What is Digg?Sponsored by Travelzoo
Take Advantage of Ridiculously Low Holiday Airfares view!
travelzoo.com - Flights $52 and up for Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Year. But move on it now.
174 Comments
- fishbert, on 10/12/2007, -6/+33Nah, this quote from the middle is the best:
"Yet the most important would be the impact of savings of fuel reaching the stunning level of 90 % of fuel production. While part of the money could be used to increase the quality of life, most of that money could be reinvested into more profitable ventures. This would eliminate unemployment and move North America into a never-known golden age when everybody would have good income and medical care."
I don't know what kind of drugs this man has been on since his stroke... I just know I want some. - fishbert, on 10/12/2007, -3/+22From the sound of it, perpetual-motion machines would be made obsolete by his gun engine.
- ryanmatthew, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18His ending quote is the best
"How could I know why nobody else has not thought about a concept like mine? I cannot answer this question, because I do not answer questions I do not know the answer to. But you could answer why haven't you thought about similar concept. Could you?" - curmudgeon7205, on 10/12/2007, -5/+20I bet he has a perpetual motion machine in the works, as well.
- thesbian12, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19It's funny, because this morning in hell, when I was shooting the usual falcon out of my ass, I noticed a flying pig throwing snowballs.
- iMactel, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18Show me a design diagram. This sounds very vague, especially the parts about eliminating the transmission and how adding extra strokes to the engine could use up previously wasted energy. I get the idea of removing the piston from direct force of explosion via a compressed are chamber, but thats about it. I think this may be a case of someone being too smart for his own or anyone elses good (read huge ego and inability to communicate successfully with mere mortals).
- mikexstudios, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13From the link that kokobaroko posted:
"Canadian inventor, Kazimierz Holubowicz, has come up with an environmentally friendly and transmission-free engine based on the same mechanics as how a bullet is shot from a gun. Initial test results yielded 92 per cent efficiency."
Now, according to Carnot's Theorm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine), the most efficient engine that can be theoretically be built is one that is thermodynamically reversible. In other words, the energy put into the engine (the combustion) can be recovered. Practically this is impossible since entropy of the system can never be zero!
Therefore, the bottom line is: In order to increase efficiency, the heat exchange has to occur slower. To create a more efficient car engine, accelerations must occur much slower! (ie. Taking 10 minutes to reach 60mph). In this article, the inventor (there's no way he can be a credible physicist) has this engine that can "explode" like a gun. The entropy here is very high and therefore, the efficiency of his engine must be very low.
While he is taking into account "design", he's not taking into account the laws of thermodynamics. - daiaveron, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15I would offer this argument; all inventions that have patents are working inventions. This invention has a patent. Therefore this invention works. Here is a link to the Canadian patent office site.
http://patents1.ic.gc.ca/details?patent_number=2476167&language=EN - JohntB, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Explosion is much more efficient than mere combustion/deflagration. For example, pulse detonation engines could theoretically get up to 50% efficiency: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_detonation_engine
- stevieB, on 10/12/2007, -6/+15"Greg challenged me to improve combustion engines, before completing my anti-gravity theory."
Why waste time on engines? If he completes his anti-gravity theory, engines are a moot point, no? We could just float wherever we want to go, no need for cars powered by gas. - olivier, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8High compression ratios in Diesel engines (19:1 vs 10:1 for gas engines) are a perfect illustration of this.
Diesels also get higher MPG because 1 litre of diesel packs more energy than 1 litre of gas and Diesels have lower RPMs - captaindan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7When it comes to reciprocating engines, explosion and ignition are quite different. Ignition is when the fuel-air mixture burns progressively from the top of the cylinder down. Explosion is when the entire fuel-air mixture burns immediately. This puts incredible stress on the piston at the exact moment when the piston is unable to transfer any load.
- chromasia, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12Mr americanantigravity - I truly hope you are joking. Next time you are watching the "incredible" anti-gravity videos watch for the strings holding the items aloft. The site has been widely debunked.
