Omega 1 engine?

[mckenzie.keith]

I don't understand why they don't just convert to burning hydrogen.

It's good enough for the sun.

If the sun worked by burning hydrogen, first of all there would have to be a lot of oxygen on the sun, and second of all, it would have burned out long ago (millions or billions of years ago).

ICEs can run on hydrogen but that is a major development and research project in its own right. I feel like direct synthesis of hydrocarbon fuels is more promising so we can keep using the engines we already have and know how to make. Also, when storing fuels, it is a lot easier if they are liquids.

Maybe the best thing is to pursue all of these concepts simultaneously. Maybe in the end there will be some mix of solutions that are used. We probably don't know enough to pick the winner now.

 

[kiwin]

It's ALMOST possible to synthesise liquid hydrocarbon fuel now. Porsche have a "working" plant in Brazil making "e-fuel". The problem is that is used an amazing amount of energy and thus is ten times the cost of gas or diesel. This problem is not going to be fixed to any great extent with scale. In addition while there is no net carbon pollution there is pollution from other products of combustion such as NOX.

So synthesised liquid fuel will never be more than a niche product for very specialised applications where nothing else will do.

 

[SloopJonB]

If the sun worked by burning hydrogen, first of all there would have to be a lot of oxygen on the sun, and second of all, it would have burned out long ago (millions or billions of years ago).

I gotta remember to use the purple.

 

[mckenzie.keith]

I gotta remember to use the purple.

I wasn't sure. Sorry. I should have given you the benefit of the doubt.

 

[mckenzie.keith]

It's ALMOST possible to synthesise liquid hydrocarbon fuel now. Porsche have a "working" plant in Brazil making "e-fuel". The problem is that is used an amazing amount of energy and thus is ten times the cost of gas or diesel. This problem is not going to be fixed to any great extent with scale.

I mean, should I believe this just because you say so? I am not convinced that the problem is insolvable. Of course it will not be as cheap as gas in the heyday of gas engines. That is probably over for good.

In addition while there is no net carbon pollution there is pollution from other products of combustion such as NOX.

This is a largely solved problem.

So synthesised liquid fuel will never be more than a niche product for very specialised applications where nothing else will do.

I think the question is how specialized, and how niche? Specialized niche products such as aircraft? What about generators operating in remote areas? Mining operations for example? Standby generators for homes? Heating for homes? Not all of these things can reasonably be replaced by electric and batteries right now. And there are still many millions of ICE cars on the road. They are not going to be replaced with electric overnight.

 

[bgytr]

Liquid piston engine looks interesting too.

 

[vokstar]

Mmmm maybe in their early days but the later engines had no problems with the sealing rings nor end seals.

Biggest problem was people considered the notional 1300cc swept area of 1 rotor section to be pretty piss poor fuel economy compared to a more conventional engine of the same size. What Mazda failed to say was there were two rotors not one so in effect it was a 2.6L engine punching out about the same HP as a big block V8, for slightly better fuel economy.

Big winner of the rotary’s are you can put your coffee cup on the air cleaner whilst running them during servicing, they literally run so smooth. The highlight of my days though of working on these gems were the day an elderly lady came in complaining of poor fuel economy. Our first tack when this happened was to ask for them to take you for a quick drive around the block. In her case being almost deaf and with no engine vibration, was to time her gear changes off the over rev buzzer. It was a very very quick drive around the block.

I wouldn't say they still have no problems, people put 2-stroke oil in the fuel and there is an kit you can get that adds some 2 stroke oil too*, but certainly was significantly better when Mazda spent a butt load of time and money on the problem. Metallurgy has come a long way since then too, but this thing doesn't appear to have any seals at all. It was funny watching the running prototype leaking fluid/oil.

The other thing is that it's meant to be really heat efficient, but it doesn't even seem to have any provision (well in prototype form) for any cooling. This thing is running extremely fine tolerances, so any thermal expansion would have to be controlled you would think or the thing will run poorly or worse yet cease up. Tolerances are another issue as machining things to the tolerances they are talking about is going to be bloody costly, potentially would have to use grinding rather than tools like you would typically use in a CNC machine. So the engine is going to be damn expensive.

*Sade owns/owned an RX8 with the conversion thats how I found out about it OTSOT

 

[kiwin]

I mean, should I believe this just because you say so? I am not convinced that the problem is insolvable. Of course it will not be as cheap as gas in the heyday of gas engines. That is probably over for good.

