PS SPECIAL – Wasted Energy

by Jack Lee

Imagine if we could increase the known oil reserves by 800%. That would be major boon to mankind, wouldn’t it? More abundant means lower cost (law of supply and demand) and less expensive means more productivity for lower costs. Then let’s talk thermodynamics (Physics). Now hang on, it’s not what you think, this is going to fun – I promise.

Here’s the good news: We already have most of what it takes to boost our gasmileage by 50% and that equals having 50% more fuel to use. Now lets look at the problem through the eyes of a physicist. Consider that an average gasoline powered automobile engine wastes 80% of it’s “potential” energy as found in gasoline. The remaining 80% of energy transformed into low quality heat energy and pollutants that becomes expelled into the atmosphere. But, it doesn’t stop there and this is where science can come to the rescue.

Friction from all the moving parts of an internal combustion engine, and even the car’s wind resistance, all take away from aforementioned mechanical energy. In fact is robs it of another 50% loss so the final energy to the drive wheel is a mere 10% of the original potential energy!

We can do better.

Even with our existing technology, most scientists would agree that we should be able to easily double the drive wheel energy up to 20% and in effect that would double the energy value of our oil reserves…capche?

We can increase energy efficiency in the wind tunnel if we just mad vehicles a little more aerodynamic. We’ve come a long way since the Model A, but we still have a long way to go.

Next, we use our innovation and creativity to lighten vehicles. The goal here is to reduce the weight of a car by 25% and keep them strong. Considering the average car weighs hefty 4000 lbs. that should not be too much of a challenge. The Model A weighed about half that. Today we have a lot of low cost alternative materials to heavy gauge steel and we need to get more creative about using the alternatives.

CONT-

Bearings help the car roll easily, but we’ve been using the same metal to metal bearing for the last 100 years with very little improvement. By simply changing car bearings to steel ball bearings mounted in either polymer or ceramic races then sealed in a molybdenum sulphide or graphite material, we can improve bearing life and reduce friction by up to 60% without losing strength! That cost is just pennies more than a conventional all steel bearing and add more miles to each tank of gas.

Automotive glass is probably twice as heavy as it should be, auto glass weighs about 3.5 lbs per square foot, but new composite or plastic materials can reduce that weight by half. If you make the glass more sun reflecting you can reduce the strain on your air conditioner compressor during the summer and that saves gas too.

Improved tire design can give you another 3-4% on gas mileage. Radial tires were a big breakthrough back in the 1960’s. This design reduces tire motion (squirm) and wear and improved the roll. Tire size, rubber compounds and tread pattern can still be improved on the radial tire for even better mileage.

So far the we’ve done an enormous amount of weight reduction and streamlining to improve mileage and we haven’t even touched the engine or sacrificed any creature comforts.

Now for the motor. Let’s run on water! No I’m not crazy…water injection systems have been around for at least 60 years. Of course you can’t actually burn water even though part of it is hydrogen, but you can make the gasoline explode and burn more evenly increasing it’s potential power and this means you can advance the timing of your engine’s spark to create more power. A mix of 10% water to gasoline does the trick. It’s simple and adds almost nothing to the cost of constructing a new vehicle and it reduces pollutants with a cleaner burn, not to mention adding to engine life. But, lets say people don’t like the idea of pumping water into an engine (even though its perfectly safe) you can also achieve similar increases the power through a supercharger and to a lesser degree with a turbocharger, both devices simply squeeze more air into the engine for improved combustion. Improvements to your on board computer system that controls your fuel injection can also improve mileage.

Some SMOG devices on today’s do little good. The basic SMOG system dates back over 40 years and since then engine’s have made enormous improvements to spark, fuel delivery and improved fuel burning. Ask any hot-rodder and he’ll tell you by removing the SMOG device you increase power and fuel economy. They will also tell you that a SMOG device is for poorly tuned cars. A properly tuned car produces almost the same hydrocarbons as one with all it’s SMOG equipment that decreases you car’s mileage. I’m not saying we should abandon SMOG devices, just take another look at ways we can improve them.

There you have it folks, we’ve just doubled the mileage of your average car and in so doing we’ve reduced our crude oil consumption by even more, since only 42 gallons of gasoline can be made from a 55 gallon barrel of oil.

There is so much science can do to improve our energy consumption and we’ve just barely begun to explore all the possibilities.

Imagine if some day we could extract close to 80% of the potential energy from gasoline – We would have just effectively increased the supply of known oil reserves by 800% and that day is closer than you think.

Sources:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_gasoline_can_be_made_from_one_barrel_of_crude_oil

http://www.engineeringpolymers.com/epbb/ch12.html

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_an_average_car_weigh

http://www.engineeringpolymers.com/epbb/ch12.html

http://bioweb.wku.edu/courses/biol280/280mat.html

http://www.saint-gobain-sekurit.com/fr/?nav1=GC&fn=env_glass.html