Posted on 05/21/2011 2:18:29 PM PDT by Windflier
Despite shifting into higher gear within the consumer's green conscience, hybrid vehicles are still tethered to the gas pump via a fuel-thirsty 100-year-old invention: the internal combustion engine.
However, researchers at Michigan State University have built a prototype gasoline engine that requires no transmission, crankshaft, pistons, valves, fuel compression, cooling systems or fluids. Their so-called Wave Disk Generator could greatly improve the efficiency of gas-electric hybrid automobiles and potentially decrease auto emissions up to 90 percent when compared with conventional combustion engines.
The engine has a rotor that's equipped with wave-like channels that trap and mix oxygen and fuel as the rotor spins. These central inlets are blocked off, building pressure within the chamber, causing a shock wave that ignites the compressed air and fuel to transmit energy.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
You guys are totally off. DiskWave just sounds so much COOLER than a Wankel.
It’s all in the marketing, you know. :)
Sounds like a combined scramjet and a wankel
oh great...NOW what do I do with these little green pills ?
Two words, Tesla Turbine.
There is no cooler name than Wankel. I love saying - WANKEL!
The Wankel was a major change in the ICE paradigm. Perhaps this “wave engine” is yet another. Lots of things to like about its performance characteristics !! But its a damn long way from production.......And I’m old... >PS
Cool. More room for chrome.
Thanks for the flash back!
I remember reading an article about the Wankle when Mazda first put it in a car. They said the mileage was slightly worse and it wasn’t quite a clean but experts say it is the ideal power plant for a car.
I said - ok then.
-DON’T YANKEL MY WANKEL-
So, you think the auto industry would forgo the sale of an entire new generation technology fleet of 200 million cars and trucks...because it would hurt the oil companies?
You'll have to explain that one to me.
There are so many interesting technological developments going on out there, that you could spend all of your time reading about them, and still not catch up.
Some are going to change the world, while others are going to be good ideas that never went anywhere. It's good stuff for a lazy Saturday afternoon, though.
Maybe the inventors are keeping exclusive rights for now.
Personally, I believe that since it was invented at public University using DARPA money...it should be public domain.
I had that thought too, but the Tesla Turbine worked well only with laminar flow. This thing clearly uses well mixed, turbulent flow.
I will remain a doubter if the best they can do is produce a small jpeg and someone who can’t describe it in understandable English.
and never makes it to market.
If not, it will be because it's not as good as they say it is.
Because, if it is as good as they say, then either we make it, the Chinese make it, the Indians make it, or the Russians make it. And, if we don't make it and someone else does, I will be the first to denounce any politician who tries to impede its importation, jobs be damned.
I grew up in the Detroit suburbs in the middle 60’s. I remember my dad pointing that car out to me a couple diffrent times on Plymouth Road. Same era Grantelli’s turbine Indy car.
“Personally, I believe that since it was invented at public University using DARPA money...it should be public domain.”
You sure about that? That would be communism.
Had an 83 (?) GSL-SE......oh, that was a blast....when it ran.
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