This is a largely solved problem.

I think the question is how specialized, and how niche? Specialized niche products such as aircraft? What about generators operating in remote areas? Mining operations for example? Standby generators for homes? Heating for homes? Not all of these things can reasonably be replaced by electric and batteries right now. And there are still many millions of ICE cars on the road. They are not going to be replaced with electric overnight.

No you shouldn't just take my word for it. You should do some judicious research. And disregard anything funded by petrochemical companies or car manufacturers not invested in BEV's ( not Porsche who are invested in electric cars). And it's in Chile, not Brazil, my mistake. NOX emissions are hardly a solved problem. There are ways to reduce them, but no way to eliminate, and reduction tends to increase fuel consumption, with the possible exception of HCCI.
Here is one such assessment. Google reveals hundreds or possibly thousands , but Google seems to be a step too far for you:

Why cars running on e-fuel can’t replace EVs

It’s made from water and air, but that doesn’t make it more sustainable.

www.theverge.com

 

[mckenzie.keith]

No you shouldn't just take my word for it. You should do some judicious research. And disregard anything funded by petrochemical companies or car manufacturers not invested in BEV's ( not Porsche who are invested in electric cars). And it's in Chile, not Brazil, my mistake. NOX emissions are hardly a solved problem. There are ways to reduce them, but no way to eliminate, and reduction tends to increase fuel consumption, with the possible exception of HCCI.
Here is one such assessment. Google reveals hundreds or possibly thousands , but Google seems to be a step too far for you:

Why cars running on e-fuel can’t replace EVs

It’s made from water and air, but that doesn’t make it more sustainable.

www.theverge.com

I think the jury is still out on the cost. And in any event my initial comment was meant to apply to a comparison between hydrogen and synthetic fuel, both of which are not currently viable (as I openly admitted).

Where I can envision stored fuels to be needed is in aviation (as your verge article mentions also) and winter heating in higher latitudes. It may seem impractical to convert solar energy to liquid fuels using an inefficient process, but it is even less practical to try to build enough batteries to run electric heating throughout the winter. And of course there is self-discharge to consider also. But I think the shear number of batteries required is the real problem. To my mind, it makes a lot more sense to try to make synthetic liquid fuels than to try to switch to hydrogen with all that entails.

As a side note, when you look at the cost of energy, it is not correct to consider only the solar panels and inverters. In a 100 percent renewable environment you would also need to have storage since the sun doesn't shine at night. I know that is obvious but for some reason people don't include the cost of storage. They say solar is cheaper than X, where X can supply power around the clock. Not a fair comparison. Grid scale batteries can help even out the daily variations (maybe weekly) but that is kind of the limit before the number of batteries becomes insane. So when considering cost of energy in a renewable grid scenario, you have to assume that there is a lot of storage. At least enough to get through the night, and perhaps a bit more than that.

And in place where winter heating is a substantial need, some provision needs to be made for that, also. Whether it is geothermal, or hydroelectric or whatever, it needs to be addressed. Cold people will burn trees if they have to. Which is OK, I guess, if the woodlands are well managed to make sure the trapped carbon biomass does not go down year after year. But otherwise not so good.

Of course all of this is just temporary until we can get fusion working.

So that is my suggested 4 prong strategy for R and D. Batteries. Hydrogen production and use. Fuel synthesis. Fusion. We may need all of it so I don't think we should pick the winners now. There should be enough people on the planet to advance all four things.

 

[kiwin]

Agree on much of that, but there are more methods of storage than batteries. There is pumped storage, compressed air, stored heat in molten salt etc etc.....

 

[mckenzie.keith]

Agree on much of that, but there are more methods of storage than batteries. There is pumped storage, compressed air, stored heat in molten salt etc etc.....

Those can all be additional prongs in the plan. But I think batteries are the only storage technology available if you want it online within a year. All the other things either take a really long time (like pumped hydro) or are still being researched. Pumped hydro can't be expanded enough to backup the whole grid overnight, but if there are good locations for new pumped hydro capacity to be installed I say lets do it.

 

[Fleetwood]

Of course all of this is just temporary until we can get fusion working.

Its been 20-30 years away for more than 50 years now; still is...

 

[mckenzie.keith]

Its been 20-30 years away for more than 50 years now; still is...

There have been some breakthroughs. Some smart people think we are finally making real progress. But yeah. You are right. It seems to always be just over the horizon.