- iMactel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Ok, I've since read the entire patent (linked in comment below). From the 30 pages (approx), I think I have a decent understanding of the concept of how it actually operates. It builds on current engine design by removing the work piston from direct force, thus allowing dramatically increased forces to be released in the chamber. He makes the destinction between slow burning and explosion of fuels by completely evaporating the fuel into gaseous form and combining it with what I presume to be a stoichometric ratio of air. This differs from present engines, in which fuel is in the form of droplets, the outside of which are accessible for slow burning. By putting an oscillating buffer between the work piston and the explosion he proposes to be able to explode the fuel at the exact end point of the work stroke, where the piston is closest to the cylinder end and where the chamber is most compressed. With directly linked pistons, explosion/ignition at this point would snap the cam or the link between the piston and cam. Ok, so we can blow the fuel up getting complete fuel consumption, and we can do it at such a point in the cycle to get maximum force out of the explosion... sounds like a reasonable claim to increasing efficiency. Furthermore, the oscillator is free to move seperate from the work piston, condensing and expanding the exhaust allowing for further extraction of energy from the heat. He injects water into the chamber before the explosion to provide cooling for the the chamber. The condensation and evaporation of the water potentiates the extraction of thermal energy from exhaust as well. He proposes to power the exhaust valves from energy stored in the compressed space between the oscillator and the work piston, somehow, as opposed to leeching energy from the flywheel.
In all, I think the guy is onto something. I think it will take him a lot of work to get a fully functional prototype, considering he describes several modes of function and lots of computer aided timing to maximize efficiency and such. As for not using a transmission... The cam is free to rotate with the piston seperated from direct forces. He proposes altering the timing of explosion to slow down the cam or to ultimately reverse the direction of the cam for going in reverse. That sounds like a lot of complicated firmware work to optimize. I don't see any reason why it can't function, but I dont envy the task of getting this concept into a real operational engine.
Before responding, please take the time to read through the entire patent via the images linked at the bottom of the patent page. The patent page itself is just the brief description. The real description is in the scanned images of the documents he submitted. I'll be interested to hear what understandoing others get from them - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Notice he is from eastern europe, if you know people from that area, you will know why he has an ego (I'm from EE too). The eastern europeans all have huge egos and think they're the smartest people in the world. Many of them are above average and think they could do anything (hey give me that!, this is how you start a grill), and sometimes that ego just pays off and makes something.
I don't know what the deal is behind this dude, but I wouldn't be surprised if it does what he says, but takes 20s to get to 60mph. That's just the way things work out. - bobonot, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9As the complexity increases the likelihood of this "idea" every coming to market decreases exponentially.
- StrawberryFrog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Oh they would be, for a while.
E.g Ballpoint pens or "biro" called after the inventor, where every expensive when they came out. And they were superior to fountain pens. But that price situation didn't last for long. - BryanTheCrow, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Even though he says it's much cheaper to produce than today's typical engines (and there's no need for a transmission), how much do you want to bet that the manufacturers that finally start using this would charge more for "gun engine" cars than cars with a traditional engine...
- kolbyjack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Perhaps his brain was just in the wrong mode
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8..now as soon as the oil industry figures a way to profit on this, the engines will be made available to us!
- opnotic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Since none of us (I hope) have fuel dripping from out the tail pipe... (as a measure of inefficiency).. I imagine that our engines are not as efficient because some of the energy is transformed into heat. Since this design actually has MORE moving parts... it seems this would only lead to more friction and inefficiency. I don't want to shut it down as I'm all for advancement... but what he says is the basic principal.. just doesn't translate to more efficiency to me.
It turns a 6 cylinder into a 12 cylinder since each cylinder requires 2 pistons. How you get more energy out of *slower* moving pistons (as he claims) is just out of reach to me right now. Slower moving = less gas maybe... but what about the energy lost that goes into compressing the air between the two cylinders? - eridius, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7whizzbang, you do realize that they would sell fewer barrels in a given time period, though, right?
- GreatToast, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5You're both wrong, you're thinking of the median.
- birdwatcher3000, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7One day a few men in black suits will approach the guy, they will represent an oil company, they will make him an offer he can't refuse, they WILL buy all rights to this engine and then they will dump the whole thing in a drawer locked in a dark basement never to be heard again until oil is pretty much exchausted.
