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Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine
2

Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

(OP)
Hey guys,

I've been working on this novel combustion cycle for the past 2 years and I recently presented the concept in Engine Expo in Stuttgart. Based on the responses that I got from the industry, I am not surprise if people are now thinking of building the prototype engines. Appreciate if you can go over the slides and provide me with comments

http://www.engine-expo.com/forum_2009/pdfs/day1/10_azmi_osman.pdf

There are also 3 JSAE papers (#20095429, #20095211, #20095063) presented in Yokohama 2 months ago. The papers available online should you need to look into the design details and exhaust valve strategy.

Go over the presentation slides until the end and let me know on whether we can finally have energy sustainability in the future. With the combined use of renewable fuels from palm oil and the water heating from sunlight, I believe that we will.

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

Nice presentation.

So, you're proposing parallel retail distribution of oxygen and methanol.  I'm imagining a whole new architecture for service stations.  New locations, too, after the first few incidents.

How many engines have you built so far?

 

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine


At the Rolls Royce engine museum in Derby, I saw a radial torpedo engine that mixed water and fuel in the combustion chambers for ... for ... eh- for some reason. A precursor to the new engine here?

Dan
  

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

(OP)
Mike,

Iron smelting plants that have switched to oxygen combustion reported 30% decrease in operating cost.

Yup a whole new refilling station that refills methanol, water and oxygen at the same time. Oxygen is supplied using PSA oxygen generator and can the generator can be placed nearby or centralized. Methanol is generated from the "integrated methanol and power generation plant" as stated at the end of the presentation.

What do you meant by few incidents? We are not talking about storing lots of oxygen as in the case of hydrogen. Oxygen is processed from ambient air, using the PSA oxygen generator. It will only be switched on if there is demand for it.

As for the oxygen tank, I'm just riding on the existing natural gas composite tank. The technology is already there. They even upgraded the construction for hydrogen.

 

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

(OP)
Dan,

The new engine evolved so much after we faced so many technical challenges during the design stage. I checked around for prior arts and found these two prior arts: -

1) At the end of world war 2, US navy overruned Japanese submarine base near Okinawa. They found oxygen based torpedo that travels faster and has greater range than any existing torpedo technology.

2) There is also an old SAE paper from US Army tank command discussing about the use of water injection to replace engine coolant. It cools off the combustion chamber well and the researchers also reported a "bonus" of 20-30% increase in power and fuel efficiency.

Mixing fuel and water is not good because you need to increase the cylinder temperature prior to the fuel auto ignition. We need to go back to the basic of heat engine in which we supply only what is needed for heat to be available, in this case oxygen and fuel. There is no need for lots of compression work as in diesel engine. With stratification of oxygen and fuel, you can stuff in as much residual gas from the previous cycle to auto ignite the charge. Compression work is only needed to accurately get the cylinder temperature for fuel auto ignition. That why there is a slide about manipulating the exhaust valve closing point and throttling the exhaust gas using low valve lift.
 

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

USN knew about Long Lance torpedoes long before the end of WW2, since they captured some in 1943.

I am intrigued to hear how you will store pure O2 inside cars.

 

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIG:Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

I'm curious about durability, clogging resistance and corrosion resistance of a direct methanol injector.

 

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

(OP)
Greg,

A unit within PETRONAS run a big fleet of natural gas vehicles, many of them are certified to work on high pressure line. Oxygen is stored in the composite tank that is much safer than the gasoline tank. There is also a relief valve in case the surroundings is too hot, this will buy some time for the passenger to flee if there is a need for it. As for the oxygen, if there is no burnable material, the oxygen just wont burn.

 

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

(OP)
Mike

You can either add lubricity additive in the methanol fuel or improve on the coating or material wear resistance. Furthermore, with fuel and oxygen stratification inside the bowl, there is no need at all to run at 1800 bar. Less than half of that pressure is good enough

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

Uh, "if there is no burnable material, the oxygen just wont burn." is not strictly true.  So far as oxygen is concerned, everything else in the universe, including especially its container, is fuel.  That's what makes it so dangerous.  Please don't take my word for that; plenty of cautionary information is available gratis from industrial oxygen suppliers.

I salute your optimism.  May you overcome all the technical and other challenges that await you.



