Manntis
10-02-2005, 12:49 PM
As many of you know, I'm a huge fan of biodiesel. When you pull gas (even diesel) out of the ground, you're releasing carbon into an atmosphere from a million-year-old reserve. The atmosphere has since rebalanced itself since that carbon went missing, and introducing it now is basically introducing new carbon into a delicately balanced system. Such pollution is likely the cause of observed global warming, indirectly spinning off (no pun intended) into things like hurricane Katrina and Rita. So fossil fuels cost us at the pump and in massive global damage.
In contrast, crops like Canola soak up carbon from the current atmosphere, then release it when burned. It's also used as a cooking oil by restaurants, which then have to pay to have the waste oil hauled away - but the waste oil, though used to heat food, is still rich in fuel energy.
Biodiesel has far superior fuel system lubrication properties, lower tailpipe emissions, and lower environmental impact during production - especially when you take a waste product, such as used cooking oil, and turn it into fuel, which uses a small amount of electric power versus drilling deep into the ground, pumping oil, transporting it, paying an army of employees to extract and transport the oil, etc.
I'm obviously also a fan of rotaries. So why not a rotary running on biodiesel?
With a few notable (and expensive) exceptions, rotaries have been gasoline powered engines. Using regular diesel, B10, or biodiesel wouldn't be possible in a conventional rotary, and designing a new diesel-specific rotary would drive the cost far higher than the $3500 average cost of a conventional internal combustion engine.
However, there is a way it could work.
I transplanted the engine and rebuilt tranny from Pamela, my old GSL-SE, into Carmen, my new one since Carmen's engine was a bit weaker. This leaves me with one of the most reliable rotaries ever built, a fuel injected, normally aspirated 13B, laying around for experimentation. I'm looking at replacing the plugs, coils, sparkplug wires, etc. with a catalytic ignition system - a hollow, metallic body with flame nozzles and precombustion chamber - which is threaded to screw onto the engine block in place of conventional spark plugs. The catalytic heating element initiates combustion (and controls timing). A timed catalytic reduction of the pre-chamber's activation energy should produce almost instantaneous combustion in the pre-chamber, then the flames propegate into the rotaries combustion chamber for complete burning and mechanical power creation.
This should create a more complete fuel vaporization and burning, and reduce the complexity of the intake system since the fuel is injected at the pre-chamber rather than in intake runners. It sohuld also reduce the rotary's notorious poor emissions as the burning begins in a pre-chamber then continues in the combustion chamber rather than beginning in the combustion chamber and flinging unburned fuel out the exhaust port.
This would also allow a rotary to run on a renewable fuel without the need for an expensive hydrogen creation and distribution infrastructure. Because the fuel is created from a waste product using a chemical catalyst and a small amount of electric current, and creates a valuable byproduct (glycerin), its possible to have our sports-car cake and eat it too, while substantially reducing environmental impacts of fuel creation and combustion.
In theory, the small amount of unburned fuel circulating with the rotor would also reduce engine wear, as biodiesel is far superior to gasoline as a lubricant and could thereby greatly reduce or eliminate the rotary's need for burning oil o lubricate itself.
A smooth running engine with cleaner emissions, lower friction, reduced number of engine parts - and all from a wankel manufactured in the early 80s :)
In contrast, crops like Canola soak up carbon from the current atmosphere, then release it when burned. It's also used as a cooking oil by restaurants, which then have to pay to have the waste oil hauled away - but the waste oil, though used to heat food, is still rich in fuel energy.
Biodiesel has far superior fuel system lubrication properties, lower tailpipe emissions, and lower environmental impact during production - especially when you take a waste product, such as used cooking oil, and turn it into fuel, which uses a small amount of electric power versus drilling deep into the ground, pumping oil, transporting it, paying an army of employees to extract and transport the oil, etc.
I'm obviously also a fan of rotaries. So why not a rotary running on biodiesel?
With a few notable (and expensive) exceptions, rotaries have been gasoline powered engines. Using regular diesel, B10, or biodiesel wouldn't be possible in a conventional rotary, and designing a new diesel-specific rotary would drive the cost far higher than the $3500 average cost of a conventional internal combustion engine.
However, there is a way it could work.
I transplanted the engine and rebuilt tranny from Pamela, my old GSL-SE, into Carmen, my new one since Carmen's engine was a bit weaker. This leaves me with one of the most reliable rotaries ever built, a fuel injected, normally aspirated 13B, laying around for experimentation. I'm looking at replacing the plugs, coils, sparkplug wires, etc. with a catalytic ignition system - a hollow, metallic body with flame nozzles and precombustion chamber - which is threaded to screw onto the engine block in place of conventional spark plugs. The catalytic heating element initiates combustion (and controls timing). A timed catalytic reduction of the pre-chamber's activation energy should produce almost instantaneous combustion in the pre-chamber, then the flames propegate into the rotaries combustion chamber for complete burning and mechanical power creation.
This should create a more complete fuel vaporization and burning, and reduce the complexity of the intake system since the fuel is injected at the pre-chamber rather than in intake runners. It sohuld also reduce the rotary's notorious poor emissions as the burning begins in a pre-chamber then continues in the combustion chamber rather than beginning in the combustion chamber and flinging unburned fuel out the exhaust port.
This would also allow a rotary to run on a renewable fuel without the need for an expensive hydrogen creation and distribution infrastructure. Because the fuel is created from a waste product using a chemical catalyst and a small amount of electric current, and creates a valuable byproduct (glycerin), its possible to have our sports-car cake and eat it too, while substantially reducing environmental impacts of fuel creation and combustion.
In theory, the small amount of unburned fuel circulating with the rotor would also reduce engine wear, as biodiesel is far superior to gasoline as a lubricant and could thereby greatly reduce or eliminate the rotary's need for burning oil o lubricate itself.
A smooth running engine with cleaner emissions, lower friction, reduced number of engine parts - and all from a wankel manufactured in the early 80s :)