AlaskaStar's Automotive X-Prize Design, Open Source Project-

[AlaskaStar]

I don't mean to spoil the party, but I seem to be the only person here that is moving toward using hydrogen as an energy carrier with the use of particle physics to power a car, without breaking thermodynamic laws.

Organic Rankine Cycle, YES. I don't find any forums that even touch this topic. It is too efficient, and yields more power via leverage than any other system out there.

I may be on to something that will require the use of high velocity lead protection here soon, but if we don't utilize solar heat energy (not just sunlight for photo-voltaic!!!) we are pretty doomed here!

Is there anyone else moving in this direction?

If so, please speak up, I would like to compare notes. I am still building my system with my plans, but there may be something that we can help each other on.

AlaskaStar

[huck]

Sorry Alaska..you lost me at Organic Rank...
Huck is still trying to figure out how to build his -uber electrolyzer-...and have it small enough to fit in the NOT spacious engine compartment.

[cwaugs]

[cwaugs]

[williamssteve]

So perhaps capturing engine exhaust gasses heat and converting to energy of some description in a car? Exhaust temp I think qualifies as wasted energy and suitable for Rankin Cycle energy recovery. A heat exchanger wouldnt be that difficult to make. In fact you could have engine coolant in one part of the system and ( separate ) exhaust gasses heating liquid in another part. I have no idea how efficient it would make things, but at least it could charge batteries or run a large bank of hydroxy units on board? I have no idea, but it might be possible.

[cwaugs]

The issue with that is that it starts a huge cycle as the engine gets more efficient then the exhaust cools off then the cooling off leaves no heat for the process then it gets less efficient then the exhaust heats up. GRRRR takes approx 10-30 seconds to complete a cycle of heating & cooling.

[williamssteve]

actually I was thinking of fitting the rankin cycle gizmo to an existing car engine. The car engine will still produce exhaust heat, it will just be captured into the rankin cycle gizmo. How you would use the captured heat I am not sure, but perhaps in a hybrid confguration, this could be useful. If you had a permenant diesel-electric confguration ( like frieght locos ) you would always have max torque from the electric motors and the ability to capture wasted energy and feed it back into the electrical generation phase.

[highhopes]

OK Im new at this, and this is some thing I just thought of, you need strong spring tension to hold the collets on the valve stem. DROPPING a valve, BAAAD.

[CrusherT]

[CrusherT]

[BillyHydrogen]

[AlaskaStar]

[biggeorge]

This is all very fascinating stuff.

There are a few things that need to be addressed though.
I've read the rules in their entirety for this x-prize thing.
Firstly, your vehicle needs to have a functioning OBD2 system.
This alone is going to annihilate a lot of people from the race.
Not sure if you've looked at the competition on the xprize website, but most of them seem to be taking a production car and popping in an electric motor, or some kind of carburettion system.

The rules also seem to be very much geared towards using either petrol, lpg, cng, ng, electricity (very biased to electric), diesel, biodiesel, ethanol...

They have not made any allowance for hydrogen powered vehicles, presumably due to them supplying the fuel and the contestants ability to store it. Nor have they made any allowance for WATER powered vehicles, with no mention of on-board hydrogen generation.

You could save yourself a lot of hassle and enter your "mass hydrogen output, minimal energy input" doover, powering a normal (modded) ICE and theoretically not break the rules or use ANY fuel.

There are a few other things in the rules that really irk me, like requiring you to have the business plan laid out in full before you enter the race (inventors are not necessarily business planners, and don't generally have the money to hire one either)
and also having 10,000 units a year of production capability. WTF???!?

$10,000 to enter the race?
Crash testing??


Sounds like the jerk who thought up this wacky race wants the fkn answer handed to him on an iridium platter, wants you to do all the work in inventing the thing, marketing it, testing it, complying it, MANUFACTURING IT ffs, and he wants to snatch it off you, stick his X-prize logo on it and sell it to 10,000 people a year. All while having the friggn discovery channel PAY HIM to let them film and promote it.

This x-prize is a crock of shite...

[AlaskaStar]

[biggeorge]