Somebody ACTUALLY patented a Stirling Series...
 

I am a full time entrepreneur, running a few of my own companies. Often I come across many engineers and great thinkers seeking investments (which I can get because of the people that I am networked with).

So long story short, they actually patented a Stirling Series power plant. In other words, a sterling engine driving an electric generator with thermocouples in between to extract extra energy from the exhaust heat. All this connected to some batteries and ultimately an electric engine.

(Ill get the patent number tomorrow if this thread gets enough interest).

I found it very peculiar that they were able to patent this, since I have personally started many threads about this kind of hybrid as well as many of others here, how had nobody patented this yet?

Thing is, they want 2.9 Million to convert an existing vehicle (build the prototype) and drive it across the US in ONE tank of gas (40 gallons according to them). I just thought I would share my meeting with these guys today.

SO, what do you think? Plausible? Good Idea? According to them the stirling engine is perfect because it creates much less pollution due to not having to get a pressurized flame and it can use any type of gas (and according to them they were also able to solve the "hydrogen embrittlement" problem - whatever this means).


(FYI, I, as an investor, am not actually going to do this because from a business viewpoint 2.9 million is WAY to much to create a working prototype- im not sure how much of that is to pay themselves).

NYC - LA = 2790 miles. Divide that by 40 gallons and get about 69-70 mpg. I can almost do that in my modified 1998 Honda.

Yep I know. Their whole deal is to get and document peoples reaction to a "new type of power plant" for cars and then go sell this patent to big auto manufacturers.

Hm.

Not to toot my own horn, but I'm reasonably certain I could do much more than build a prototype for $2.9. With what's left over, I could probably send a chimpanzee into space... or at least a pig.

An interesting item and I am sure it will gain plenty of attention although translating that to investment dollars is another topic altogether.

The "Hydrogen embrittlement" mentioned happens when any element of hydrogen is in direct contact with steel.

The result is a structural weakening of the steel which can then result in the failure of the steel component.

Legislation in many areas do not allow suspension components to be chrome plated for this reason.
Nickel plating is often a viable alternative.

The solution is simply a barrier (non hydrogen permeable obviously) to be placed between the steel and the hydrogen source.

Typically glass or glass fibre liners are the simplest way to avoid such contact although there are more exotic and expensive ways to solve the problem.

Peter.

I don't think that that's even the best way of doing it. I think passing the exhausts through a heat exchanger that heats the intake air would be both a cheaper and more efficient solution.

Have they already received the patent or just applied it? Also you can patent almost anything, its a whole another case will the patent be genuine if someone wants to sue you to court for violating someones previous patent or they just prove that it is not a new invention. Like you said you have already talked about similar thing here so just that might be enough for the patent not accepted. Usually the patent officers dont search the ecomodder forum for references, but if someone is pissed about someones patent for something he will find usually way to prove that its not new invention.

Again I know most of EU patent laws and not so much about US stuff.

What comes to fuel economy or that challenge I could drive that coast to coast with 3L Lupo speeds over 62 MPH and pass it clearly. So I dont think that fuel consumtion figure or the amount of fuel dont tell how good the machine is. I they are able to do that journey in a stock Ford F-250 then I would think big car companies would get interested... They already know how to make cars which can do 100 MPG @ 62 mph easily they just arent manufacturing those yet.

Improve the product 10% every year in all aspects is their target. That is why they dont want to meet the cafe standards because its too big improvement.

I started on that pathway in 2003 with a Patent application for an engine that could "transform" itself into a flywheel, using it's own mass as the storage platform.

In my old Insight I could get 70.2 MPG so with 40 gallons of fuel that works out to 2800 miles and the Insight was an automatic (CVT).

When I realized that no auto manufacturer was going to try to develop and build the design and the Patent Office was fighting me every inch of the way on approval, I decided to change my tactics in 2006. The resulting Patent
US#7677208 was issued in March 2010 and I am working on a functional vehicle prototype with my personal funding at this time.

My budget is about 1% of your quoted 2.9 million. I can't see that amount of money spent on any conversion, but engine builds from scratch can easily get exorbitantly expensive. Actually if you follow hypermiling fairly extensively the engine is not really the source of inefficiency, it's the power train that has the potential for the greatest improvement. Not that the engine is not a significant contributing factor. Argonne Labs is currently doing research with the objective of achieving 60% energy conversion efficiency in an IC engine.
Most passenger cars engines can get to peaks of 34-43% efficiency right now, with the most efficient engine reaching 53% in the giant low speed diesels in large container ships.


