Ach du Lieber! Ein' Buzz-Turbine?

From: Michael M. Butler (mmb@spies.com)
Date: Thu Jun 05 2003 - 16:28:38 MDT

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    40% efficiency is interesting if true. I wonder how noisy it is...

    > A new design for an engine has
    > a quintessentially British origin
    >
    >
    > Jun 5th 2003
    >> From The Economist print edition
    >
    > http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1826051
    >
    >
    >
    > ENGINES have been spluttering along in more or less the same way for
    > decades. Most motor vehicles still rely on one of two sorts of piston-
    > based
    > internal combustion engine, both conceived over 100 years ago (by
    > Nikolaus
    > Otto and Rudolf Diesel). Turbine engines are similarly ancient. Even one
    > of
    > the more recent innovations, the pulsed jet engine, which injects gobbets
    > of
    > fuel into a combustion chamber to create intermittent pulses of power,
    > made
    > its debut as far back as the second world war. It formed the motor of the
    > V1
    > flying bombs launched by Germany against Britain.
    >
    > Now, a father-and-son team of inventors from Suffolk, in Britain, hopes
    > to
    > revolutionise engine technology with a new design for an ultra-efficient
    > engine. John and Laurie Archer have been spending their spare time hidden
    > away, in true British inventors' tradition, in a shed at the bottom of
    > the
    > garden. There, they have designed a motor that can run on natural gas,
    > methane from landfills, or hydrogen.
    >
    > After ten years of hard work, a prototype made in part from a child's
    > construction kit, and many patent applications, they have licensed their
    > design to a Dutch technology group called ICCU Holdings. ICCU is putting
    > together a consortium to develop the engine, and plans to use the
    > Archers'
    > design to build generators that will provide clean, green power units for
    > housing estates.
    >
    > All engines work on the principle of burning fuel in a confined space and
    > using the resulting rise in pressure to generate mechanical energy. In an
    > Otto or Diesel engine, large losses of energy arise from incomplete
    > combustion of the fuel. Further waste comes from losses to friction and
    > noise as the pistons are driven up and down. As a result, the average car
    > engine burns four times more fuel than it would need to move the vehicle
    > were it as efficient as the laws of thermodynamics permit. By contrast,
    > turbine engines, such as those used in aircraft, waste only about one-
    > third
    > of the fuel they burn. They do so because rotation is smoother than the
    > up-and-down motion of pistons, and also because they are able to suck in
    > vast amounts of air and thus burn the fuel with a lot of oxygen, which
    > means
    > that combustion is more or less complete.
    >
    > The ³Archer-Trice² engine, as it is known, combines pulse jets with
    > turbines. John Archer describes the engine as looking like a propeller in
    > a
    > doughnut. In the Archer-Trice engine, gaseous fuel is fed into a
    > cylinder,
    > which then rotates to compress the space in which the gas is held. The
    > design of the rotor gives the air intake a large ³swept volume²‹in other
    > words, a vast amount of air is sucked in, even though the engine itself
    > is
    > stationary. A sparking plug ignites the gas, providing the pulse which
    > produces power to turn the cylinder. The compressed burning gas is
    > released
    > through the exhaust.
    >
    > Water is injected into the system to produce steam, providing a way of
    > cooling the engine (which, in a moving machine, is another of the
    > services
    > provided by the airstream). And the engine is computer-controlled to
    > ensure
    > that all the stages are timed to perfection and that it operates at
    > maximum
    > efficiency. Currently, the engine is around 40% efficient, and the
    > Archers
    > hope to improve on this.
    >
    > John and Laurie Archer are both electrical engineers, and have always
    > been
    > interested in how engines work. But their decision to try to design their
    > own engine came after they built a D-type Jaguar car together in the
    > 1980s.
    > ³We realised that the car engine was hugely inefficient and thought we
    > could
    > try to make something better,² says John Archer.
    >
    > What may once have seemed like a crazy idea is now being taken seriously.
    > At
    > the moment, the Netherlands imports much of its electricity from
    > neighbouring countries, meaning that a significant amount of energy is
    > wasted in transmission. ICCU is keen to develop a more efficient and
    > environmentally friendly power supply, and the Archer-Trice engine could
    > provide a solution.
    >
    > The firm is investing several million euros in the project, and within
    > nine
    > months it hopes to use the Archer-Trice design to produce an efficient,
    > natural-gas-fuelled generator capable of powering 1,000 homes. As a
    > bonus,
    > the steam from the cooling system can be used to heat the homes, instead
    > of
    > being wasted. If all goes to plan, ICCU will be able to set up a network
    > of
    > local generators that will reduce reliance on large power stations. They
    > may
    > even be able to sell surplus power back to the national grid.
    >
    > In the meantime, John and Laurie Archer are still refining their engine
    > design and waiting for the day when Archer-Trice engines are taken up by
    > the
    > car industry. That may be a while coming. But you never know. Perhaps in
    > another 100 years the name ³Archer² will stand alongside those of Otto
    > and
    > Diesel in the history books and maintenance manuals.

    -- 
    I am not here to have an argument. I am here as part of a civilization. 
    Sometimes I forget.
    


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