Turbine Engine: No Pistons, No Lube, 30% Better Fuel Economy
There are more than 5,000,000 heavy duty trucks running up and down US highways each day. Every one of those trucks gets an average of 7 mpg, carries upwards of 200-300 gallons of diesel, and spews out potentially harmful emissions.
Like it or not, we depend on them to bring us our food, fuel, and products for everyday living. It’s a connection that most of us often forget about, only remembering it long enough to curse them as they slow us down on the highway.
It’s also an industry that has recently been hit hard by soaring fuel prices, and now, with the average price of diesel in the US at $4.70/gallon and climbing, it’s sure to get worse.
Needless to say, there’s a rising cacophony of voices within the trucking industry clamoring for relief. Most of this noise currently comes in the form of wanting a break in fuel prices, but really that’s just a temporary fix. Any solution with sticking power would have to offer both economic and environmental benefit — you know, win-win.
Enter Turbine Truck Engines. The company has developed an engine for heavy duty trucks called the Detonation Cycle Gas Turbine (DCGT). Key features of this engine technology include:
- Uses over 30% less fuel than current heavy duty engines
- 30%+ fewer emissions including nitrogen oxide (NO, NO2, N2O2) and carbon monoxide (CO)
- Operates on all fuels and mixtures of fuels: biofuels, hydrocarbon fuels, hydrogen and synthetic
- Has few moving parts, requiring much less maintenance
- Has no pistons or valves, and uses no lube oil, filters or pump
- Is air cooled and lightweight (less than 2 lbs. per hp)
The company has been aggressively seeking investors recently and last year won the prestigious Frost and Sullivan Award for Technology Innovation.
Currently Turbine Truck Engines holds several patents and has a few prototypes under its belt. When (and if) their technology finally reaches the market, the combined savings on maintenance and fuel, as well as environmental benefits, could make this engine extremely popular with truck drivers and trucking companies worldwide.
What do you think? Is it worthwhile to invest in this type of technology, or should we move past fuel altogether and focus on other things such as our rail infrastructure for movement of goods? Is that even possible? Are big rigs a permanent feature of our society? Is there any way to run them entirely on electricity?
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Image Credit: Turbine Truck Engines
Reading the three pages of comments on this so far really does open ones eyes as to how out of touch people in this nation are with one of the most needed industries we have. Face it folks, with out trucks our nation ceases to exist/the economy nose dives and doesn’t recover/we all lose everything.
I(like patton above) Have been in the trucking industry for years and have seen vast changes like never before in just the past 7-8 years. I do consider myself one of the lucky few out there that I have a contracted haul that gives a rising fuel surcharge, so unlike others I only pay $0.97/gal for fuel. That allows me to survive the down time we are having but, it does not make up for the fact that everything else is rising in cost!
I would welcome these engines right now if offered just to try them out. I think it’s a good start to try and develop better systems for the future in this industry. The rail system can barely handle the mass of freight they move now, therefore they would have to severly expand their operating system in a hurry to keep up, and with out the trucks….what does this nation do with the estimated 2-5 million jobs and 70,000 companys that would stop operation in a single day???? I see one of the largest contributers to this economy as the EPA! Yes the eco system and the planet are things that need to be protected and company’s nedd someone to answer to when they destroy and harm the landscape, BUT……..we also have to have a way to live in this world and the EPA has harmed the life of the people more then they have helped us in the past 20 years. Trucks cost more now due to exaust standards and the equipment is more costly to maintain. Now combine that with $4.89(yes we pay more for #2 diesel then gas and use more of it with less MPG)and we have an economical disaster on our hands! Make the EPA back off of the oil companys and let them tap the north american continent for oil NOW…..that way we can afford to stay alive while we come up with better ways to run this country and it’s industries! Besides, shouldn’t the greatest country on earth be energy independant???
And where are the flying cars that run off of thin air that were promised to us back in the fifty’s????
Chris Taylor, Since your website is rather broken and I bet the e-mail address listed there is probably just a spam trap (and the “license” link is broken at that) I’ll just say here I picked the most generous value for LiOn off the wikipedia energy density page.
The energy density by volume was far more generous than that by mass.
By mass, it was 0.5% the energy density of diesel.
Yes, it is reusable. But there is a reason we haven’t all jumped on the battery bandwagon. The technology simply is not there yet.
Don’t forget that choosing to use something that weighs 200 times as much as diesel fuel means reducing the vehicle’s range as well.
As I and others noted, trains are a reasonable solution to this problem. But that does not help the truckers.
Nick:
Good article and great discussion. As food for thought for both you and the truckers who have been reading this, I would suggest also checking out Capstone Turbine, http://www.microturbine.com
They have been producing turbine/electric hybrid buses for several years and have models that just might work for large trucks. Capstone has been designing, manufacturing and refining their turbines for at least ten years and have almost 20 million total turbine operating hours under their belts.
Disclosure: I have been investing in Capstone for years, since I have always liked small turbine technology and believed that it provided certain advantages that reciprocating engines could not achieve.
electric is nice and it has come a long way the newer used cells are lithium like in a laptop recharg time is much shorter then days of old it has been drop to the minutes level and speeds increased Tesla in california makes a sports car that is faster then the latest ferrari check them out they may have a solution to the problem or are working on it
Steel wheel on steel rail for extremely low rolling friction and turbine or piston diesels to produce diesel/electrics is hard to beat. What we need is greater control over current rail systems and huge improvements in methodology - current cars too heavy, engines pollute, inter-city systems don’t exist, goddamit a kid with a lego set can do a better job! Tracks are visibly piss-poor, and still on wood, not cement like Europe, engines and cars are huge, oversized and slow, we need lots of fast computer piloted and controlled electric container cars for fast light delevery and leave the odd very heavy freight load to trucks? Anything is better than the shit we currently call a rail system. What we have came from Britain in the 18th century There is lots of room for improvement!
Engine efficiencies improvements will take a long time. Alternative fuels will take a long time. Trains are vastly more efficient. Their major difficulty lies in competing with trucks, which run on taxpayer provided highways, while railroad are responsible for owning and maintaining their roadways. Impossible. We can’t abandon highways, but we CAN make trucks run more like trains. Platooning technology would allow trucks to run like trains..close together, drafting, saving enormous amounts of energy.
Vehicle platooning for cars is difficult because they’re of such diverse sizes. Long haul trucks are almost identical in size, and it would be relatively easier to retrofit them to platoon. And that improvement would be equally helpful when/if all those other propulsion improvements come to pass?
If your engine dose all that you say then you will like this web site of a new fuel source. It is a news broadcast a little over 9 minuts long. Check it out A John Kanzius, an amazing new discovery.
salt water burns.com
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