Has anybody heard of this? I've read the website of its inventors, but its translated from French into English and things are a little confusing. He claims he has a working version of this engine. Does anyone know more about it? i.e. efficiency, fuel economy, is it a hoax, etc.
Thanks
Where's this website? (URL, that is). It's a little hard to give an opinion of something that I don't know what it is.
Good Luck! Rich
I was more interested in finding out if anybody knew more about it than what anybody thought about it. Here's the website all the same.
Cheers
Well, with the reference they give, it appears to be some serious work, even if the website material lacks of precise figures and diagrams.
Anyway, we made some calculations last year at school (Mechanical master degree) and the efficiency claimled seems to me reallistic: a photonic combustion engine would be twice more efficient than a classical internal combustion engine. At the moment, motor manufacturers (the french ones at least i can tell you :o) are trying to obtain a "photonic combustion" in a classical internal combustion engine. As far as I know, the main issue isn't the combustion control, but to meet the reliability and endurence requierments with higher temps and pressure in the combustion chamber.
The combustion cycle isn't that revolutionary... For me the engine design is a little bit more. But I would be really curious to know they achieve the combustion chamber sealing (is that the word?) properly. I thought it was a major issue for rotating engines... And one have to tell theses guys that even with a fixed center of mass, the engine might still vibrate.
Pierre Burry
Ps Why don't try to retrive more info by emailing the website authors?
I could get by for now without precise or labled diagrams. Just some curves on an axis would suffice so I could get an idea if the compression was adiabatic or isothermal or if the addition of heat isobaric or instant, etc.
T-S and P-V diagrams would also help explain the machinery.
It may be a great invention, but without a T-S or P-V diagram, there's no quick way to demonstrate to others that an engine could have higher efficiency.
All conservatism is based on censorship of economic information. -- Bret Cahill
IIRC this has been discussed at length over the years on sci.energy.hydrogen.
Again, IIRC, it was poo-pooed by the boffins there.
If it compresses fuel and air, it is limited to the chemical antiknock properties of the fuel, I would have thought, and thus would have a significant disadvantage over a CI engine.
BTW, that 50% more power/efficiency without a throttle, is a furphy in my understanding.
I haven't read the site carefully though yet :) I'll wait till someone with more patience than me finds something interesting there :)
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.