 

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

(OP)
if you can burn inorganic material to get heat, I will have to salute you too but based on my research, I have to disagree with you. You can oxidize metal but you wont get intense heat that you will get with gasoline, diesel or methanol.

To us, it's getting harder to get oil and gas that we have to go ultra deep sea. I've worked with Japanese OEM for quite some time and we always believe that give us time and money and we will solve the engineering problems. So, as long as I still have that Japanese mindset in me, the engineering challenges can be overcome. I have the right to have the optimism.

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

See, e.g., "oxygen lance", a simple device that uses iron as fuel.

 

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

Azmio

Your optimism is encouraging, but to be a bit pedantic, Sodium is a metal. So is magnesium.

I think iron also is exothermic when reacted with oxygen as is the case with an oxy acetylene torch cutter, sometimes known as a gas axe.

Regards
Pat
See FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on use of eng-tips by professional engineers &
http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm
for site rules
 

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

Fuel plus oxygen in a combustion chamber will make a mighty good cutting torch for burning pistons, cylinders, valves, etc.

You can recycle the exhaust to act as a diluent, but there is another diluent much more commonly available ... 78% nitrogen.

When calculating the efficiency of this proposal, don't neglect the significant energy required to separate oxygen from air, and don't neglect the significant volume and weight of high-pressure storage.

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

"When calculating the efficiency of this proposal, don't neglect the significant energy required to separate oxygen from air,"

Well, I had assumed that that was the first step!

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIG:Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

Azmio,

I built a proof of concept engine that was to inject water after the fuel burnt in 2002. The hydraulic power extraction needs more work so I never tried the water injection portion. Back in the late 1970's I considered modifying a one cylinder engine to inject water after the fuel burnt but after talking to old steam engine operators they felt the expansion time for the water would need to be longer than for a gas engine to obtain much real benefit so I never went down that path. The linear engine is designed to have a longer power stroke than intake to allow the water a longer time to expand into steam.

At http://www.dehyds.com/index.html the white paper on Understanding Standby Power Energy Penalties will provide some information as to why a crankshaft engine is a poor choice for mobile vehicles. If things go well I should get to do my garbage truck testing in July. This should provide more data about standby power penalties.

Ed Danzer
www.danzcoinc.com
www.dehyds.com

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine


 Amizio,
Obstacles are meant to be conquered. Good Luck,

Dan
  

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

(OP)
Brian,

Nitrogen is a bad thing to have in the combustion chamber, by getting rid of the nitrogen, you will eliminate the possibility of NOx. Without any worry for NOx, i can raise the flame temperature slightly higher for more complete burning. Furthermore, I dont like the idea of having to compress nitrogen, it's just a waste of energy. Instead, residual gas that is made of CO2 and water in the case of oxy combustion is a much better choice.

Go the my oxygen slide where I quoted 0.3 Nm^3/kWhr to produce oxygen. I talked to my colleagues who design petrochemical plant process about the high power consumption in producing oxygen. She was surprised because she told me that it's not so if we do it in mass production. As i wrote earlier, by switching from air to oxygen, the operation cost for furnace and boiler is reduced by 30%.

As for the oxygen storage, oxygen has a much higher density than methane, so you can store a lot of oxygen in the same natural gas composite tank.

Frankly, I wont worry much about the energy investment required because there is plenty of energy that we can obtain if we minimize heat from being rejected to the environment.  

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

(OP)
Dan,

That's what I thought too. I have worked in both production and research. While I'm wearing my researcher hat now, I worry less about the minor engineering challenges and concentrate more on achieving my research objectives.

When I was faced with 2800K cylinder temperature, it took me 2-3 weeks to find a solution to the overheating problem. I finally solved the problem by injecting water and this opens up the opportunity to maximize the combustion heat absortion. Water also enables me to recover the remaining energy escaping through coolant and exhaust gas.

Voila!! an exhaust gas of 40-50 Celcius and a car without any radiator. Sadi Carnot will be glad to hear this if he is still alive.

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

(OP)
pat

that's a news to me. Can you provide me with detail experiments report. I know many companies and experts who make a lot of money doing composite tanks for NGV. I will forward the report to them and get them to write to you.

