NewNergy

NewNergy discusses the latest inventions, innovations and breakthroughs in the energy & environmental sciences.

Low-emission Car Powered by a Hybrid Engine

Details of Honda’s upcoming green ride, the new CR-Z, have scant but some Japanese websites have managed to get their hands on a sales brochure, revealing the car’s design and some technical specification as well. The production car which is expected to be launched at next month’s Detroit motor show will be powered by a hybrid engine for a low-emission drive.

The car will be powered by a 1.5-liter i-VTEC four-cylinder engine mated to a six-speed manual gearbox and supplemented by an integrated Motor Assist electric motor that adds 13bhp at 1500rpm. The brochure claims that the CR-Z will be able to hit 60mph in under 10 seconds.

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Solar Powered Aircraft to Fly from NYC to Paris

A Spanish company called Turtle Airships is working on plans to build a luxurious solar-powered blimp which can take passengers from New York to Paris.Perhaps the only thing cooler than being powered by lightweight photovoltaic cells, this airship is also designed to rest on land or water.

The first blimp prototype will be propelled in two nontraditional ways. The outside of the ship will be covered with Cadmium-Indium-Germanium (CIG) photovoltaic cells, picked for their their light weight. The cells should generate enough power to move the blimp at around 40 mph in average conditions, or at around 70 horsepower. Meanwhile, a diesel drivetrain will generate the rest of the power, and ideally the designers will look to an adapted hybrid electric model for that. And because blimps fly at low altitudes, they don’t have to deal with problems that plague diesel engines at elevations over 30,000 ft.

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U.S. Military Looks Into Clean-burning Cyclone Engine

Schoell, a Florida inventor, envisions a day when his external combustion engine replaces most of today's gasoline- and diesel-powered internal combustion engines. The U.S. Army and U.S. Navy think it may be an efficient way to generate electricity.

The Cyclone engine works by pumping fuel and air into a round combustion chamber, where it swirls cyclonelike and burns at about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Combustion gas passes into a heat exchanger, where it heats deion-ized water to 1,200 degrees under 3,200 pounds of pressure.The water turns into steam, but under pressure the steam remains in a fluid state and is referred to as a "supercritical fluid,".

The steam passes through a valve and into a cylinder, where it expands with almost explosive force to drive a piston. When the piston is pushed to the far end of the cylinder, the steam exits through an exhaust port.From there, the steam enters another heat exchanger, where heat is recovered and cycled back to the combustion chamber. Now cooler, the steam exits the heat exchanger and enters an air-cooled condenser, where it is turned back into water and is pumped back to the first heat exchanger to go through the cycle again.

Schoell has run his engines on gasoline and diesel fuel, but also on fuel made from orange peels, palm oil and chicken fat.cyclonelike swirl of fuel and air in the combustion chamber enables complete combustion so there is little except carbon dioxide as exhaust.In February, Cyclone Power Technologies announced the completion of tests with Raytheon of a Cyclone engine designed for the Navy to use in unmanned underwater vehicles and torpedoes.

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Local Man Creates Engine Powered By Magnets

Allen — A local area resident Jeff Baird’s newest invention is an engine that uses a technology that really isn’t new at all. It’s electromagnets.It’s probably 60 or 70-year-old technology.Many have tried and failed to get these engines to run efficiently and Baird said he has fixed what others couldn’t.All they’re doing is pulling on the pistons which has been done before.

The current prototype can generate enough electricity to power lights, televisions and computers. It is a work in progress and bigger and better engines are on the way, Baird said. Large batteries fire the magnets and the motor acts as an alternator that keeps the batteries charged continuously. Because it does not use fossil fuels, it is environmentally friendly.

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Energy-Efficient Engine Converts Waste Heat Into Energy

The energy-efficient car engine being developed by Martin Lydell and his Team Adiabatic may be up for a $5 million XPRIZE, but the real reason he is building it is to help Mother Earth.

The engine internally transfers thermal energy that is usually lost to a car's radiator into engine power output.Lydell said only about 25 percent of gas put in a tank goes to propelling a car, with the rest wasted. Heand his team have worked to capture the heat lost from the radiator to power the engine. It gets 77 miles per gallon in the engine he calls the Pulse Power.

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NOX Emissions Free Steam Engine

Cyclone Power Technologies announced results of emission testing performed on its Mark II 18HP engine running on diesel fuel. The tests demonstrated that the company's award-winning, external combustion technology is dramatically cleaner than current internal combustion diesel engines.

