Waste Heat - Bane of Cars & Planets...

It's entirely amazing to me that after 100 years of internal combustion engine technology, we still only use about 20% of the energy released by burning fuel to make motion.

Think about it: only 20 cents of every dollar spent on gas or diesel moves your ride. The other 80 cents of every buck is intentionally dumped as "waste" heat out of radiators and tail pipes. This was freakin' ridiculous in the latter part of the 20th century, let alone the beginning of the 21st!!

If you're only using 1/5th of the energy to move a car, you should be able to do it just as well by now with an engine 1/4th the size, and that's allowing for mechanical friction losses you can't eliminate.

But dumping 80% of your available energy as heat into the ambient environment? Bullshit! That is just plain...un-American!

I read about a guy in Popular Mechanics who was injecting water into engine cylinders on every other power stroke instead of fuel & air. Good idea, and it might get you a 40% improvement in efficiency or so. Say now we're still DUMping half the energy as heat. Still bullshit!

There is a way.

The key is to combine internal combustion, hybrid-electric, and one further technology: Stirling-cycle heat engines. Stirling engines have been available technology but overlooked for decades. Foolishly so.

What needs to happen:

1. An efficient-as-possible small gasoline or diesel engine drives an electric generator to charge the hybrid's batteries.

2. As much heat generated by the internal combustion engine as possible is fed into one or more stirling engines, which also drive electrical generators to charge the batteries. (Any remaining heat can be used for interior climate control)

3. An electric motor or motors fed by the batteries and/or generator plant physically moves the vehicle.

I challenge world universities and auto-manufacturers to develop a solution to the "heat waste problem" and bring it to market as rapidly and reliably as possible.

Note that waste heat recovery through stirling generators and other heat-to-electric technology could be applied to numerous industries other than aoutomotive.

Power-plant smoke stacks, fossil-fuel-powered ships, and myriad other industrial activities could have "waste" heat recovered as electricity.

We could be getting a LOT more bang for our energy bucks.

Oil & coal companies, if this revolution taking off scares the heck out of your finance departments, maybe you should consider diversifying into the waste heat recovery business. After all, you are ENERGY companies, right? How about drastically reducing your climate change image, hmm?

Sincerely,

Dan Stafford
Publisher & Creator
The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal