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.
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
This never solves our long-term energy crisis for future economical and environmental survival. Eventually, we will exterminate ourselves by exhausting our non-renewable resources with over time of petroleum-dependent technologies and infrastructures in the near future. These will crumble as the energy requirements outstrip available resources. The collapse of industrial society will be results of high population demands from increasing scarcity of petroleum and all its products and byproducts.
Forget about the innovation of high miles per gallon! Forget about hydrogen power because it requires us to refuel at gas stations when tanks are empty. Forget about electric cars because it requires us to plug on electric outlets as long as electricity is running. Get rid of petroleum-running engines because they require us to dependences of petroleum to survive. Search and invent new innovative technologies without energy dependences such as fossil fuels. Renewable resources as a plentiful of air, winds and bright daylights to power engines without using any petroleum and other energy dependences are the ideal for our green future. For example, vacuum air into the compression to boost the engine to run the power without any petroleum uses and gas station dependences.
Unfortunately, powerful oil lobby-influenced politicians prevent new innovative opportunity for the development of alternative energy innovations without petroleum dependences and monopoly. Bush and the Congress never want to abandon our consumers dependence of gas stations and utilities because we paid them from gas pumps and electric lines in order to keep flowing of profit revenues to support oil and utilities companies and government taxes. Oil, automakers and utilities companies often bought out of various energy alternative innovators with their patents rights in order to mainstay on profits and prolong companies’ survivals to preserve the monopoly. As you know that President Bush and his cabinet members are oil people and of course, they secretly care about oil prices going up! Their main motive is the greed.
Actually, the “crankshaft” is really a camshaft, as it is a shaft with cams on it…
All of this new science is great ,but most of the poor can’t afford this stuff. what about them??
“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.”
Yes, of course. The 50% reduction in weight would also help bump up fuel mileage. The smaller size could also mean smaller cars (or at least smaller engine compartments) which would further cut down on weight.
Diesels are not in the US because the government does not subsidize the cost of diesel, like in Euro Land and because the US and state governments believe diesels pollute too much.
It is more energy to create the hydrogen then to just use oil.
@Space, the engine’s rate of fuel consumption dropped much more than compared to its rate of power production. So it was still pushing out, but using much less gas compared to the control car.
From: http://www.revetec.com/news097.htm
“Brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) is a measure of an engine’s efficiency. It is the rate of fuel consumption divided by the rate of power production. BSFC is specific for the reciprocating engine.”
“A typical cycle average value of BSFC for a gasoline engine is 322 g/(kW•h). This means the average efficiency of a gasoline engine is only 25%. A reciprocating engine achieves maximum efficiency when the intake air is unthrottled and the engine power is high enough to overcome its internal losses. For a gasoline engine, the most efficient BSFC is approximately 256 g/(kW•h) or an efficiency of 32%.
Efficiency is lower at other operating conditions. As seen above, lower values of BSFC mean higher engine efficiency.”
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Although, in the “Official” report, is this normal when testing an engine? 5 seconds?
From: http://www.revetec.com/pdf/REVETEC%20X4V2%20Engine%20Evaluation%20Report_final.pdf page 5
“During the full load engine testing, the engine was only operated for approximately 5 seconds at each engine speed, fuel flow and exhaust gas emissions were therefore not measured. The power and torque measured at full load were corrected for atmospheric conditions according to ISO 1585.”
-b
From the cad designs it does look like this engine operates well at lower speeds with good torque but there are inherent flaws in the initial design which can probably looked at further into the process. Such things as space, for essentially a 4-banger it takes up quite a bit of space. It would do better to do a 8 or 16 cylinder version as a diesel engine for the trucking industry. The current engine designs today maximize space savings in the v formation or in straight inline versions which isn’t necessarily the most efficient design but is cost effective to make.
Also this engine would be alot more expensive to build inherent in it’s overall design. It seems to have a central engine housing (block) with 4 seperate chambers housing the pistons which seem to be made of aluminum alloy. So a good bit more metal is used for essentially a 4-cylinder. With a compression ratio of 10:1 I can see where some of the extra torque comes from. But as a diesel it would definitely need to be beefed up to handle a copression ratio of probably 22:1 for this engine design.(meaning more metal used)
Although I like the design of using straight pushing and pulling vs angular momentum to gain efficiency the flaws of using a rotary mechanism are wear and tear on the rotary part and adjacent part can seriously hinder performance, which was the downfall of the original mazda rx-7. If the parts are made of hardened materials then I can see some hope for this.
A long running 100,000 mile or more stress wear and tear test on this engine will truly show if these issues have been addressed but only time will tell if this design has hope. I wish them the best of luck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hope this technology doesn’t get bought up by Exxon and shelved like all the others.
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