New Air Hybrid Engine

I hope it works out better than that Air Guitar I bought

 

the Scuderi Air-Hybrid has the unique capability of recapturing energy from the exhaust of the engine, making it possible to utilize a Scuderi Air-Hybrid design in stationary applications such as electric generators – an application where electric hybrids are considered impractical.

How is an electric Hybrid not well-suited to generate electricity? LOL

 

The key word in that quote is "stationary", ie a standalone generator.. I think the specific situations that they believe that their product can address is generator shutdown and start-up.. When you are shutting down a generator, after it slows down past a certain speed, it is no longer generating useful electrical output, but there is still a lot of energy in the rotating elements.. And when starting up, you have to first spin up the mass of the rotor and get it up to speed before it begins to generate useful power. Instead of hooking up a motor/generator to the generator where you basically run into the same issue (ie residual spin that cannot be converted into electricity), they're proposing attaching a mechanical contrivance to use the rotational energy to compress air and use the compressed air to respin the generator..

This actually sounds a lot like the "hydraulic hybrid" that one of the Big 3 tried out years ago- very similar concept, but instead of air, they used hydraulics which are arguably more efficient than air..

 

Hi All,

The problem with this idea is that when the gas is compressed, it creates heat. Heat cannot be retained as long as a chage in an electric battery, as the tank and its connections must be heavy thermally conductive materials, such as steel. As the gas expands after being cooled over storage time, it comes out colder than ambient (which it started at) and colder gas has a smaller volume - thus less energy. This happens because a gas is compressable, which allows for allot of storage capacity, but wasteful utilization.

The opposite of this situation is hydraulic storage. Hydraulic fluid is not compressible, which lends for limit storage as only so many molecules of a given incompressible fluid will fit in a give volume. This means only pressure can be increased, not volume of fluid. The relatively efficient utilization is possible though, as the only heating is due to flow friction, not thermodynamics. So a hydraulic system can do a fare job of launching a bus up to 40 mph, but "stealth" mode for 1 or 2 miles is probably out.

 

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My air Guitar works great! You should hear me do Layla, note for note with Eric. Way Cool Dude. Peace.