Mar
8
The Transonic Way to Improved Gas Mileage
March 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Transonic was exhibiting at the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in Washington earlier last week with a supercritical fuel injection system that can improve the fuel economy or gas mileage of internal combustion engines by between 50-75%.
That’s almost unbelievable, but stay with me. The Transonic fuel injection system is based on supercritical fluid [...]
Feb
25
The Exploding Bloom Box
February 25, 2010 | 1 Comment
With much coordinated anticipation Bloom Energy revealed their Bloom Box (BB) fuel cell to the press yesterday. With working units sold and operating on sites in California naysaying has to be a real hard task.
There are articles and blogs rich in interesting details and after an hour or so of looking through them I encourage [...]
Feb
23
Bloom Fuel Cell Booms Tomorrow
February 23, 2010 | 2 Comments
With a setup blitz of media coverage from Fortune and Business Week in the business section to CBS on the political left and much of the green crowd in between, Bloom Energy and their “fuel cell” or very close approximation of one is having a media event Wednesday February 24th, 2010. That’s when some answers [...]
Feb
12
The Latest Electric Vehicle Controller
February 12, 2010 | 2 Comments
The researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have designed, fabricated and demonstrated a PHEV traction drive power electronics system that provides significant mobile power generation and vehicle-to-grid support capabilities. (The Oak Ridge press release isn’t specific, but here PHEV seems to mean Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicle, not parallel hybrid EV.) The [...]
Feb
9
The Best Electric Vehicle Motor
February 9, 2010 | 2 Comments
The electric motor as we know it was first designed by Nikola Tesla and then vastly improved for commercial use by George Westinghouse with many improvements along the way. Today’s motors follow two dominating designs called permanent magnet and induction that are descriptions of the rotating assembly inside the case that delivers the twisting force [...]
Jan
28
An Ethanol Engine For Maximum Output
January 28, 2010 | 3 Comments
Not since the Ford Model T has a U.S. engine manufacturer produced a market oriented ethanol fuel engine. Or more accurately, one optimized for ethanol. The engineering firm Ricardo and supporter Growth Energy who promotes ethanol have built and lab tested an ethanol engine that uses ethanol for maximum output. That means compression, lots of [...]
Jan
27
A Jet Turbine Engine for Your Hybrid Vehicle
January 27, 2010 | 4 Comments
A jet engine for a hybrid vehicle generator set seems at first a little extreme. But is it? The scale for jet turbines for outside observers is the huge engine hanging from the wings of airliners. That’s a little deceptive, as those jet’s turbine engines are much smaller than what’s visible. The power turbine inside [...]
Jan
11
A Look At The Only Fuel Cell On The Market
January 11, 2010 | 1 Comment
Toshiba of Japan has been a leader in fuel cells and last October quietly put a methanol fuel cell on the market. Japan is well known for introducing leading technologies into their home market, so this isn’t s shock. But it certainly is a shot across the bow of every other fuel cell market ‘want [...]
Dec
29
An Electric Hybrid Bulldozer Goes On Sale
December 29, 2009 | 3 Comments
With a little fanfare Caterpillar announced last week they’re shipping a diesel engine driven generation set to electric motor hybrid drive bulldozer. The D7E model is in the upper midsize range with the Cat C9.3 ACERT(TM) diesel engine rated at 235 net horsepower (175 kW) driving a powerful electrical generator that produces AC (alternating current). [...]
Dec
18
A Hybrid Airship
December 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Is it a plane, a blimp or a dirigible from out of the past? No, it’s a hybrid airship, part dirigible, and part airplane. Built by co-founders Bob Rist and Brian Martin of Ohio Airship outside of Toledo, Ohio with the help of folks laid of at Cessna and Jeep the hybrid offers some truly [...]