Bottom line is the huge increase in efficiency we would like to see in the near future will be done with some form of capacitive storage and release of short term energy supplies. This means the (pulse and glide) operational tactic employed by those who achieve more than double EPA mileage ratings employ EXACTLY the same tactic. Operating the engine at only maximum efficiency then shutting it off and coasting with the inertia stored in the mass of the vehicle itself.

The obvious progression of this method is to provide some form of internal storage and release of inertial forces to allow the vehicle speed to remain constant while using the pulse and glide strategy for the engine, with the frequency of the pulses depending on average energy demands over time.

If the people you are considering investing can provide you with tangible independently accumulated evidence of their process being successful, without being "embellished" with exorbitant claims then that would accentuate their credibility, but then you already know that.

My design was investigated by a class of Virginia Tech engineering students and given a positive report as far as being a significant improvement over conventional power trains.

The EPA spent a lot of time (and our money) to research and develop hydraulic hybrids with a test mule weighing 3800 pounds that got 80 MPG.

Other designs are also being developed by INNAS and Artemis, hydraulic hybrids that offer double current EPA mileage in the same vehicle.

regards
Mech

Practical Stirling engines all have heat exchangers. The exhaust temperature is so low that thermocouples are useless.

Thermocouples are, as a practical matter, useless even with the hot exhaust of an I.C. engine because their efficiency is so low.

Great discussuion. In the past year I have met two people who work for a company in Pasco, WA that make large electrical generator plants using solar mirrors, high temp helium gas and a stirling engine. Amazing technology.

Not sure if this is the company, but appears to have just filed for bankrupcy.
UPDATE: Stirling Energy Systems' Bankruptcy Latest In Solar Industry Woes - WSJ.com

Here a link for the American Stiriling company, they sell educational kits.
Stirling Engine or Sterling Engine by American Stirling Company

And one for the Quaisturbine Stiling engine
Quasiturbine Stirling Engine (Sterling) - Rotary Hot Air Motor - Heat Pump

I thought at least one car manufacture already made a stirling engine car, but google shows nothing.

Strange that they could patent this, because GM did at least one prototype back in the '70s. Search for "Stirlec".

You know, once you have an RE-EV with external combustion you don't even need gasoline, you can use a slow to fire fuel like pellets.

Actually they are in Kennewick which is very near Pasco. I almost applied for a job there but got my current job first. There name is Infinia ( INFINIA • Home ) . They are doing alright financially.

They also use hydrogen in some of their engines. Hydrogen is used because it has a lower viscosity than helium. This reduces energy losses due to turbulence and flow drag in the engine.

a stirling engine calculator for those interested

Simple Performance Prediction Method -English-

just for fun I calculated a 1 liter Stirling engine filled with helium at 150 psi (1MPa) generates only 900 watts of power between the temps of 275C (hot side) and 25C (cold side)

switching it to hydrogen gives 1400 watts of power out.

Exactly what I thought. They apparently have a "utility patent".

If they have a patent you can read it online with the patent number. Issued patents are in the public domain like mine, US 7677208. If they do not have an issued patent, don't count on one being issued until it actually happens (Patent Pending-but not guaranteed to be approved). I could write a book about my experiences, including finding a very similar design dating back over 120 years, which I was required by law to reveal to the Patent Office.

The problem is the Patent Office has a rejection criteria defined as "obvious to someone educated in the art" a very vague criteria subject to wide variances in interpretation.

They may have patented a combination of individually non patentable devices.

regards
Mech

I have the patent "summary" paper with me, which they gave me. It has already been issued.

Patent number 7726130b2

Well i guess their cheque cleared.

Reading the patent these guys don't know what their doing. Seeing that they want to run thermocouples as a bottoming cycle to a Stirling engine makes for a good laugh ( Even if they are talking about running it from the exhaust from the combustor providing the heat for the Stirling engine)

The patent gives no specifics about the engine or about anything else. I'm surprised they even got a patent for the combination. The only unique thing about it is the sterling engine, the rest is off the shelf hybrid technology.

No mention of any transmission which is one of the reasons why wheel to wheel regeneration in electric hybrids is so poor, in the neighborhood of 30% after you go through all the conversions involved.

