A Manhattan Project, an Apollo Program for Cars?

April 30, 2006 – Vol.11 No.6

A MANHATTAN PROJECT, AN APOLLO PROGRAM FOR CARS?

To solve the world’s growing transportation fuels problem a major international initiative could be created. The result would offer far greater fuel economy for the world’s fleet of roadworthy vehicles than from the inefficient internal combustion engine that’s been in service for more than a century.

In the long run, decades from now, the economies, the environment and the population of the planet would benefit.

But in the short run, someone, most likely the oil companies, would lose if the resulting technology were rapidly deployed around the globe. Dramatic increases in fuel economy would put a severe crimp in gasoline and diesel sales.

Losing is the reason why there probably won’t be a project of such magnitude. Oil companies don’t want to lose in the short run even if it means their survival in the long run. They’ll fight vigorously - politically and in the marketplace - to keep from losing.

The best wide-scoping solution for the growing energy problem would be the solution that keeps oil in business, healthy and profitable for decades into the future: but they’ll need some convincing that this is a good idea.

That solution has not yet been dreamed up. Still, ideas abound, as they have for years, for the replacement of the conventional internal combustion engine.

As above, AFS Trinity thinks it has the solution that includes mating an internal combustion engine with an electric motor, a battery pack and a bank of ultracapacitors for fuel efficiency in the range of 250 miles per gallon.

There are more ideas:

-- In an interview for the Pure Energy Systems Network, inventor/physicist Kazimierz Holubowicz discusses his ideas on making an internal combustion engine that would achieve far greater energy efficiency by exploding fuel (any fuel) in a chamber and preserving the waste heat to put it to work.

He calls it a gun engine.

At quick glance based on his description, the invention seems to be a combination of a diesel engine and Stirling heat engine that incorporates a free floating piston. An interesting idea, for sure. He says fuel efficiency would be 5 times that of conventional engines.

-- The Scuderi Group is promoting a design for a slightly-altered internal combustion engine which recaptures the energy of its exhaust by compressing it in a cylinder. The saved compressed air/exhaust is then fed back into adjacent cylinders to assist turning the engine’s crankshaft.

The company says it could easily commercialize the Scuderi Air-Hybrid Engine and it would cost little more than conventional engines since it uses the same parts and components. The Scuderi Group was recently awarded $1.2 million in US federal funding to further the development of its engine.

--- NASA's Ames Research Center and researchers from McGill University in Montreal have developed an electric drill that will bore through rock on places like Mars that needs only 100 watts - the same as a common incandescent light bulb - to operate.

Like the engine in a car, an electric drill needs high amounts of torque to do its job. How did they do that with so little energy? The Planetary Drill could easily operate on solar power, they say.

NASA says nothing about using the technology to drive cars and trucks.

(By comparison, one of this editor’s hand-held power drills needs about 600 watts to drill through rocklike masonry.)

Visit the Pure Energy Systems Network at http://pesn.com/ The Scuderi Group at http://www.scuderigroup.com/ and the Planetary Drill at

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/preparingtravel/mars_drill.html