- kokobaroko, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Gun_Engine
This guy is from Poland. We have handfull of starwing genius inventors. For example Lucjan Łagiewka and his "magical" bumper eliminating significant crash forces. He demonstrated it in public crashing small car (morris mini size) at 50km/h in to a solid brick wall .. without seat belts and airbag, the driver was able to get out of a car after the crash, car was driveable with minor cosmetic defects.
http://www.macrodynamix.com/potw_en.htm
guess what , it was 10 years ago and nobody heard about his bumper since :/ - carve, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This article smells pretty fishy to me. However, there are a lot of misconceptions about combustion here, so I'd like to clear that up.
There are two main types of combustion.
1) Deflegration. The flame front moves at tens of meters per second. All internal combustion engines currently in use run on deflegration (yes- even diesels. They deflegrate when the fuel comes in contact with air that has been heated through compression). In a piston engine, your fuel charge burns relatively slowly and expands at it burns. This is constant pressure combustion (remember that, from T-s diagrams in thermodynamics?)
2) Detonation. The flame front moves at HUNDREDS of meters per second. Your charge burns practically instantaneously. This is constant VOLUME combustion. Your charge burns completely before it begins expanding, creating a large pressure spike.
I've worked with pulsed detonation engines in the past. A PDE is just like a pulse jet (like the V-1 "buzz bomb" in WWII). with the exception of using detonation instead of deflegration (the Germans were trying to make a PDE, but were unsuccessful). Pulse Jet efficiency is in the low single-digit range. PDE efficiency has the potential to be greater than that of a high-bypass turbofan!
Now, you're getting the same energy out of the fuel regardless of how you burn it, and cars already have nearly 100% complete combustion, so you might be wondering where the extra power is coming from. The answer is "compression". Jet engines and piston engines spend a LOT of energy to run their compressors or their compression stroke. That is power that is no longer available to be used for useful work. If you remember your T-s diagrams, to find the work out of an Otto or Brayton cycle engine, you subtract the legth of the energy addition line from the length of the power output line. The compression can take between 30 and 90% of the power that was generated. With detonation, we get our compression, essentially, for free!
I have no idea what this guys engine looks like or how it is supposed to work, but if he has found a way to eliminate the compression stroke then he is onto something. That isn't what it sounded like though. It sounded like he said he was claiming to get more complete combustion, which is bunk. Also, I don't get the whole "12-stroke" thing. Is just repeatedly compressing and expanding the same warm gas? If so, that is a waste. - ramiro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"all inventions that have patents are working inventions. This invention has a patent. Therefore this invention works."
FALSE. Patents are PRESUMED valid. There are a lot of patented inventions that are sold to the public and have never been proven.
Ex.: Radiation protection patches for cell phones. The FTC went after the guys who were selling the anti-radiation patches and they are now prohibited from marketing it
Zethris, you're the freaking ignorant idiot here. Go back to fark.com - kafka47, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7He lives in Vancouver BC and my friend plays chess with him. Really knows his stuff. Brilliant man.
- oringo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I couldn't find any diagram or picture of his gun engine, but there is a wikipage detailing his gun engine design: http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Gun_Engine
- empty2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4If you look at it long enough you will realize that it is a "chambered" turbine engine
A jet engine with chambers, pistons instead of fan blades
The real benefit seems to be that even if the efficiency is even that of a standard V8 or even 4 cylinder you gain the energy loss due to the piston changing direction on the end of every stroke
Also it seems that the engine can “run on air”. After the engine is hot it cools off by running a few intermittent air only cycles. The air draws off heat from the engine and expands cooling the engine and using up heat energy that may have been lost. You could also imagine that a water injector could be used also to cool off the engine and allow it to run as a steam engine for those few cycles. - RedSpar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I remember back in the '80s Smokey Yunick (famous racecar builder) came up with an engine somewhat similar to this one called the "Hot Vapor Cycle" engine. It greatly increased thermal efficiency of an internal combustion engine.
