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Next Big Future reports:
Liquid Piston gets more DARPA funding for 30KW engine 30 times smaller than todays engines
DARPA has awarded LiquidPiston an additional $2.5 million to continue development of its 30kW X4 rotary diesel engine prototype, bringing DARPA's total funding of the engine technology to $6 million.
When development of the fully packaged engine is complete, the 30kW X4 engine is expected to weigh just 30lbs and fit into a 10" box, while achieving 45% brake thermal efficiency – approximately an order of magnitude smaller and lighter than traditional piston diesel engines, and also 30% more efficient. The efficient, lightweight, and powerful rotary Diesel/JP-8 X4 engine offers a disruptive power solution for direct as well as hybrid electric propulsion and power generation.
Seems we get a story about a wonderous alt-energy breakthrough every week that never pans out, can the humble Diesel engine be reinvented to become the "next big thing?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Thursday July 05 2018, @08:11PM (3 children)
Eh? Trains ARE run on diesel, you said so yourself. You are simply ignorant of the theory of operation of a diesel electric locomotive, they use the electric drive as a more efficient TRANSMISSION, not as the primary motive force. It turns out that, as you note, locomotives require a lot of low end torque to start moving and that a mechanical transmission to accomplish that conversion was a lot bigger, heavier, more expensive, had higher insertion loss and higher maintenance costs than a simple conversion to electricity driving an electric motor. But the source of the motive power is still diesel fuel, there are no batteries aboard a locomotive beyond a small one to crank the engine.
And the cost to move a ton of cargo by train is so low that it is doubtful any competitor is going to displace the sunk costs of the existing rolling stock before it is all retired at end of life, and they are commissioning new locomotives now so they will be rolling for a very long time.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Friday July 06 2018, @04:59AM
The counterpoint to that, of course, it what happened to steam. Once the tech behind diesel had matured, the railroads saw the advantage and all converted to diesel-electric almost overnight. A lot of relatively new steam engines ended up hitting the scrap heap because no one wanted them.
That's not to say that we will get a repeat, but the railroads are going to do the math and do what makes the most sense.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Saturday July 07 2018, @12:55AM (1 child)
Hmm, you know, that makes me think of a great application for such comparatively tiny generators - hybrid electric cars.
Efficiency would be a consideration, but if you gave a car just enough expensive batteries to handle daily driving (20 miles? 40?), along with a gas tank and cheap generator for those longer road trips you could have a real winner on your hands. Google suggests a Tesla cruising at highway speeds averages about 16kW, so this could easily be recharging the battery on the road almost as fast as it would otherwise deplete - throw a "recharge" toggle switch on the dash and let the driver decide when to consume gas. Plugging in is cheaper, so most people would do it when they could, but you'd always have serious power in your back pocket whenever you need it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @03:23AM
Or, you know, you could buy a Chevy Volt which already does this (plug-in hybrid). I think there is a similar Prius model also.