Motorhead Messiah

"Check it out. It's actually a jet engine," says Johnathan Goodwin, with a low whistle.

Goodwin leads me over to a red 2005 H3 Hummer that's up on jacks, its mechanicals removed. He aims to use the turbine to turn the Hummer into a tricked-out electric hybrid. Like most hybrids, it'll have two engines, including an electric motor. But in this case, the second will be the turbine, Goodwin's secret ingredient. Whenever the truck's juice runs low, the turbine will roar into action for a few seconds, powering a generator with such gusto that it'll recharge a set of "supercapacitor" batteries in seconds. This means the H3's electric motor will be able to perform awesome feats of acceleration and power over and over again, like a Prius on steroids. What's more, the turbine will burn biodiesel, a renewable fuel with much lower emissions than normal diesel; a hydrogen-injection system will then cut those low emissions in half. And when it's time to fill the tank, he'll be able to just pull up to the back of a diner and dump in its excess french-fry grease--as he does with his many other Hummers. Oh, yeah, he adds, the horsepower will double--from 300 to 600.

"Conservatively," Goodwin muses, scratching his chin, "it'll get 60 miles to the gallon. With 2,000 foot-pounds of torque. You'll be able to smoke the tires. And it's going to be superefficient."

He laughs. "Think about it: a 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!"

Imagine a rush hour traffic jam with thousands of jet engined cars stopping and starting bumper to bumper.

All those plastic bumpers would be melted all over the highway. It might help fill in the pot holes though.

I just finnished reading the rest of the article. it's so full of crap it's incredible. Stuff like:

"I can go next door to Ace Hardware and buy a DC electric motor, go out to my four-wheel-drive truck, remove the transmission and engine, bolt the electric motor onto the back of the transfer case, put a series of lead-acid batteries up to 240 volts in the back of the bed, and we're good to go. I guarantee you I could drive all around town and do whatever I need, go home at night, and hook up a couple of battery chargers, plug one into an outlet, and be good to go the next day."

Sure he can. His grade 7 "edukation" sure shines through.

Then there's a comment:
""It was an influence," concedes Hummer general manager Martin Walsh, of the EcoTrek vehicles. "We wanted to be environmentally responsible by having engines in Hummers that run on renewable fuels." But until I contacted Hummer for this story, GM didn't know that the man behind those machines was none other than Goodwin."

What B.S. and a slap in the face to the hundreds of people who have been playing around with bio diesel and developing the process of converting veggie oil so that it could run in near any diesel for the last 30 years now.

It certainly wasn't this Goodwin fellow who claims he can filter deep fryer grease though a pair of old blue jeans, pour it in the tank and drive off.
Oh it will work in a warm engine- for a while. But it won't be long before he destroys a very expensive injector pump and gums up a very expensive engine.

The article is so full of outrageous claims, it's pathetic, but I'm sure it will send more than a few back yard inventors running off to the hardware store for more supplies of wire, gardern hose, plastic pails etc. to rig up their own version of a deep fryer grease, hydrogen boosted volvo station wagons.

I predict new car sales are going to increase shortly...

Sure the H1 was a Diesel, but the old motor is a boat anchor compared to a duramax.

If Hydrogen injection does increase fuel mileage in Diesels I'd sure like to here more about about it, although with more science and less personality profile.

As for where to get Hydrogen, there is 2 molucules of it in every molecule of Natural Gas, so its piped into my house. I'd just need to crack and compress it. If it meant paying 1.50/gallon for Diesel instead of $3.20, because my fuel mileage doubled, I'd find away to get hydrogen.

Ken Lay and Bush thought we could use Hydrogen as a primary fuel. If it made my Cummins get 30 mpg, why would I need that? I'll just use it as additive.

I'd have to see the science, first, before a believe the article, however.

"I think I detect the faint order of bovine waste frying."

Hey, good plan. I wonder if you get as much energy from fired bovine waste, as you get from KFC waste?

"However, there is a whole bunch of natural gas kits you can buy to plumb into a diesel, but are they cost effective?"

In all seriousness, natural gas diesels have an unexpected problem. When natural gas is injected into a diesel engine, the gas has less inertia than fuel particles, and does not disperse as well as liquid fuel. The net result is incomplete combustion, and soot. You actually get more soot out of a natural gas injected diesel, than a liquid fuel injected diesel. As for mixing the natural gas with the air, before injection, is certainly playing with fire. It is an explosive mixture, and any stray spark, backfire, escaped gas, or collision.....watch out!

I recall Volvo had a turbine-electric hybrid demo car a few years back. The idea was that the turbine was fairly small and would run for longish periods at its most efficient speed and throttle settings to turn a generator to feed the motors and send excess power to batteries. It wouldn’t make much sense to be constantly firing it up and shutting it down, since those are usually long, slow processes for turbines, and also are where they produce their worst emissions. And while at their most efficient turbines are more efficient than piston IC engines, I’m highly skeptical about reaching 60 mpg in a Hummer.

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