Low Cost Gas Engine Innovation Doubles Fuel Economy
Revetec, a little known company from the Gold Coast region of Australia, may be on to something huge: they’ve created an engine that is 50% smaller, 50% lighter, has 50% lower emissions and is cheaper to manufacture than a conventional internal combustion engine of the same horsepower. Oh yeah, did I mention that it doubles the fuel economy too.
What that means is a car like the 2007 Toyota Yaris, which is rated at 40 mpg on the highway, would get 80 mpg with a Revetec engine.
This isn’t some hoax… They have a prototype which has been attached to an actual vehicle and independently tested to substantiate their claims.
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In personal communication with Mr. Brad Howell-Smith, the Chairman, Inventor and CAD Designer for Revetec, he says “road tests have estimated that [the engine] uses around 50% less fuel than a conventional engine” and if it were converted to run on diesel, that performance gain could be much higher.
Also, because the engine delivers higher torque, and can perform and operate well at much lower rpm’s than a conventional one, the noise levels are lower.
To illustrate how serious he is, Mr. Howell-Smith said that since 2001 his company has been in touch with the US Military Head of R&D for the Southern Hemisphere on a “regular basis” for the purpose of developing one of their engines for light aircraft.
The current prototype engine, the X4v2, is what Revetec calls a “controlled combustion engine.” The meat of the engine comprises two counter rotating multilobate cams, which are acted upon by two pairs of diametrically opposed pistons which are rigidly interlinked by connecting rods.
If that sounds like complete gibberish to you, you’re not alone. Which is why I included an animation of the process to the left. A more simplified animation of the general motion of an engine of this sort is also included below.
Mr. Howell-Smith said that “if [the engine] uses 50% less fuel given that it has the same top end as a conventional engine, emissions would be reduced by 50% if the bottom end was utilized.”
What does all that stuff about “bottom end” and “top end” mean? The X4v2 has a huge amount of torque over a much larger range of rpm’s than a conventional internal combustion engine.
If a person were to drive a vehicle fitted with this engine in a non-aggressive fashion and keep the rpm’s at the “bottom end” (meaning no “jack-rabbit” starts) they could expect to see a 50% reduction in emissions.
Alternatively, according to Mr. Howell-Smith, a person could see a 30% reduction in fuel use and a 30% reduction in emissions if they used the full acceleration power of the X4v2 all the time. This would provide a 20% increase in acceleration capabilities.
We could debate about whether or not the internal combustion engine has a place in the future of transportation or whether it’s going to be all-electric or fuel cell or whatever… but in the meantime, Revetec has a product that could revolutionize the the transportation industry now, and provide a much needed large reduction in fuel consumption and emissions.
Just imagine a bunch of 80 mpg Toyota Yarises (Yarisi??) running around all over the place. A little scary, I know, but… an 80 mpg conventional automobile? I must be dreaming, wake me up before I get too excited.
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Image Credits: Revetec
http://www.rexresearch.com/caminez/1caminez.htm
This is very much like the Caminez Aircraft engine of the 1920s.
Popular Science Magazine (August 1926)
“Amazing New Motor Runs without Crankshaft or Gears”
Possible revolutionizing of the production of gasoline motors is seen in the invention of an amazing type of engine that recently made a successful airplane test flight at Farmingdale, LI. Its inventor is Harold Caminez, formerly of the Engine Design Section, US Army Air Service.
Internally, the novel motor is constructed along radically different lines from other aircraft engines. There is no crankshaft. Nor are there timing gears.
In place of the usual crankshaft there a plain, straight shaft on which is mounted a large steel cam that is shaped like a figure 8. It is placed directly in line with the centers of the cylinders so that it engages with roller bearings mounted in each piston. These roller bearings are specially built with large diameter outer races. Four lightweight connecting rods or links are so arranged on bearings in each piston that when the cam pushes the pistons in two of the cylinders toward the cylinder head, the links pull the other two pistons down and keep the roller bearings in them in contact with the cam. These links are far lighter than the connecting rods in the ordinary engine, because their only function is to pull the piston down on the intake stroke and they consequently do not have to bear any of the strain of the power stroke.
Gasoline engines of the modern type develop the most power when they are run at high speed, higher in fact than is desirable for best efficiency with an airplane propeller. The new Caminez engine takes care of this difficulty in a most ingenious way. Because the cam is made like a figure 8 the pistons make two complete strokes up and down for each revolution of the shaft on which the cam is mounted. In an ordinary engine, the pistons make one stroke up and down for each revolution of the crankshaft. In other words, the shaft of the new engine revolves at half the usual speed. This means high and efficient speed for the pistons combined with the most desirable speed for the air propeller.
Incidentally, this doubling up of the piston strokes means that no gears are needed to run a camshaft to operate the overhead valves. The main shaft of the Caminez engine turns at the same speed in relation to the piston movements as does the camshaft in the ordinary motor. He new engine therefore gets along without camshaft or gears to drive it.
But of still more importance from the point of view of durability and smoothness of running is the fact that the new engine is the first four-cylinder motor that is inherently balanced mechanically so that there is no vibration caused by the moving parts.
Why do I think this is a little fishy? Revetec’s stock trades at less than $.02 per share and the company has a market cap of around $3 million. If this company had anything really interesting, I somehow think someone would have bought an interesting amount of the stock.
@ Steve
Perhaps you’re right, but perhaps it’s only a matter of time before their stock takes off…
Why is there a lack of empirical evidence? This sounds a lot like the “50 mpg carburetor” to me. Just a bunch of fluff. Prove it to me.
@ panic
Did you follow the links in the article to their testing pages?
http://www.revetec.com/news097.htm
http://www.revetec.com/news096.htm
Do a little digging around in there and you’ll find independent testing results.
Take a guess why everyone in Europe drives a diesel. A 1.4 liter D-4D diesel Yaris can get you as much as 64 mpg (in a fucking city traffic), with quite a lot of torque to go around (since it’s still a freaking diesel). A far cry from its pathetic 1.0 liter petrol brethren or any over-hyped hybrid for that matter… aaand unlike this wanna be tech it’s been around for quite a while now and is quite inexpensive.
Still, I have my fingers crossed for Revetec to make this marketable.
I had a look at their website
and they claim an efficiency improvement from 32% to 39.5% (compared to regular gas engines)
Where does that “doubles fuel economy” come from ?
Do they claim it, or did you, Nick Chambers, make it up?
@ Space
I most definitely didn’t make it up, why would I do that? I even double checked my facts with the inventor, Brad Howell-Smith, to be sure I wasn’t misrepresenting his claims. I know it sounds crazy. The quote in the article from Mr. Howell-Smith clearly states it will use 50% less fuel, which, as confirmed with Mr. Howell-Smith, means a doubling of the fuel economy. I have an email from him to prove that he is indeed claiming that.
Apparently, the mechanical efficiency of an engine only accounts for a portion of the fuel economy. In real on-road tests they have achieved a doubling of the fuel economy.
How about just scrapping the conventional gas driven engine all together???
Start assembling the infrastructure for hydrogen to take over. Then forget our dependence on foreign oil forever.
That engine in the picture most definately DOES have a f*cking cam shaft, 2 actually.