Advocates of direct drive electric vehicles state the lack of a transmission makes the vehicle more efficient. In one manner it does that, but in order to recapture several hundred horsepower seconds of energy in a rapid stop, you only have in the neighborhood of 20 revolutions of the wheels to capture the energy. No chemical battery can accept energy at that rate (several hundred kilowatts in a few seconds).

This is one of the main reasons I advocate the hydraulic approach, just like the arrestor gear on a carrier. Imagine the power that system has to handle to stop a 40 ton aircraft from 150 to 0 MPH in a couple hundred feet.

Next Energy in Detroit stated that hydraulic hybrids were at 78% efficiency in regenerative energy capture, in 2006.

I just don't see the novelty in their claim, with the exception of the sterling engine. I have yet to read of any sterling design that would be compact and powerful enough for any automotive application.

I would seriously recommend an analysis by an independent engineering concern, like my design was analyzed by Virginia Tech. They had nothing to gain from a positive or negative conclusion and they concluded it would be effective and competitive with gas-electric designs.

Do yourself and your wallet a favor and approach this with extreme skepticism until you get some real confirmation from an unimpeachable independent source. The inventors will need to provide a heck of a lot more specifics about the sub systems when they are subjected to real scrutiny.

I always told potential investors that they could pay the people who were actually building something I could not and not worry about paying me anything until there was testing and proof of concept. I don't need money to live, I need money to develop my design. Funding would help to accelerate things, but it also brings on additional pressures and expectations and that seems to also bring on those magical additional obstacles to success.

When and if I get the results I expect from testing then I have a product whose value is tangible. Investors like to see all their ducks lined up with proof of performance, or their risk return ratio is very high.

Be careful my friend, I don't see any real evidence or data that would convince me of success and I have been studying the various hybrid designs and configurations for over a decade.

regards
Mech

Some info or sterling engines.

American Stirling Company FAQ

regards
Mech

But what fraction of your stops are that rapid?

You do have a good point about the battery charge acceptance rate being a weak link. That's why some people are looking at either ultracapacitors or flywheel systems.

James, I don't want to take this thread in the wrong direction. I was reading a consumers report last week and they tested a Leaf. Lost 15% of the energy charging the battery.

We should not fall into the trap of making comparisons of systems driven by hypermilers, the real world includes a lot of wasted braking energy and making a vehicle that recovers that energy at a rate of over 80% wheel to wheel will never be accomplished by any combination of batteries and capacitors that NASA could build today with unlimited funds.

On the other hand a hydraulic accumulator has a life expectancy measured in decades. Rebuilding it is a matter of replacing the rubber bladder. The cheapest capacitive storage you can buy today. Not something that may be available in a decade, not even considering the cost.

regards
Mech

This is the way that I believe is the future, the only problem is cost. To keep it low you would have to go with a 3,000 psi accumulator- 5k max but even that is expensive (since you then need a less common 5k pump to fill it). Point in case, you can't jam THAT much into a 3k accumulator, although it is still much more efficient than any capacitor or battery being filled at a fast rate.

BTW I wound be providing or seeking investors, I realized this as soon as they walked into my office lol. However, I still think the concept of a stirling (more like a quasiturbine stirling) is pretty good due to the low (non existent) compression needed to light the fuel = less toxic gasses.

And btw I would also like to hear more about this patent of yours, sounds interesting but there are diagrams or sketches to introduce my mind to the picture you are painting on the patent. If I understand, you are saying a transmission/motor all in one thing?

Here is a link to a Swedish company that recently built a prototype series-hybrid stirling electric car. http://www.precer.se/Files/Precer_Data_Sheet_D.pdf
http://evauthority.com/precer-ev-bio...mb-465x262.jpg

A lot of the commercial Stirling businness is coming from Sweden today.
http://www.cleanergy.com/technology/ has the old V161 engine in production (9 kW electrical output + 25 kW thermal) and it is used both for gas and solar powered applications.
http://t360.idg.se/polopoly_fs/1.260...2301273491.jpg

United Stirling did some prototypes together with car companies during the oil crisis in the seventies. They had working engines in the 60 - 80 hp range.

Here is a paper with a lot of info on automotive stirling implementations.
http://mac6.ma.psu.edu/stirling/repo...1997021349.pdf

As I noted before these guys are a bunch of clowns. Anybody would be well advised to stay the hell away from them when it comes to investing. The blatant clue to their incompetence is the proposal to use thermoelectric generators to generate energy off the waste heat from the Stirling engine. If a Stirling engine is properly employed you won't be able to utilize the waste heat with out degrading the Stirling engine's performance. When you propose using thermoelectric generators which in real life are only about 15% efficient at best the degradation of the Stirling engines performance will be huge.