A standard 4 cylinder engine outfitted with his apparatus easily made 400-500hp and V-8s over 1000. All with mileage in the high 80's to 100s
It worked on the principle that if you raised the fuel/air mixture temperature high enough it would cause prefect vaporization of the fuel increasing the efficiency of the burn in the combustion chamber by a large percentage. (in normal fuel injection or carburetted engines, gasoline stays in suspended liquid droplet form)
The story got big press and he made the cover Hot Rod magazine. He had working prototypes that were tested in the magazine as well.
Apparently the military tested it and soon after all publicity on the engine went away. Smokey would not talk about the engine anymore and seemed very annoyed with the government. hmmm
If you Google "Smokey Yunick hot vapor cycle" you'll see a lot more info about it. - rushiku, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@myfawnwy: That is refering to BioPerformance (obvious from the title), BP is a Multi-Level Marketing scheme that sells magic pills that supposedly increase gas mileage. (a friend of mine was sucked into it and contacted me about the opportunity)
It's easily researchable, highly contronversial and 'flammable' (likely to cause a flame war)
Questions I have yet to find an answer for:
Why is this product being offered through an MLM? If it's that good, why didn't BP just get a contract as an additive to be added at the refinery?
Why is the company headed by a religious evangelist, with a history of running MLM scams? (Lowell Mims)
Why hasn't BP provided substantial evidence to support their claims, as requested by the BBB? (see BioPerformance on the Texas BBB site)
Why does BP smell strongly of napthelene, aka: mothballs, aka: old trick to improve a car's performance long enough to sell it?
I know, it's OT. BP proponents, you know where the red thumb is. - diggless, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5he doesn't have patents, just filings. I think he is full of crap. None of his comments even hint at a fundamental understanding of the issues involved.
I am calling shenanigans. - opnotic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Wow... I just better read the rest of the article instead of scanning... (scanning can be good though for voodoo science stuff so you don't get bedazzled). So he answers my question about the energy used to compress the air in that he takes that super heated air and is able to get a few free strokes out of it every number of cycles...
But wow... he goes on to talk about this solving unemployment. It just seems flaky. Any motor (be it gas fueled or otherwise) can be turned into a generator... so this technology... (if our current technology is so bad) could also cause coal plants (for example) to be better at making electricity. He doesn't touch on that... but he does speculate on how money saved can go toward reducing unemployment and more even. I'm gonna call flake on this.
Oh, and did he really say that he doesn't think we should use up all our hydrogen like we are doing with oil?!?! - Jozer99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Do you guys know anything about the laws of thermodynamics? If you do,you know that there is a certain maximum efficiency that any given engine design can attain. The efficiency of gasoline engines is usually given as 20-30%. This seems low. However, when you do out the equations, the maximum efficiency a gasoline engine could possibly have in earths atmosphere is only about 30%. This means we are around 80-90% efficient already. The reason for the limitation is heat. Like almost all power sources we have, gasoline engines use chemical energy to create heat, and use the heat to create power. The limit of the efficiency is based on the ratio of the absolute temperatures of the fuel during combustion, and the exhaust. Since no matter what we do to a gasoline engine, it will put out exhaust at around room temperature (probably above), there is no way to make the gasline engine 100% efficient, which would require the exhaust to be expelled at absolute 0 (-273.3 C, -425 F)
- ziks, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9I like how he claims that the inefficiency of heat engines is due to "poor design". Yet even a casual university physics education would have told him that it's due to the laws of thermodynamics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_engine#Efficiency
It's not possible to get a heat engine close to 100% efficient without cooling the radiator down to near absolute zero. - chiapet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4In 1886, Gottlieb Daimler built the first car. and not much has changed
the internal combustion engine is dated and needs to go - troon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"I do believe that Hydrogen should not be wasted as oil resources have been, so my advice is to rethink the fuel cell technology."
Yeah, because hydrogen is quite rare... - kordless, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6The best comment is from the first part:
"One day, busy with trying to develop a theory of anti-gravity, *I had been moved to Earth by my son Greg* (I have three sons and a daughter). Greg challenged me to improve combustion engines, before completing my anti-gravity theory."
Looks like this guy is from another planet and just moved here. Maybe that explains the prior anti-gravity research! - ophello, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@stevieB
Dude, they would still need energy. Antigravity isnt free energy. It would still need an engine or power source. - Haapi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Diesel engines explode fuel, gasoline engines combust it. The characteristics of his engine as described go with that.
