New "Shockwave" Engine Design Solves Energy Crisis

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Danpascooch

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Apr 16, 2009
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Bruiser80 said:
danpascooch said:
This doesn't make any sense... how do they direct the force of the ignited gas to only one direction? Wouldn't the explosion provide an equal torque clockwise and counterclockwise thus keeping the turning stationary?
In addition, where is the compression of the fuel-air occurring? Spark/glow plug?

Implementation in 3 years? Try 10-20.
I wouldn't write it off yet, I'm sure it does in fact work, I just think the Escapist article didn't explain it properly
 

Jamous

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Apr 14, 2009
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BlueSinbad said:
Jamous said:
Very cool. Just out of interest, why has nobody done it before, I mean, with the huge push to waste less energy it just seems to make sense... :S
Because "Secretly" these big companies don't want to make it, because that would mean the oil companies blahblahblah wouldn't make as much money etc...BLAHBLAHBLAH ya know what I mean? The rich people want to stay rich.
Yeeeeah I get your point.
 

GeorgW

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Aug 27, 2010
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Smart idea, hopefully it will be put to use sometime this century!

BabySinclair said:
20 to 1 it gets bought by OPEC or a major car company and never sees the light of day
I won't take that bet!
 

BabySinclair

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Apr 15, 2009
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Istvan said:
BabySinclair said:
20 to 1 it gets bought by OPEC or a major car company and never sees the light of day
Because obviously car companies would have no motivation to sell cars that use 90% less fuel than their competitors, and it's not like opec nations wouldn't mind cutting production to maintain current prices and have their oil reserves last 10 times longer.
It depends on its efficiency with how long it goes without sufficient wear to impede its use. If the new engine lasts too long the car companies won't let it out. They make money every time an engine needs new parts. It's a secondary source of revenue. Either the customer will buy the parts to get it repaired or flat out buy a new car. In both cases the company makes more money. They don't want you to keep the same car for 15-20 years. If it has problems which drives you to buy a new one after 7 they are very happy. The new engines they are rolling out that last longer were invented decades ago but only coming out now because they have too. Combustion wears the engine and the more inefficient the better in their opinion. That said, if it lasts only as long as a regular engine then they will fight for it assuming it can be made inexpensively.
 

draythefingerless

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Jul 10, 2010
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FarleShadow said:
cursedseishi said:
As do you then, bub. The article makes nothing of implying it will solve the crisis. It is, however, saying that its going to help get hybrid cars more efficient, and with the higher price of gas, that means a lot.

As for alternative energies, that isn't just solar or wind, its a broad term used to describe anything besides the use of current coal and oil methods. But hey, if we can't use oil, and alternative energy is a joke, I guess we could run off your inflated ego and sense of worth, that should buy us a few years at least.

Or nuclear, or fusion when they get it to work, or Geothermal, etc, etc. Or we could pedantically argue with someone who already agrees that the engine is a fine idea, but dislikes fantastic claims like the one IN THE TITLE OF THIS ARGUMENT. Tada!
HA! Fusion....you actually believe there is any sort of future in that...thats cute.

Anyway,

Nice engine, one problem. Oil spending is worst in countries that wont get this. India, China, Africa, South America. Their industries and their transports are unneficient. Its not only the western society that is spending the most gas. This engine is fine, but like all new ideas, it only reaches a percentage of what it needs to reach. Unless you mass sell it in EVERY car out there, everywhere you can....its going to have a small impact.

Any impact is good thou.
 

Wicky_42

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Sep 15, 2008
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danpascooch said:
Wicky_42 said:
Ok, that's pretty cool. Why hasn't this idea been come up with before - I mean, where are the car companies' research funds going?! If it works well enough, it could be pretty sweet, and might even make alternative fuels easier to deploy - hydrogen, for example.

danpascooch said:
This doesn't make any sense... how do they direct the force of the ignited gas to only one direction? Wouldn't the explosion provide an equal torque clockwise and counterclockwise thus keeping the turning stationary?
No, the curves in the channels create vectored emissions. Think of how a wind-turbine works, or a water turbine. Similar idea.
But a wind turbine is hit by wind perpendicularly to the turbine, from what I read in the article it sounds like this ignites gas while it's sitting between two of the raised ridges.
No, the gas is in the centre of a spiral of channels, so its expansion out through the parallel spirals generates angular motion.
 

Danpascooch

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Apr 16, 2009
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Wicky_42 said:
danpascooch said:
Wicky_42 said:
Ok, that's pretty cool. Why hasn't this idea been come up with before - I mean, where are the car companies' research funds going?! If it works well enough, it could be pretty sweet, and might even make alternative fuels easier to deploy - hydrogen, for example.

danpascooch said:
This doesn't make any sense... how do they direct the force of the ignited gas to only one direction? Wouldn't the explosion provide an equal torque clockwise and counterclockwise thus keeping the turning stationary?
No, the curves in the channels create vectored emissions. Think of how a wind-turbine works, or a water turbine. Similar idea.
But a wind turbine is hit by wind perpendicularly to the turbine, from what I read in the article it sounds like this ignites gas while it's sitting between two of the raised ridges.
No, the gas is in the centre of a spiral of channels, so its expansion out through the parallel spirals generates angular motion.
So you're saying the expansion forces it to hit the turbine perpendicularly at a high speed? That actually makes a lot of sense, I'm sure pistons waste a lot of energy by traveling in two different directions, so this might really be a major breakthrough.
 

thedeathscythe

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Aug 6, 2010
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FarleShadow said:
I'm sorry, but I'm getting more annoyed about every little invention that 'solves the X crisis' while still using oil.