If you want to invest money in a Sterling powered hybrid look to investing with Dean Kamen. He has been working at it since before 2008 and he already has taken the segway from concept to product so he knows business.

Wow, and they're using pellets too, not ridiculous gasoline!

Well - the major attraction with Stirling engines is that they just require a temperature gradient to work. Heat is a low form of energy so it's easily generated or harvested.
They are a bit hard to regulate though and work best at a constant high efficiency rpm. This makes the series-hybrid an obvious choice.

The basic design could actually be incorporated in a Stirling configuration, but the best pathway to implementation is in a drive for power train applications. The reason is power trains do not have to be EPA certified for use, having no emissions issues to resolve.

I also have a concept for an accumulator that I was considering applying for a Patent to cover the design. It could be incorporated into the structure of the vehicle. 3k PSI will work but the higher pressure designs would work much better.

Basslover. I hate flying and it's a long way to Texas. Have you ever considered a vacation in Williamsburg, Va? ;)

I'll PM you my email address and we can communicate off this site.

regards
Badger

PM sent with contact information.

regards
Mech

I realize this guy is a brilliant inventor, but, the segway is a ridiculous display of technological wankery. It is an incredibly dumb way to transport humans. And were they not snapped up by gubmint agencies spending other people's money, it would be a financial flop as well.

Haha thats how i have always seen this. HOWEVER, it wasn't a great flop which says something for product and business itself - great design, great marketing = success (but yes not really necessary to travel that way).

this was not an example of good private sector design/marketing.

it was an example of the kind of squandering of taxpayer money that has us in the fix we're in.

if it was a success in the private sector, it would be a different story.

You have to be kidding me! As far as marketing the Segway is considered only second to the 1984 Apple Mac super bowl commercial. No product ever has generated so much hype before its unveiling.

For what it does its design is elegant and its user interface couldn't be simpler.

It may not be a commercial success at over 50,000 units sold, but its design and marketing are top notch. If you want a failure look at the Aptera. It will never be produced in numbers to even threaten the Delorean.

Just when everybody thought that, finally, the car of the future was here- it wasn't.

Anybody have any conspiracy theories as to why all of these GREAT vehicles keep being uncapable of coming to life?

conspiracy my a$$
The government and EPA had nothing to do with Aptera's failure. They lobbied hard to get emissions and federal safety standards waved and succeeded. It was horrible business planning that did them in. Any time a business plans to set up production in a state with one of the highest costs of living is a plan for failure pure and simple. That and trying to portray your product as being safe to the consumer and touting the fact that you had safety standards waved to investors (people aren't that stupid).

Aptera rebuts safety concerns about its three-wheeled 2e

I think Aptera was more interested in snarfing up investor, x-prize, and govt money than actually building product.

Not sure about the Aptera but the DeLorean was NOT a great car.

It handle like a sack of flour (not a good starting point for what was intended to be a sports car after all) , had build quality to match and some truly appalling design executions.

The "Gullwing "doors might have been a "sales point" but having them leak like waterfall ever time it rained was not.
Let's face it - Mercedes Benz sorted this out on their "Gullwing" in the 1950's! AND they didn't take some twenty seconds to open and close either.

Think the worst of British Leyland and go a few steps backward from there.

Even the millions the British Government poured into it didn't save what was bound to be a fiasco from the start.

Sorry but the car WAS a DOG and no amount of gazing through rose coloured glasses will alter that.

Peter.

The segway is a technological marvel. I won't dispute that. The problem is, it is a really stupid way of moving a person around. Very expensive and slow. And the pilot has to stand. A bicycle does everything better at a tiny fraction of the cost.

As for it's marketing, it pretty much consisted of "hey, this really smart inventor dude has come up with an amazing contraption that will revolutionize transportation".

It wasn't.

It didn't.

They were bought up mainly by government agencies that wanted to jump on the bandwagon. People with room temperature IQs would not spend their own money on what is basically a technological marvel that does something very expensively and poorly.

I will not call it an example of good marketing, because, unlike the mac, it did not have success in the private market. It was a success at proving how idiotic politicians are with other's money.