The winnipeg carborator. . . 130mpg in the 1930s(?). That person got murdered.

@LeopoldBloom ok so this other guy is the inventor? Im only noting that other solutions exist.

@LeopoldBloom I truly think that - with all the brilliant people who've been working on piston engines over the decades - if there were some modification of a carburetor or fuel injector that made such an amazing difference, then it would have been re-discovered.

@jehova Modifications of analog devices, like engines and carburetors, have analog results. What I mean by this is that if you adjust an engine in a small way that improves it, you can continue making small adjustments that either continue to improve or make it worse.

Thus small adjustments can lead you down a path to a local optimization. So if there's a big optimization out there, trial and error and small adjustments will eventually lead to it. This has not happened, which makes me think the Winnipeg carburetor wasn't real.

@ElwoodBlues i too am skeptical but if capitalism values profit above all else, it seems to; such a breakthrough would be suppressed? Id expect perhaps we can try to recreate (reinvent) this technology (innovation).

@jehova It's always possible that the great breakthru was suppressed. However, nobody suppressed optimally shaped combustion chambers (hemi & better). Nobody suppressed 4 valves per cylinder or variable valve timing. Nobody suppressed fuel injection or stratified charge or other similar improvements.

The horsepower we now get out of normally aspirated 250 c.i. is much greater than what they used to get out of 450 c.i. fifty years ago. And they burn much cleaner and last longer too.

@ElwoodBlues thanks im trying to understand the physics.

@ElwoodBlues it was invented that way invention doesnt, generally, get suppressed. Innovation does?

@ElwoodBlues furthermore my query is with increases in engine volume. At what threshold does cc of an engine not actually produce any additional force to ml (cc) combusted? In pursuit of efficiency.

@jehova I'm not sure there is a limit, as long as you're willing to change other engine parameters. According to Google,

102 rpm is pretty slow. it's a two stroke diesel, so each cylinder fires 51 times per minute. I think it may be optimized for torque rather than total horsepower.

I don't know if you could take a pile of smaller marine diesels and get the same hp out of a smaller total displacement. horsepower is torque times rpms, so you can probably get more hp, but that beast is optimized for turning a very large propeller at 102 rpms so any other large collection of engines would have to gear down to 102, incorporating some very very large gears to transmit all that torque.

@ElwoodBlues 1 mole is 86.175ml? Therefor 87cc is? Whereas 1 hp is . . . Idk its alot of math. Ill get back to you.

@jehova A mole is a certain number of molecules. A mole of gas at stp (0°C, 1atm) is 22.4 liters, or 22400 ml.

Why moles? If you look at atomic weights on periodic tables, oxygen is about 16 of those units whatever they are. That means a single oxygen molecule weighs 32. Now the good part: a mole of oxygen weighs 32 grams.

@ElwoodBlues im doing 1 molecule of gasoline (hexane?) Which is c6h14 thus 86.17gs. Or about 130mls of gasoline to release 4186kj which is 1.55hp. Therefore 1L contains the equivalent force of 1550hp and a hp engine only requires a given number of mls to utilize a given force. Efficiency in high volume engines is obscene?

@jehova I see what you're aiming for. Joules or kJ are a measure of energy; they would convert into horsepower multiplied by time, say horsepower hours.

1 hp = 746 watts = 746 Joules/sec.
So with your numbers, burning 130ml/sec of gasoline to release 4186kJ/sec of energy at 100% efficiency would give 5611hp for 1 sec or 93hp for 1 min if burned over a period of 60 sec. And burning 1 liter over a period of 1 minute would yield 719.4 hp for that minute.

And now we have to talk about efficiency, and I'm on less firm ground here. There's something called the Carnot theorem which says that the best efficiency you can achieve depends on temperatures

I think that in our case the hot source temp is the temp of combustion. And I sorta think (very shaky ground here) that the cold temp is the temp of the exhaust gas, but it might be the surrounding air. All temps in Kelvin relative to absolute zero.

Anyway, Carnot tells us the maximum possible efficiency for a given combustion temp, but tells us NOTHING about how to achieve it!

Also, temp is rapidly changing in the combustion chamber and I have no idea what to do with that factoid!

@ElwoodBlues thanks can gasoline be vaporized to fill an engine chamber

@jehova Yes, and I think that's a good way to think of the combustion process. Even if it goes in as tiny tiny droplets, after compression & ignition it's a gas.

