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How Efficient Can Internal Combustion Get?

thedailygreen.com — How much progress can we really make with the same old technology?

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  • bincoder, on 05/14/2008, -3/+4By transfering and storing the KE of any vehicle for later release it doesn't matter if the vehicle weighs 1 gram or 100 tons. The energy you burn to get it moving is recovered from when you want it to stop. The only loss in the ideal system would be from friction and drag. Magnetic bearings = zero friction. A properly designed shape minimizes drag. Ideally, drag = 0, friction = 0, Mass = not relevent. That is the goal and the reality. There is no reason that 500 mpg cannot be achieved depending on what peeps will accept as 'stylish' or 'practical' and the price of the technology. Since the mass can be cancelled out by hybrid/regenerative technology, crashworthyness is not an issue either as the vehicle could still be made of 3 tons of stainless steel if desired with no fuel penalty. Think about it... One teaspoon of gas is plenty to send a heavy object through lightyears of space because friction and drag = zero. That's a bit more than 50 mpg.
    • BigManOnCampus, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1Is that sarcasm? Because I started to laugh, and then I thought, "wait, he might be serious."
    • beabis, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1You would be exactly right in an ideal universe. But in this universe you can't get rid of drag or friction and every time you convert energy from one form to another some is wasted as heat.
    • spwpi10, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1Actually you are entirely wrong. An expansion-compression engine has a maximum thermodynamic efficiency. That is, even if there were no drag, no friction, it is impossible to get as much useful work out of the system as energy you put in.
      For a quick explanation look up the Carnot cycle on wikipedia, and thats also operating at completely reversible conditions which is physically impossible. So because non-reversible processes and thermodynamics any internal combustion engine has a maximum efficiency which it can run at if the engine were to be built absolutely perfectly with no drag or friction and it's nowhere near 100%.
  • thechr0nic, on 05/14/2008, -3/+2I love how people think that hybrids are 'green' until they start to consider that when you plug your car it, the energy comes from the grid, which is largely supplied by burning coal. Add that to the toxic potential of disposing of large batteries.

    There are other ideas on how to get it done, maybe we use a hydrogen fuel cell, or maybe ethanol, but there is no existing infrastructure for those, so it will be SUPER costly to implement.

    seeing as how the combustion engine is already ready for mass production, and the petroleum station infrastructure is already in place.. It seems to be much more cost effective to simply make the combustion engine more efficient.

    There are some ideas out there on how to accomplish this here is one:
    http://digg.com/autos/GM_Tries_Remaking_Gas_Engine ...
    which links to this article:
    http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_car ...
    Which uses this concept to accomplish it:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCCI

    Just saying, there are some more 'realistic' (cost effective) ideas out there, that could be released to the market in years instead of decades.

  • protomor, on 05/14/2008, -0/+2Internal combustion engines are NOT efficient at all. Thats why things like turbos and direct injection were invented. Direct injection is finally being put into cars but the use of it has been around for decades. Its just finally becoming possible thanks to modern technology. I'm not saying gas is the way to go but it can definitely be improved.
  • starfocus03, on 05/14/2008, -1/+1Very interesting information....
  • Slices, on 05/14/2008, -2/+2Actually... Internal Combustion can be quite efficient provided you eat the right food. Mexican usually does the trick.


    Oh, you mean cars! No car will be fully efficient until they figure out a way to make it run on tacos. I say.
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