email: Erich_S@msn.com

Abstract:

With the ever-looming threat imposed by dwindling fossils fuel supplies, we constantly need to develop and improve the efficiency of our engines.  One of the safest alternate fuel sources to crude oil is hydrogen.  Our current engine designs, however, are very wasteful in the method of converting fuel into motion.  Using hydrogen as a fuel makes those inefficiencies even more pronounced.  Here is a design that attacks some of those inefficiencies, the E.R.I.C.H. engine.

   Hydrogen can be drawn right out of our atmosphere, and then can be burned with oxygen to produce plain water H₂O.  This is a totally harmless way to power our machines, at least until we deplete the oxygen and hydrogen.  In the next few years we (as a civilization) should be dedicating lots of resources to converting and developing these kinds of engines for use in all of our day-to-day machines along with the conversion to electric powered machinery.  With nano-technology, we should be able to develop phenomenally powerful and reusable batteries.  But how do we make our engines more efficient to work with hydrogen? 

  Obviously, I can’t just go to my ’69 Camaro and put hydrogen into the gas tank and expect my monster 350 to run.  There are serious conversions that need to be made to an engine to make it run with hydrogen.  I’m not going to bend your ears with conversions that need to be made with our pathetic piston/cylinder engines we use today in our vehicles.  The piston moves up, slows, stops, and moves down, etc.  There is a significant amount of energy that is used up in changing the momentum of the pistons.  This translates into wasted heat, wasted fuel, etc.

  Even the great idea of the Wankel rotary engine is not a good design for hydrogen in my opinion for various reasons.  The Wankel engine makes much better use of the momentum of the piston (usually a flat triangular shaped piston) by allowing it to spin inside an oblong cylinder cavity.  See reference [1] for more detail (link below).  The piston forces volumes to expand and contract as the triangular shape spins along an eccentric, almost circular path.  One problem is that the momentum is not purely rotational; there is some moving back and forth to degrade efficiency.  Another problem is with the seals of the engine.  As the momentum shifts, the seals experience uneven wear.  Then, as the speed of the engine increases, the forces from centripetal acceleration exert higher pressures on the seals.

  Now an engine already exists that uses purely rotational components, it is the gas turbine engine.  See reference [2] for more detail (second link).  Wouldn’t this be a contender for better efficiency since there is no wasted motion?  Yes and no.  This engine is perfect for situations like propelling jet airplanes, or power plants because to work efficiently, they must rotate at extremely fast spin rates.  That means lots of special materials, parts, and MONEY.  Also, they don’t work very well over a large range of speeds.  They work best at a constant spin rate.  So unless we had a very high output source of fuel – like fusion / fission / etc. – we probably won’t be seeing them in conventional vehicles, like cars or buses.