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

(OP)
Pat,

Is the resin that you're talking about inside or outside the tank? If you have the experiment report, it will surely shock many NGV tank companies that we've worked with

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

(OP)
Ed,

Before you can exploit the steam expansion in the combustion chamber, you first have to make sure that the water injection does not surpress the flame development. That's why I had to inject the water upward. The one is to make sure you have a very fast combustion and that can only be achieve if you stratify both fuel and oxygen within the piston bowl. Another recipe to make it happen is to have the water pressurized and heated as high as possible without turning into steam. Together with the intense heat from the oxy combustion, once you inject the heated water into the combustion chamber, it will vaporize very quickly.

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

Many of the composite pressure tanks have a steel or aluminum liner to keep the high pressure gas from leaking through or reacting with the gas contained.

I doubt the angle of the nozzle will be as important as the time will be. The time required to burn the fuel completely will be a portion of the power stroke. The time to extract a significant portion of the steam expansion energy will be much longer than if there is no water injected.

Other production problems will be keeping the water from freezing. Adding alcohol will stop the water from freezing but may have other emissions, materials and operations impacts.

I hope you have better luck finding R&D funding than I have.
 

Ed Danzer
www.danzcoinc.com
www.dehyds.com

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

(OP)
Ed

Based on our CFD simulation, the angle of nozzle makes a big difference. Many prior arts inject water into the piston bowl and they have also reported high HC meaning that the injected water affected the flame development. If you go over my slide where I include the combustion chamber 3D models, I have arrows on where water will go. The water mostly stay above the piston top whereas combustion flame continues inside the piston bowl. Some of the flame actually in contact with water when reverse squish occurs, but it is minimum. We will sort this out by delaying the water injection a bit.

A good balance is necessary, because if we inject the water early to get early steam expansion, the HC goes up a bit. However if inject the water later, we wont get the steam expansion effect in the region of 10-15 ATDC where the best MBT is possible.

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

(OP)
Ed

I forgot to write that all of the water line is fully insulated to avoid heat loss. This will also insulate the water line from cold temperature outside. The water storage is also included, i told my project team members that the more heat is lost, the lower the efficiency will be

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

I used the words think and might as my evidence is mainly anecdotal. A steel liner should solve the problem. People who produce and distribute oxygen gas for welding should have data.

Regards
Pat
See FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on use of eng-tips by professional engineers &
http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm
for site rules
 

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

I read the pdf you listed above.  I assume your thoughts are: disassociation of the water molecules would bring the water closer to a phase change that once introduced to the combustion chamber at the proper timing, while incorporating injected oxygen, would create the extra power that was also experimented with over and above the typical water injection in ww11 jet planes. Water utilized in the turbine engines in ww11 were typical of larger gains. This being different from the typical water injection utilized on most ICE engines. Some extensive research was done at NASA regarding this for commercial jet liners. The issue was additional weight vrs power out and fuel consumed (which was a bit less consumed from typical operations)
My thought was with the compression of atmospheric through turbos; is this not a bit related to compressed oxygen carried in tanks? The differences related to power output with the utilization of water seems incremental. Does your system increase volumetric efficiencies as related or in relation to compressed air through turbos?  There is a need to utilizing more waste heat and the obvious use of waste heat for the water to help disassociate that brings up efficiencies and versatility in available fuel use.  This concept has been studied.
I've worked on systems related to yours proposed as the goal seems to be the same in maximizing expended waste energy, to gain performance and the utilization of different fuels. Thus while maintaining or increasing oxygen densities without the typical systems of inter cooling.
Hino did extensive research as Dr. Takashi Susuki goes through some detail in his book "The romance of engines". Hino was able to increase the output and efficiencies by a significant percentage. They related to it as their "adiabatic system". Water however was not utilized in the one demonstrated. Just a not of some relevance and good information. My initial opinion is your project carries much merit and practicality in certain applications.

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

(OP)
Natural,

Thanks a lot for your posting. This is the sort of discussion that I've been waiting for.

To answer your question, the water molecules stay as it is and not split into hydrogen or water. The water is used to maximize the heat absorption from the combustion heat. As you pointed out, once it absorbs heat, it will change phase from liquid to steam thus enhancing the gas expansion far higher than what is achievable through CO2 and N2.

