight of the vehicle. That's built by undergraduate engineers. So something coming out of industry would be significantly better than what we did as undergrads.

If the electric car does come out, we should all pitch in for a group buy on beryllium wire for aftermarket parts :lol:

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Only bad thing I can think of is no vrroooommm vrrooommm and just
zzzzziiiiiiiiiiiii when u step on the gas:lol:

^^ :) fuck beryllium wire lets go fiber optic :lol: