175 000 miles!

Cars need maintenance every 3,000 miles, or every few months. Voyager, blasted by the solar winds, microasteroids, extreme radiation across the spectrum, and catapulted from planet to planet is just about due for a service and a battery check. Unfortunately, a AAA card wasn’t installed.
Seriously, cars are fascinating things. Not insofar as you’ve achieved 175,000 miles (30,000 times as far as you have to go to be considered in space), but insofar as the car actually works at all.
Consider this. When you burn fuel in air, you are causing the fuel to react with oxygen and nitrogen. The oxygen reaction gives out energy. (Carbon dioxide is in a lower energy state than the original molecules of oxygen and octane. What’s left over is what your engine gets.)
Nitrogen, though, takes energy to burn. It is much more stable than the molecules produced. When you burn nitrogen, you lose energy.
(Nitrous oxide is violently unstable, so the resulting products will almost invariably be of a massively lower energy. Because the difference is so great, you get a lot of power out. You also melt the engine, but that’s a different matter. 🙂
Because you lose energy, the engine and pumps have to work harder to get the level of output you want, which eats into their life-expectancy.
Ok, so now we’ve got all this energy. Most of it is raw heat, which is difficult to use. Heat is a very low-grade form of energy, and a car engine is really not designed to make any use of it. Most of the effort to do with heat is in getting rid of it. Car radiators are pretty crude devices at best. It doesn’t really help that the air that passes through a radiator then reaches the engine. If the radiator were really good, this design would simply transfer the heat right back onto the engine again. So, it’s actually fortunate that car radiators are amazingly inefficient. At least, until someone comes up with a better design.
The kinetic energy in the gas molecules is the only usable product. This is what causes the pistons to move, and therefore the engine to give you more than a headache.
This is where things get fun. The oil allows the pistons to move freely. Oil is damaged or destroyed by the radiated heat, which reduces the efficiency of the pistons. This, in turn, will result in more heat being generated.
An engine is therefore designed to self-destruct. As designs go, I can think of better. And, no, the changes are really quite minor and although it would take someone with better engineering skills than me, would be well within the means of the more inventive types.
Let’s start with the Nitrogen problem. Imagine, if you will, a horizontal pipe, with a branch coming off from it. The branch connects to the air intake of the engine, and the main part of the pipe allows air to go in and out freely.
Place an electrical grid at the entrance to this pipe, and attach a second to where the branch connects onto the main pipe. Connect the first grid up so that it will have a positive charge sufficient to pull a single electron off an oxygen atom.
Connect the second grid up, so that it has a negative charge. To complete the circuit, this should really be as negative as the other is positive.
As you drive, the oxygen will be charged, but the nitrogen (which takes a lot more energy to give up an electron) won’t be. The oxygen will become positive, but the nitrogen will remain neutral.
The oxygen will then be pulled by the second grid into the branch leading to the engine. The nitrogen will go down both paths, with most just staying in the main pipe.
Air has 78% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, 2% other junk. The funnel described, or anything similar, will give you something more like 20% nitrogen, 79% oxygen, 1% other junk. After subtracting the energy needed to keep the grids charged, you still end up with between 3-4 times the efficiency.
Now for this heat thing. You start with one set of molecules, with energies in various forms. You end up with a different set of molecules, aldo with energies in different forms. In all cases, these energies cannot be just anything. They have to be specific values. In addition, certain combinations are also impossible. Any energy left over, after you’ve put all you can into the new molecules, is going to be given off as heat.
Solving this is simple enough, in theory. You just need to chemically alter the fuel, or add something to it, that can act as a sponge for heat. Absorb as much as possible that you couldn’t otherwise use, making it available as kinetic energy. This you very much can use.
Figuring out the right chemicals is a challange. Why do you think there are so many additives on the market? The problem is, typical additives don’t fight the cause of inefficiency, they add to it. They work because they’re highly reactive, which just adds to the heat. They don’t make any of the existing unused energy available.
Of course, things aren’t simple in them there engines. As you increase the heat within the engine, the lowest energy state (ie: the best possible result, for the best possible efficiency) stops being so preferred. Unstable molecules become just as likely. The difference between these and what you started off with is going to be smaller. In turn, this means you’re not getting as much power for the same gas.
You’ve absolutely, positively have to keep the engine as cool as possible, without it being so cold it won’t run. In a sense, this isn’t so far from all that processor overclocking the serious geeks get into.
Here, we’re overclocking the engine, but we’re using methods that will actually do less harm to the engine, the pumps and the oil, than running the engine as standard.
We need to make a few more adjustments, though. Remember the radiator, and how it’s blasting hot air at the engine? Let’s move it to below the engine, and have the air that comes off the radiator go through the vents that face the windscreen.
This has several interesting effects. First, this design was used in Formula 1 motor racing, by the Lotus racing team. The fan drawing air through the radiator also pulls the car to the road, increasing grip. I would not try this at home, but the F1 cars built with this design were able to drive over oil slicks at 240+ mph, on bald tires, with absolutely no ill effect. Except, perhaps, on the spectators’ nerves.
Now, to improve efficiency. Phase-changers are usually the best, and the water temperature is certainly high enough to change phase very easily. The change from water to steam would cause a lot of heat to be given off right there and then. Use part of the radiator for the steam to cool down. You then compress it back to water, and use the second half of the radiator for the water to cool down.
Ok, what else can be done? Well, if you have two metals of different types sandwiched together, you have what is called a Peltier device. If you pass a current through such a device, it transfers heat from one side to the other. Your choice of metals determines how much heat you can pump this way, and how high a temperature it can work at.
The radiator is metal. Plating a radiator with another metal wouldn’t be hard. Electroplating just takes a battery, some acid, and the metal you want to plate with. It’s probably not something you’d want to do at home, although you could, but it shouldn’t be hard to find a place that’ll do this. But you’ll still need to figure out what the second metal would need to be. Sorry, you’re on your own there.
Finally, when you eventually want to slow down, you put on the brakes. This turns all that energy you’ve worked hard to keep into heat. So much for progress! But there’s an answer here, too. If instead of brake pads, you have a dynamo, you can turn all the motion into electrical energy. This is called “regenerative braking” and is popular on hybrid and electrical vehicles, as it saves as much energy as possible for later use.
On a standard car, though, it’s still good. Because it doesn’t use friction, it’s completely immune to oil, heat, cold, or anything else that affects normal mechanical brakes.
What’s more, it gives you an emergency power source. A motor is just a dynamo wired in reverse. If the gas engine fails, you run out of fuel, or some equally car-stopping event happens, all you’d have to do is turn the dynamos into motors, and you’ll be able to get some extra distance. (It’s not going to work miricles, but it might get you to a gas station or a garage, and if you’d otherwise be stuck on some godforsaken road – Ashley Phosphate, or King Street, for example, this might be the next-best thing.)
Of course, in SC, the roads are so bad and the driving so terrible that the cost of car repairs is always going to dwarf any efficiency improvements you make, anyway.

2 Replies to “175 000 miles!”

JD says:

November 24, 2003 at 00:42

Cars need maintenance every 3,000 miles, or every few months. Voyager, blasted by the solar winds, microasteroids, extreme radiation across the spectrum, and catapulted from planet to planet is just about due for a service and a battery check. Unfortunately, a AAA card wasn’t installed.
Seriously, cars are fascinating things. Not insofar as you’ve achieved 175,000 miles (30,000 times as far as you have to go to be considered in space), but insofar as the car actually works at all.
Consider this. When you burn fuel in air, you are causing the fuel to react with oxygen and nitrogen. The oxygen reaction gives out energy. (Carbon dioxide is in a lower energy state than the original molecules of oxygen and octane. What’s left over is what your engine gets.)
Nitrogen, though, takes energy to burn. It is much more stable than the molecules produced. When you burn nitrogen, you lose energy.
(Nitrous oxide is violently unstable, so the resulting products will almost invariably be of a massively lower energy. Because the difference is so great, you get a lot of power out. You also melt the engine, but that’s a different matter. 🙂
Because you lose energy, the engine and pumps have to work harder to get the level of output you want, which eats into their life-expectancy.
Ok, so now we’ve got all this energy. Most of it is raw heat, which is difficult to use. Heat is a very low-grade form of energy, and a car engine is really not designed to make any use of it. Most of the effort to do with heat is in getting rid of it. Car radiators are pretty crude devices at best. It doesn’t really help that the air that passes through a radiator then reaches the engine. If the radiator were really good, this design would simply transfer the heat right back onto the engine again. So, it’s actually fortunate that car radiators are amazingly inefficient. At least, until someone comes up with a better design.
The kinetic energy in the gas molecules is the only usable product. This is what causes the pistons to move, and therefore the engine to give you more than a headache.
This is where things get fun. The oil allows the pistons to move freely. Oil is damaged or destroyed by the radiated heat, which reduces the efficiency of the pistons. This, in turn, will result in more heat being generated.
An engine is therefore designed to self-destruct. As designs go, I can think of better. And, no, the changes are really quite minor and although it would take someone with better engineering skills than me, would be well within the means of the more inventive types.
Let’s start with the Nitrogen problem. Imagine, if you will, a horizontal pipe, with a branch coming off from it. The branch connects to the air intake of the engine, and the main part of the pipe allows air to go in and out freely.
Place an electrical grid at the entrance to this pipe, and attach a second to where the branch connects onto the main pipe. Connect the first grid up so that it will have a positive charge sufficient to pull a single electron off an oxygen atom.
Connect the second grid up, so that it has a negative charge. To complete the circuit, this should really be as negative as the other is positive.
As you drive, the oxygen will be charged, but the nitrogen (which takes a lot more energy to give up an electron) won’t be. The oxygen will become positive, but the nitrogen will remain neutral.
The oxygen will then be pulled by the second grid into the branch leading to the engine. The nitrogen will go down both paths, with most just staying in the main pipe.
Air has 78% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, 2% other junk. The funnel described, or anything similar, will give you something more like 20% nitrogen, 79% oxygen, 1% other junk. After subtracting the energy needed to keep the grids charged, you still end up with between 3-4 times the efficiency.
Now for this heat thing. You start with one set of molecules, with energies in various forms. You end up with a different set of molecules, aldo with energies in different forms. In all cases, these energies cannot be just anything. They have to be specific values. In addition, certain combinations are also impossible. Any energy left over, after you’ve put all you can into the new molecules, is going to be given off as heat.
Solving this is simple enough, in theory. You just need to chemically alter the fuel, or add something to it, that can act as a sponge for heat. Absorb as much as possible that you couldn’t otherwise use, making it available as kinetic energy. This you very much can use.