The research so far pointed out that the efficiency gain far outweigh the investment made for the extra power required to obtain oxygen and to compress water. it's true that if an airplane wants to apply this to the propulsion system it needs to carry water and some oxygen to speed up the combustion. However, we also have to realize that the fuel required to be carried is much lower than in conventional aircraft. in case of jet turbine, I'm afraid that the water cannot be reclaimed and reused. As for the piston engine, about 80% can be reclaimed and reuse.

For light duty vehicle, there is no need for gas to be compressed other than the small compression work after teh exhaust valve is fully closed. As for the marine and power generation, the oxygen needs to be compressed a bit to enable the injector to overcome the pressure build up in the combustion chamber. Nevertheless, the compression work involve is very much different from conventional engines. The total charge is reduced at least by 78% thus significant energy saving can be gained because the total charge involve is about 4/5 less.

As for the volumetric efficiency, I believe it does not apply in this engine. The concept require just enough amount of oxygen to oxidize the fuel for heat. Once the heat is available, water is injected at 150 bar so that it will serve as a working medium for heat absorption and enhanced gas expansion. In short, we deliver into the cylinder only what is needed for it to function, nothing more and nothing less.

Water is an excellent substance that can exist in both liquid and vapor phase without going at low temperature. This means, by compressing the water, the specific heat capacity and boiling temperature will be increased thus I can use it to scrub heat and deliver it into the combustion chamber. Once inside the combustion chamber, it will be turned into steam and pushes the piston or the turbine blade to do work.

I read the adiabatic engine SAE paper. It is an interesting paper but to make it a reality is quite difficult because cooling at the bore surface can be a problem for proper lubrication. That's why I took a different route and the insulation is applied to the outer surface and not inside the bore or cylinder head flame face.

Here's an excellent paper (SAE 750129, haha I was 2 years old) for you to read, it's from the US army tank command, i hope that the authors are still alive to see that their earlier works will someday benefit many.  

Let's exchange more information and let's meet up someday.

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

Some thoughts come to mind:
First I'm a bit confused in regards to the diagrams in your paper. There is heat being absorbed by water to later be used to be injected into the chamber. This will create pressure as you indicate and at some point disassociation. I did notice you keep Low pressure 1 bar and high being 150bar and at 330C. That would create disassociation unless you have a means to recirculate re-condensates.?  Metering and delivery would be extremely important particularly with water/steam under pressure. So it seems as though you've calculated the delivery and temperatures to maximize energy potentials at phase change under compression.
With the diagram and positioning of injector nozzle (what kind of spray pattern and at what micron level, or are you measuring per mole?) From my experience I would anticipate problems with quench, flame front travel and possible interferences dependent on head chamber design, ie swirl port, hemispherical etc. Design of conventional heads via ICE or Diesel are of concern for the reasons above and many others not mentioned here.
Also do you have a working prototype engine or are you utilizing existing contemporary engine designs? From the consumer level?
My other thought is regarding jets; that there can be the advantage of airspeed, pump and scrubber to avoid the extra weight of tanks. Designed correctly (concerning drag coefficients, structuring etc.)with the same delivery, would take less energy overall executing the required results for performance. Just a thought without getting into details. Water weight is and has been determined to be unrealistic for most commercial or even fighter planes on some levels. However I thought to taking advantage of airspeed and re-condensates from atmospheric and existing pressures, but would probably never provide enough H20 to be useful.
I would also state, If your producing more power from per CI, measured at static, then you are increasing volumetric efficiencies. The percentage gain may be incremental, still an increase. This from the phase change in water utilizing whatever additional means to increase cylinder pressure. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Absorption of heat energy and the re-release through expansion of the molecules incorporated with the chemical energy of the fuel can be counter productive/productive dependent on cylinder conditions, atmospheric conditions, flame front, air speed, expansion rates, etc.  So it seems to have been indicated by previous studies. Dr. Heywood and Dr. Wi Cheng at MIT have some good papers along with other professors around the country, notably from Cal Tech on these subject matters. I will take a look at 750129 later tonight.
I've also been taking a perspective from the Quantum level which I feel has significance based on my continued studies on the applicable methodologies currently utilized in many  different areas including classical physics. It's a bit more complicated, but at the moment, I feel can be significant on many levels.

RE: Hybrid Diesel and Steam engine

(OP)
Thank you.

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