It’s one of the most common questions we get from people with engineering backgrounds after they’ve seen the Scuderi Engine for the first time: How do you prevent the expansion cylinder from overheating?
There is an interesting story that appeared Monday in Green Car Reports about the “Five Things Carmakers Will Never Do That Would Boost Gas Mileage.” This article written by Antony Ingram makes some great points. It caught our attention especially since, from the Scuderi Engine perspective, incorporating the split-cycle technology would actually make some of these “five things” easier to address.
The Scuderi Engine is typically associated with the automotive and other mobile propulsion applications. This is a natural association given that car engines are a more visible part of everyday lives and when Carmelo Scuderi first designed the concept, it was the challenges of a gas engine that directed his thinking. However, one emerging technology that is often discussed in the power generation circles is combined heat and power (CHP), or as it’s sometimes called: “cogeneration.”
We get asked a lot about the differences between the Scuderi Engine and the conventional internal combustion engine. One question in particular focuses on the engine’s weight and if there is any difference in power and weight versus a conventional four-cylinder passenger car engine.
In the United States Tuesday, the Obama administration issued new rules requiring automakers to drastically improve vehicle fuel efficiency. The new standards will require an average fuel economy of 54.5 miles per gallon for the 2025 model year. Current rules for the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program mandate at 35.5 mpg by 2016.
Throughout the development of the Scuderi Engine technology, there have been many discoveries and new inventions. A special one is what we affectionately call the “Soap Bar,” a system within the variable valve actuation (VVA) system.
A report was released Wednesday by the National Petroleum Council (NPC) on the status of alternative fuels and recommendations on how to accelerate the adoption of new fuels and technologies. The report is meant to answer questions from the U.S. Department of Energy on how to speed up the use of alternative fuels (i.e. natural gas, biofuels, etc.) in the next few decades given that nearly all of the country’s transportation fuel comes from oil.
As development of the Scuderi Engine and its potential applications continues in the lab, marketing teams have been out in full force participating in various trade shows and conferences.
The recent SAE World Congress included presentations by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) engineers on two major facets of the Scuderi Split-Cycle Engine technology: The Air-Hybrid component and the engine’s ability to leverage the “Miller Cycle” to achieve major efficiency and power gains.
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal special report: “Innovations in Energy” featured an article discussing the abundance of natural gas and the viability of using it as an alternative to gasoline and diesel fuel. (In a separate article, the report also highlights the Scuderi Engine as an emerging engine technology.)