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Gaffer Variety:
Supercar Outline SN2 001:
By Willie Gaffer:
July 2, 2007:
Here is a sketch of the components of a supercar as I now visualize them. I will describe my understanding of each box in this sketch below. I reserve the right to change my mind and this sketch as issues develop and I learn more about chemistry.
Separator 1:
The necessary output of this separator, as I now see it, is hydrogen.
Contrary to the hype of the fuel cell people, hydrogen is not free. To produce hydrogen we must separate it from something else, which will be the input to this separator. Of course, that will produce byproducts, chemicals that are not hydrogen. Currently, the most readily available input would be a hydrocarbon in the form of gasoline. What we do now is dump the raw hydrocarbon into the engine, which is why we get CO2 as a byproduct of combustion. My plan is to separate the carbon ahead of the engine and dump raw hydrogen into our engine. I am not hung up on gasoline as the input, but the generation and distribution systems are already in place, which gives it a big edge in my view.
Separator 2:
You have already guessed that the input to this device is air. Air is not a compound like hydrocarbon. It is a mixture of gasses. For our purposes, it consists of about 20 percent oxygen and 80 percent nitrogen. Again, current practice is to dump air directly into the engine, which is why we get nitrous oxide and other oxides of nitrogen as byproducts of combustion. We put crap in and we get crap out! My plan is to separate the nitrogen ahead of the engine and dump raw oxygen into the engine.
There are a number of promising approaches to doing this separation. Since oxygen is a bit more than 10 percent heavier than nitrogen, a centrifuge could be used to separate the gasses. That is how mad scientists separate U238 from the more common U235 when they want to make bombs. I don’t know if centrifuging would be effective in our case, but it must be followed up. Another method of separation is to use a membrane to pass oxygen and block nitrogen. Again, I don’t know if this would be effective in our case, but it must be checked out. Another method I know about uses an oxygen concentrator. The concentrator uses hydrous aluminum silicate minerals to absorb the nitrogen and pass the oxygen. Can it be adapted to our needs? I don’t know. Finally, I know that nitrogen fertilized can be created out of thin air, so to speak, by fixing the nitrogen with electricity. That is all I know about it. It’s just another line of inquiry.
Here is the big if factor. Engines are huge pigs in their input demands. After all, a four liter engine will put out enough energy to supply six ordinary homes with electricity, if it were converted. Hence, we must put more chemical energy than that into it. That’s why a 4 liter engine running a 3000 rpm needs about 1200 liters of oxygen per minute. Whatever we use for the separator, it must deliver that much O2.
Power 3:
This box represents an energy converter of some kind. It must convert hydrogen and oxygen into water and mechanical or electrical energy. Herein is the major advantage of using a fuel cell. The mechanical stage is bypasses since the fuel cell produces electricity directly. The other two methods of conversion, a piston engine and a turbine, both produce mechanical energy which must, in turn, be converted to electricity. One important point is our engines must be designed to use hydrogen as the fuel rather than gasoline as they now do. I suspect this would produce a smaller, albeit hotter burning, engine. There may be other ways of converting hydrogen and oxygen into mechanical and electrical energy. These three are just what I know about now.
DC 4:
This box represents the device that converts mechanical energy directly into electrical energy. One of my major assumptions in this whole design is the vehicle will be driven by electric motors, which will be part of the wheel assembly. At this time, I see this box as a 48/50 volt DC generator. Whether we use a turbine or a piston engine, I see this as being integral with the engine. Although I show them as two separate boxes, they are inseparable.
Control 5:
This is the unit which is accessed by the vehicle operator or driver. I see it as an all electronic energy switching and control unit. It must control, not only the destination of the current, but the level and polarity as well. The drive units will be fully reversible and this unit must control that feature.
Battery 6:
This is self-explanatory. It is simply an electrical storage unit where power can be buffer and also stored for use in initiating the various processes at startup. At this time, I see it as a readily available lead acid battery.
Drive 7.1:
I will describe drive 7.1 with the proviso that the other three drive units are identical. We need only design it once. This design has several distinct advantages. For one, Four wheel drive is inherent it the design. There will be one of these units for each wheel of the vehicle. Next, four wheel steering falls out naturally from this design. What was once a mechanical nightmare becomes a simple system. Also inherent is the stability of being able to switch power automatically to the wheel or wheels with best traction.
These descriptions are just my baseline to begin work. They are intended to give me a set of problems to solve, which will direct my research. Everything here is subject to change as I learn more and or new ideas occur.