Cyclone Engines, by comparison, do not require any costly, efficiency-draining exhaust after-treatment. One reason for this is the Cyclone Engine burns its fuel at approximately 2,000degF, whereas NOX forms at temperatures above 2,300degF - ranges typical for both diesel and gas-powered internal combustion engines. It is also important to note that the Cyclone Engine does not idle. When no power is required from the engine it shuts off, thus NOX readings at this time - as well as carbon particulate matter and carbon dioxide (CO2) readings - are zero.

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New Catalysts Lower Fuel Consumption & Reduce Carbon Emissions

A new range of fuel catalysts has been launched in Australia which has the potential to reduce carbon emissions from all industries that use diesel, heavy fuel oil, coal and gas.The transport industry currently accounts for 13.7 per cent of Australia’s net total greenhouse gas emissions and emissions from electricity generation account for 34.4 per cent.

Launched by TK Fuels Ltd Australia, the catalysts, based on extensively researched fuel technology developed and currently in use throughout Europe, have been found to lower fuel consumption, improve engine performance and significantly reduce the pollution of unburnt fuel particles and other toxins from exhaust emissions.

Full article here

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BlueCool Truck Bunk Cooler - Zero-Emission, Idle-Reducing Cooling Product From Webasto

Webasto Product North America, a global leader in heating and cooling solutions for the light and heavy-duty transportation industries, has received California's Air Resources Board (CARB) approval for its BlueCool Truck Bunk Cooler. Out of all CARB approved devices, BlueCool Truck (BCT) is the only engine-off technology that has no emissions when in use.

BlueCool Truck's source of cooling is a high-tech cold storage unit that is charged (frozen) while the truck is running. During times of driver rest, the system utilizes only small amounts of electricity from the existing vehicle batteries (no additional batteries are needed) to circulate super-chilled coolant between the cold storage unit and a heat exchanger installed in the truck sleeper cabin. Once charged, the system uses no diesel fuel and therefore produces no emissions during the cooling operation because it runs independently of the OEM air conditioning system.

The principle behind how BlueCool Truck works is not a new discovery, it is a natural phenomenon called latent heat. It has been known for centuries that ice has poor thermal conductivity and extracting cold storage efficiently and effectively is extremely difficult. This problem has been overcome now by embedding the water/ice in a high-tech graphite matrix, with a resulting thermal conductivity that is 100 times better than a pure water/ice exchange. The design provides a highly efficient, compact and dynamic thermal energy storage system that produces an assured cooling output at a constant temperature.

Full article here - Zero-Emission, Idle-Reducing Cooling Product From Webasto Earns CARB Approval

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More Power from Motors by Injecting Ethanol, Methanol or E85

One of the most promising new ideas in energy efficiency comes from researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The proposition: get more power and efficiency out of turbocharged motors by injecting ethanol, methanol or E85 (85 percent methanol, 15 percent gasoline) into the engine at times of higher demands for power.

The MIT crowd claims this technology can boost gas mileage by as much as 30 percent, and that it allows a high-compression engine and high-boost turbocharger to operate on regular gasoline. Daniel Cohn, senior research scientist at the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment, and other MIT professors, have formed a company, Ethanol Boosting Systems, and are testing their concept with Ford Motor.

On another front, Daimler and General Motors are experimenting with motors that run on gasoline but combine features of traditional gasoline engines (fuel ignited by a spark) and diesel technology (fuel ignited by compression of fuel and air).

More from here -Automakers explore gas-saving technology

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Oxidation stability of biodiesel and blends

Oxidation stability of biodiesel and blends

A standardised quality parameter to avoid motor damage can be easily determined with the highly reliable Biodiesel Rancimat from Metrohm UK. In addition to other alternative fuels such as ethanol, methanol or biogas (methane), fatty acid methyl esters are increasingly found on the market; these are then known as biodiesel, RME (rapeseed oil methyl esters) or FAME (fatty acid methyl esters).

Read more from this article @ Manufacturing Talk

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Cummins Announces Approval of B20 Biodiesel Blends

Cummins Announces Approval of B20 Biodiesel Blends

23 Mar 2007

Louisville, Kentucky [RenewableEnergyAccess.com]

Cummins Inc. announced the approval of biodiesel B20 blends for use in its 2002 and later emissions-compliant ISX, ISM, ISL, ISC and ISB engines. This includes the recently released 2007 products.

Cummins is able to upgrade its previous position on the use of biodiesel fuel, which limited the use to B5 blends only, up to B20 for three key reasons.

Read the full report from here @ Renewable Energy Access

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