Figuring out the right chemicals is a challange. Why do you think there are so many additives on the market? The problem is, typical additives don’t fight the cause of inefficiency, they add to it. They work because they’re highly reactive, which just adds to the heat. They don’t make any of the existing unused energy available.
Of course, things aren’t simple in them there engines. As you increase the heat within the engine, the lowest energy state (ie: the best possible result, for the best possible efficiency) stops being so preferred. Unstable molecules become just as likely. The difference between these and what you started off with is going to be smaller. In turn, this means you’re not getting as much power for the same gas.
You’ve absolutely, positively have to keep the engine as cool as possible, without it being so cold it won’t run. In a sense, this isn’t so far from all that processor overclocking the serious geeks get into.
Here, we’re overclocking the engine, but we’re using methods that will actually do less harm to the engine, the pumps and the oil, than running the engine as standard.
We need to make a few more adjustments, though. Remember the radiator, and how it’s blasting hot air at the engine? Let’s move it to below the engine, and have the air that comes off the radiator go through the vents that face the windscreen.
This has several interesting effects. First, this design was used in Formula 1 motor racing, by the Lotus racing team. The fan drawing air through the radiator also pulls the car to the road, increasing grip. I would not try this at home, but the F1 cars built with this design were able to drive over oil slicks at 240+ mph, on bald tires, with absolutely no ill effect. Except, perhaps, on the spectators’ nerves.
Now, to improve efficiency. Phase-changers are usually the best, and the water temperature is certainly high enough to change phase very easily. The change from water to steam would cause a lot of heat to be given off right there and then. Use part of the radiator for the steam to cool down. You then compress it back to water, and use the second half of the radiator for the water to cool down.
Ok, what else can be done? Well, if you have two metals of different types sandwiched together, you have what is called a Peltier device. If you pass a current through such a device, it transfers heat from one side to the other. Your choice of metals determines how much heat you can pump this way, and how high a temperature it can work at.
The radiator is metal. Plating a radiator with another metal wouldn’t be hard. Electroplating just takes a battery, some acid, and the metal you want to plate with. It’s probably not something you’d want to do at home, although you could, but it shouldn’t be hard to find a place that’ll do this. But you’ll still need to figure out what the second metal would need to be. Sorry, you’re on your own there.
Finally, when you eventually want to slow down, you put on the brakes. This turns all that energy you’ve worked hard to keep into heat. So much for progress! But there’s an answer here, too. If instead of brake pads, you have a dynamo, you can turn all the motion into electrical energy. This is called “regenerative braking” and is popular on hybrid and electrical vehicles, as it saves as much energy as possible for later use.
On a standard car, though, it’s still good. Because it doesn’t use friction, it’s completely immune to oil, heat, cold, or anything else that affects normal mechanical brakes.
What’s more, it gives you an emergency power source. A motor is just a dynamo wired in reverse. If the gas engine fails, you run out of fuel, or some equally car-stopping event happens, all you’d have to do is turn the dynamos into motors, and you’ll be able to get some extra distance. (It’s not going to work miricles, but it might get you to a gas station or a garage, and if you’d otherwise be stuck on some godforsaken road – Ashley Phosphate, or King Street, for example, this might be the next-best thing.)
Of course, in SC, the roads are so bad and the driving so terrible that the cost of car repairs is always going to dwarf any efficiency improvements you make, anyway.
Dicky says:

November 24, 2003 at 18:18

Ummm JD, reading your post reminds me of a comment colonel potter used in M.A.S.H. I really think it applies here… “HORSE HOCKEY”.
And Eugene. Haysoos’s car has alot more miles on it, and he has never done any work to it. Well Actually I think he changed oil about4 years and 100,000 miles ago, but it may be longer. My old cougar is still running, over 400,000 miles on it now. the only problem is that with all the times I have been hit, the frame is now beginning to crack and rust through. Almost time for a complete frame off rebuild of it.

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175 000 miles!

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