The floating pistons are what allow the formerly wasted heat to be employed to perform more work. I would think that would allow timing to be sufficiently elastic for it to perform as he describes. A comment further down this digg describes the design as a kind of turbine with pistons instead of blades. Good insight, I think.
To eliminate the radiator and most of the requirements for a transmission is a huge gain, just saving the weight. Would there also be applications for such engines driving electric generators, either in hybrid cars, or to power trucks like locomotives? I dunno. - Anchoret, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I can't believe this has gone on for so long without someone pointing out that the propellants in artillery and small arms ("guns") do NOT explode or detonate. They are consumed in a controlled (and inefficient) burn. These propellants are graded by the speed of their burn.
Much effort is taken to insure that they can not detonate or explode, as the consequences can be fatal. A known example discovered some years ago was with ultra-light target loads of Hercules Bullseye in revolvers.
The only explosions are in the small fulminate primers that initiate the burn sequence. - GregMote, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You probably should have mentioned that the link is the patent for the gun-engine. I was pleased to see that the patent actually explains why he calls it a gun-engine. But I will let you read that for yourself. I am still very sceptical that this would work as it seems a lot more complicated that a regular ICE. PS: The patent has the worst diagrams I have ever seen.
- klang, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The refreshing thing about the article is that THAT is exactly what he expects. He knows the consequences of a widespread use of his engine. He knows, that nobody will be interested in this technology until oil is pretty much exhausted
- lost84001, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The "Inauthentic Paper Detector" is *****.
I just posted some gibberish from a spam message and it tells me it's 96.2% authentic.
That site doesn't confirm a damn thing. - drakaan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4To iMactel: Look up "Bourke Engine", which seems to be a similar concept, if not the same...it's also a 70-year-old design. Saw something about "the politics of war-time decision-making" being the reason it never got popular. The Bourke design is a 1-stroke, instead of a 12-stroke, though.
I have to admit, the article does smell a bit, though... - memerot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I looked around on the 'directory' they have for the gun engine (http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Gun_Engine) and found this gem:
"Prototype
Destroyed from too much torque to shaft. Presently machinging another one."
Great. So his gun engine blew itself up and he doesn't even have a prototype. - sirplus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3outstanding! you gotta love this guy. naysayers, lighten up, he's trying to do something very useful at a time when oil companies are ruining everything. i hope he raises some dough and gets to see some actual product developed with his invention during his lifetime. the engineering concepts are sound, and i love his attitude. the world needs people like this so give him some cred.
- SystemsGuy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Birdlady - Whilst the men in black suits may exist, the men in white suits with the butterfly nets do exist - and are knocking on your door right now.
Do you *really* think that Japan - the most innovate car designers today, in a country with as high a dependency on imported oil as the US - are not doing everything they can to improve engine efficiency?
Oh. wait. The men in black suits made them put a gas engine in the hybrids because the wanted a gas tank.
Do you want a more efficient racing engine in your car? Great - you can actually do it today, you just have to accept a bit of a higher failure rate (eg your engine is good for 5k miles), and a bit less safety.
Someone go pick up a physics book and take a look at thermodynamics. Thank god some Digg readers actually have.
Oh. wait. The men in black suits wrote the physics book. - candre23, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Some of what this guy claims is true.
The 4-cycle gasoline internal combustion engine IS only about 20% efficient.
You DO get considerably more efficiency from detonation than from combustion.
The idea of detonating fuel instead of simply burning it is not that extreme - that's how diesel engines work. I've often wondered why there was no engine that detonated gasoline instead of burning it. The answer I was given (from mechanics and teachers) is that gasoline is TOO energetic, and any engine strong enough to contain the explosions over a long period of time would be too heavy to be practical. If this guy has somehow solved the problem, then he's a genius.
However, like most things that are too good to be true, this probably isn't. If he has a patent on this engine and it's "12-stroke" process, then he should have no problem ACTUALLY EXPLAINING how it works. This is not the first "revolutionary" engine technology that was all set to change the world. None of the others stood up to actual scientific scrutiny. I wonder if this one will. -
Show 51 - 100 of 175 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is