Shaul Yaakoby, CTO and Inventor, Gal Fridman, CMO and Maya Gonik, Head of Business Development check out an Aquarius engine
Posted on 04/29/2016 10:51:22 AM PDT by DJ Taylor
Aquarius’s new take on internal combustion engines will be the big leap forward that vehicles need, says company founder.
The notoriously conservative car business – autos, after all, are still largely powered by the internal combustion engine, developed nearly 150 years ago – is in for big changes, according to Gal Fridman, chief marketing officer and co-founder of Aquarius Engines.
“Our enhanced engine design uses energy much more efficiently, and eliminates the valves and rods that cause energy loss,” he said. “If a car equipped with a modern standard internal combustion engine can go about 600 kilometers on a tank of gas, ours can more than double that.”
Founded in 2014 by Fridman, CTO Shaul Yaakoby and CEO Ariel Gorfung, Aquarius is the latest challenger to the hegemony of the internal combustion engine – the piston-driven machine that generates energy to turn wheels and open and close valves, providing the power that enables a several-ton hunk of steel, aluminum, and plastic to move.
Developed over a number of years in the mid-1800s, the internal combustion engine was first patented in 1860, and was in commercial production by the early 1900s.
“Over the years there have been incremental changes in IC engines, with the most recent innovation the development of the turbo engine, which uses air to pressure and power,” said Fridman. “But those have been very incremental, nothing like our take on engine technology in the Aquarius engine.”
Instead of the 4, 6, or 8 pistons that thrust up and down to turn the valves that move the wheels, the Aquarius engine features a horizontal-moving cylinder that generates energy to power two electric generators that power the car. The result is a much smaller engine without the thousands of complicated and hard-to-replace parts in standard engines; a small, efficient power-generating machine with fewer parts to wear out, and fewer parts to distribute energy to – meaning that there is less chance for the energy to dissipate, said Fridman.
“The Aquarius converts the piston’s movement into energy, which is immediately transferred to the electric generators instead of being dissipated to different components, like in standard IC engines. As a result, we can be twice as efficient, retaining double the energy and enabling drivers to travel as much as 1,300 kilometers on a single tank of gas, under ideal conditions. And the cars will not be more expensive than the ones currently on the market.”
More power and efficiency – and radically lower fuel costs – would no doubt be welcome by consumers. But would the industry – including the hundreds of thousands of garages, the tens of thousands of parts makers, the thousands of dealers, and the hundreds of manufacturers who are all part of the internal combustion ecosystem? And, according to Fridman, just setting up a new production facility for vehicles with slight variations on internal combustion engines could cost between $1 and $ 2 billion; how much would it cost to build a new infrastructure for an entire industry?
Many more billions, obviously – but according to Fridman, that will not be an impediment to the adoption of Aquarius engines. “If it were strictly up to industry, there might be some hesitation – but in this case, it is not up to industry, but to government, which has mandated a sharp drop in emissions for vehicles by 2020.”
Wankel engines provide a lot of power per pound of engine but at the price of not being that efficient. Nothing wrong with the technology (other than getting seals to work) it is just a technology without many applications. We live in a world where MPG is more important than HP per pound of engine.
Looks like they improved the Wankel engine.
Without some sort of diagram I call BS.
Shaul Yaakoby, CTO and Inventor, Gal Fridman, CMO and Maya Gonik, Head of Business Development check out an Aquarius engine
The problem with the Wankel was a lack of complete burn of the fuel and consequently, exhaust temperatures. An engineer did patent a fix for this by adopting an oval ejection port. This helped increase the burn time and reduced the exhaust temp.
My contacts tell me that Mazda has currently tabled the Wankel, but is investigating the patent. No word as to when or if they will adopt, bring back, etc.
Maya Goink?
Average power use of a car is not that great. A generator that can create a little more than average power use with a supercap or battery for acceleration could make for a very fun car to drive.
Found some sketchy info on the internet (thanks for giving the name, Aquarius).
It looks like it might be a free-piston internal combustion engine directly driving a voice-coil type electric generator. Output goes to power electric motor drive for shaft power to vehicle wheels.
This is not a new idea. At least 40 years old.
Head of Business Development looks kind of cute.
He's got that bass ackwards. If there is profit to be made, private industry would be the best vehicle to advance this technology.
Remember when the Wankel rotary engine was going to be the wave of the future? Is this another untried engine that will be a disappointment?
...
Orbital Engine, too.
Toyota is now getting 40% thermal efficiency from their gas engines in their hybrid systems.
They call her "Maya and Maya Knot."
Surely another technological breakthrough that can save the world and Israel will be condemned for harming Palestinian women and children.
Wrong. The Saudis want low oil. When oil is low then the capital investment in energy-saving projects (like the one in the article) is low. The Saudis only stop profiting off oil if there is a game-changing invention which reduces demand.
The inefficiency of power conversion is not in cams and valves, it is in heat. Most, like 80% of the wasted energy is heat, this engine has that loss.
It’s a hybrid that burns the liquid petroleum fuel in the engine to create electricity for a motor, instead of back at the coal-fired power plant.
That’s what I read. I could be wrong.
Carnot efficiency rules still apply, unless it operates at very high temps and pressures, it will be less than 50% efficient like all the other IC engines.
Exactly what I was thinking. The article says very little about the design, but in the picture from the article, the man appears to be holding an aluminum part.
Sorry fellas, you ain't gonna get there if you are using that as your engine constructing material.
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