The Wave Disk Engine * USA - Cheap, Efficient, Clean, and Different

This small engine could be up to 3.5 times more efficient than the piston-driven engines

(Image: The New Scientist)

MICH,USA -The New Scientist/Gas 2.0 -March 21, 2011: -- The basic design of the internal combustion engine has not changed much in the last 100-something years. And the disk wave engine could be the answer to a future free of combustion engines... Developed by researchers at the Michigan State University, this small engine could be up to 3.5 times more efficient than the piston-driven engines found in most cars. How? Well the engine does away with those heavy pistons and replaces them with a single disk with small channels carved out to carry air and fuel…any fuel, from hydrogen to gas to biodiesel. The inside and outside edges of the disk alternately open and close to combine the air and fuel, and shockwaves produced from the rotation of the disk compress and ingite the combination. By hooking the engine up to a generator, you can produce electricity to feed the motor, while getting almost four times better gas mileage and producing 95% less carbon dioxides...

Considering that today’s most advanced, expensive, and efficient combustion engines only put out between 15% and 40% tops of the energy (fuel) put into them, an improvement of 3.5 times more efficiency would mean more power and more miles-per-gallon from an engine that is 20% smaller and estimated to cost just $500 for a unit large enough to power a car. And  turbine engines can achieve up to 70% energy efficiency….

TRUCKS EFFICIENCY * UK - Truckers’ loads

London,EN,UK -FT.com -November 23 2010: -- Normally a surge in the price of used equipment relative to new signals a robust order book. Not for truck manufacturers. A series of US and EU standards for diesel engine emissions has added 7 to 10 per cent so far to the cost of a typical heavy duty model while increasing fuel costs by nearly a quarter...  Engineers at General Electric, which has developed technology to remove emissions more economically, reckon that the average efficiency of a heavy truck fell from eight to six miles per gallon in 2007 as a result of the new standards and has since crept back by around half a mile per gallon. The next set of regulations, which also are expected to add to prices, seeks to make engines more efficient by 2014. The end result will be a truck less efficient than one that could have been bought for less money in 2006...