And I think the mixture in the cylinder is aimed pretty close to the right number of moles of O2 to balance the moles of carbon & hydrogen in the fuel. Maybe a few percent excess oxygen for complete combustion.

@ElwoodBlues ok is it injected as a liquid? Then ignited? Might it be vaporized

@ElwoodBlues lets make it better!

@jehova Yeah, the fuel is sprayed, becomes tiny droplets. With a carburetor, the fuel is somehow drawn thru moving air; with fuel injection it's sprayed out of some tiny holes. Anyway, along with the droplets, the air is drawn into the cylinder (20% O2) at reduced pressure at partial throttle; one atmosphere at full throttle (a turbo or supercharger pushes compressed air plus droplets at somewhere near two atmosphere's pressure).

The filling of the cylinder with fuel air mixture happens as the piston withdraws to maximum volume. Then valves close, the piston comes back and compresses the mixture and at somewhere near full compression (depends on the compression ratio of the particular engine; maybe 10:1) the sparkplug ignites the mixture and a flame front travels thru it making more gas, more pressure, pushing the piston back out with much more force.

Anyway, 80% of the contents of the cylinder are nitrogen which doesn't contribute to burning the fuel, just takes ups space.

@ElwoodBlues might the injection process be made to use less fuel overall? It seems that larger engines are advertised but in terms of the amount of fuel needed to exert needed force waste is the name of the game?

@jehova You'll have to provide a citation. Pogue is the only inventor. The reason the Winnipeg carburetor isn't being manufactured is because it doesn't work.

Saying that capitalism "suppressed" this is just tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory. Capitalism encourages competition, so if the Winnipeg carburetor worked, some manufacturer would manufacture it to gain an advantage over their competitors. Back in the 70s, there was a huge push to come up with high-mileage cars; that would have been the perfect time for it.

@LeopoldBloom okay im only asking a question. Id think it could be done more efficiently. When was the internal combustion engine invented? Its been a long long time. There really isnt a better way?

@ElwoodBlues The problem isn't how much energy is stored in the fuel, it's the relative efficiency of extracting it. Converting chemical to mechanical energy isn't a new idea; Hero's aeolipile was invented thousands of years ago, but was so inefficient, no one ever thought of mounting it to a cart. If they had, they would have had an automobile.

@LeopoldBloom also based on the time period it happened in and the obvious insider trading greed and insider legislating id be suprised if competetion was even considered. Gasoline was 'originally' derived from light petroleum extracted from hemp oil. Thus, Dinosaur fossil fuel is a complete conspiracy. So thats fun.

@jehova The internal combustion engine goes back to the 19th century. There have been a few attempts at improvement, like the rotary engine, where you don't have to convert reciprocating movement of pistons to the rotary motion of the transmission because the power source is already rotating. The main improvements have been in computerization, to allow the engine to run as efficiently as possible, or different fuels like hydrogen gas. Efficiency also has to be balanced with economy of manufacturing and safety. A nuclear-powered car would be very efficient but too expensive to produce and too dangerous to drive.

I think instead of focusing on single-passenger cars, we should be developing more public transportation, which is far more economical because it operates at scale. Ridesharing and self-driving cars could be optimized to pick up and drop off passengers for short trips outside the public transportation network by using AI to optimize the route. So-called "15 minute cities" would also help as they would allow people to meet their needs without making long trips.

@LeopoldBloom If you scroll back far enough, I did put in a bit about Carnot's theorem for efficiency.

@jehova says Gas turbines are much more efficient at high rpms and high horsepower, but I think they're really wasteful at idle and when the car is moving slowly.

Most piston engines use the Otto cycle, but the Prius engine uses the Atkinson cycle. It's more efficient than Otto over a a narrow range of rpms. The rest of the tech in the Prius is a way to make great use of the narrow range of rpms.

There is a car that takes that one step further; it's a plugin hybrid with a piston engine that only runs at 1 speed and only charges the battery. I don't remember the name and I'm too lazy to look it up.

Anyway, specialized engines can be made more efficient at one task; that's probably true of the 109,000-horsepower Wärtsilä-Sulzer. It's job isn't to put max horsepower into the drive shaft, it's job is to make a 30 ft diam propeller push water backwardsd at max efficiency.

@LeopoldBloom definitely better managing of the need for transportation is ideal public transit ride share hang gliders zip line passanger cars etc. lets have some fun with it.