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germanbird writes: "Jalopnik has an interesting article up about Koenigsegg's Prototype Camless Engine. The engine uses pneumatic actuators rather than a cam to open and close the valves in the engine. The engineers behind this claim that it can provide "30 percent more power and torque, and up to 50 percent better economy" when applied to an existing engine designs. The article and some of the comments also mention that some work has been done with electromagnetic actuators to accomplish the same task. It may be a while before this tech is mature enough for passenger vehicles, but maybe if a racing series or two picked it up, it might give some of the manufacturers the opportunity to work the bugs out?
Not sure this is on topic for SoylentNews, but the article brought me back to my introduction to engineering course in college. One of my classmates was a car nut and I remember a discussion with an EE professor one day about the potential (or actually lack thereof due to performance issues) for using electric actuators to open and close valves."
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday February 28 2014, @07:15PM
Well Electric motors produce waste heat too. You do work, you will invariably waste some heat.
And, given current storage capacity of battery technology, that probably has a much greater effect.
A rich man can lose a 100 dollar bill and not worry, but a poor man can't afford that.
The energy density of Gas/Diesel allows some waste heat, and quite frankly I don't think the industry has even focused on that aspect of efficiency.
If this guy can in fact get 30 percent (which I doubt) it puts us that much closer to wringing as much energy out of gas as is possible.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday February 28 2014, @08:43PM
Well Electric motors produce waste heat too.
You've got to be kidding. You do realize that ~95% efficiency is far better than ~30% efficiency, right? No one ever said electric motors were perfect.
And, given current storage capacity of battery technology, that probably has a much greater effect.
Tesla has cars with almost 300-mile range now, largely thanks to that massive efficiency difference. The storage capacity of batteries is not a big problem any more. Their cost/Ah and recharge rates are.
The energy density of Gas/Diesel allows some waste heat, and quite frankly I don't think the industry has even focused on that aspect of efficiency.
Huh? They've been pushing for tiny fuel efficiency improvements for ages. You can only do so much with a Carnot Cycle engine, especially at small scales. Go read about Carnot Cycle on Wikipedia; the other name for an ICE is a "heat engine". The way it works is exploiting the difference in temperature between hot and cold reservoirs, the hot being the combustion and the cold being the environment, and it's limited by the Carnot Theorem; you can only get 100% efficiency with infinite temperature; real-world is 40-60% (closer to 40% for car engines).
If this guy can in fact get 30 percent (which I doubt) it puts us that much closer to wringing as much energy out of gas as is possible.
Simple math: a 30% improvement (which I agree is very highly dubious) on 30% efficiency gets you to 39%, which is still far, far away from ~95%.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Friday February 28 2014, @09:15PM
Even simpler truth: Because you move inefficiency from one place in a system to another, doesn't give you the right to disavow all inefficiency.
For instance Look here: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=107&t=3 [eia.gov]
Follow the 2nd link to the tables, and compute the efficiency of the various methods of electrical generation.
So 40% doesn't look so bad now does it!
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.