No people, recycling or Shockwaving isn't saving the world, its just not screwing it up as fast. End of!
They said it solved the energy crisis, not the environment crisis. As in, he's talking about gasoline usage, we only have a finite amount and we consume it much faster than it takes to renew, so by the huge amount this reduces the usage of gas, it will help solve energy crisis. Not once did it say anything about helping the environment, and saving the world. Those are two completely different battles.

OT: I wonder when these will be taken on. Solar powered cars got bought by the oil industry so that no one could make them, hopefully he doesn't sell this to them.
 

Numachuka

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Sep 3, 2010
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Daystar Clarion said:
Why did I see the word 'engine' and automatically think of something you base a game off of and not what you use to power a car?
Because this is a video game site.
 

The Wooster

King Snap
Jul 15, 2008
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Man, does that thing look awesome. It looks like some kind of badass magic summon shield.

"Oh yeah my car runs on unleaded and HELIOS, GOD OF THE SUN!"



BRUM!
 

WanderingFool

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Apr 9, 2009
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Cool, and if it actually does work, awesome...

FarleShadow said:
I'm sorry, but I'm getting more annoyed about every little invention that 'solves the X crisis' while still using oil.

No people, recycling or Shockwaving isn't saving the world, its just not screwing it up as fast. End of!
... Okay... good luck with that...
 

SyphonX

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Mar 22, 2009
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Why do people keep trying to invent gadgets for the energy-crisis. Do they really think it's because no one has made something decent yet? Hint: It's not that no one has invented the light bulb yet, it's because the world is run by a bunch of oligarchs, sadists and sociopaths.

If you have the drive and are savvy enough to invent something like this, then take it one step further and start creating your own corporation, and your own organization. We need numbers folks, not 1 or 2 engineers every 5 years that get bought out, silenced or ridiculed.

There will never be new technology if someone can't profit off of inefficiency and the ancient Babylonian slave system, where one must constantly work in order to consistently re-purchase items that are designed to break and be inefficient. Modernized slavery through inefficiency.
 

Darkauthor81

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Feb 10, 2007
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So, what if this does get implemented? Here's what I see happening.

More efficient engine in a lighter car cuts fuel demand. Fuel consumption and cost drops.

Yay!

But, because fuel costs drop, the real reason why fuel costs are sky rocketing remains. Asia is pulling itself out of third world country status. Which means the people there want and can afford cars. There, as is everywhere else in the world, the price of gas is twice what Americans pay. This is a huge obstacle for most of them to overcome and keep many from buying cars.

This new engine makes fuel costs drop. More Asians now buy cars because they can afford the gas. They consume the gas that we suddenly aren't consuming. Gas prices and consumption go right back to what they were.

This is the same reason why the conservative's push to "drill baby drill" wont solve anything either. Pumping more gas into the system isn't going to lower demand.

Science may stall the outcome, but the end is inevitable. There's just too many people in the world.

I'd like to be proven wrong here and believe there is some hope if someone here can correct me on this.

Edit: I'm not implying Asians are evil or less deserving of cars. The higher the number of people that want something of limited quantity, the higher the price goes. Asia is now in a position to want gas. Which greatly increases the number of people who want gas and so the gas prices go up.
 

SaintWaldo

Interzone Vagabond
Jun 10, 2008
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The third to last paragraph just falls off the face of the web. I wonder what Greg said?

Greg Tito said:
...

The design is simple once you wrap your brain around the concept. A gas-air mixture enters the center of the disc and as the rotor turns, the mixture is compressed because the channels are blocked. A spark ignites the gas, sending shockwaves of energy inwards which turns the rotor and starts the process over again. The turning disk powers a generator, allowing much less gas to be used to create

...
What does it create? Banana gum?
 

risenbone

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Sep 3, 2010
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Well it's a little too little to late kind of thing. Wonder if he could get it to work with diseal which is evan more efficent than gas due to not needing a spark (diseal has a lower flash point and so it can ignite under compresion).

As to where the car industry is spending their R&D dollars it's in silly things like battery power (which for the last 10 years hasn't really progessed much) and zero emmision stuff like Hydrogen power cells where the only emmision is water.

Batteries are fail because they can't go very far till you need to recharge the batteries and then they take 12 hours to recharge making a trip to the next town take a matter of days rather than a couple of hours.

Hydrogens draw backs is while the stuff is plentiful it's always attached to something else which takes energy to seperate and then you have to store it somehow which is just as tricky because it's pretty volitile stuff on it's own. However there are already Hydrogen filling points in California and Honda has a family car that runs on a Hydrogen powercell that developes 100kw. GM had a concept a fair while ago that pretty much did the same thing but has never made it to market. The advantage being that it has the same range on a tank that a normal petrol car does and if you plugged it in at home you would get a check from the power company because 100kw is enought to power several houses.