Could a Steam Engine Under your Hood Increase Efficiency?
Inventor David Sakrisson claims that the engines in our cars today could readily be made more fuel efficient, more powerful, and release fewer emissions. All it takes, says Sakrisson, is a conversion method consisting of some "relatively simple bolt-on devices."
Instead of gasoline, Sakrisson's system uses a mixture of water and syngas for fuel. Both are commonly used today, he explains: water injection in race cars and syngas in combustion turbines in power plants.
In order for the engine in your car to burn this fuel, the second part of the system is an engine conversion unit. The unit converts conventional engines into combustion-driven, combined-cycle steam engines. Basically, once syngas enters the engine and the cylinder is heated, water is injected, which instantly flashes into steam. This steam is then the main driving force of the engine.
On his Web site , Sakrisson explains that the average vehicle wastes about 1/3 of its fuel's heat energy out the exhaust pipe and into the environment. In addition, the average vehicle wastes another 1/3 of its fuel's heat energy out the engine's cooling system, adding more heat to the environment. Thus, it's the cooling system of the car that his work is primarily aimed at improving.
"Our present engines are in need of a major retrofit in the area of internal cooling and detonation control," Sakrisson says. "Water or steam is a much better anti-detonate than is gasoline or other fuel."
Sakrisson says that his system is an affordable, realistic and permanent way to improve the efficiency of today's vehicles. While his Web site is quite loquacious and vague, the conversion of his ideas into a working product will ultimately be all that matters.
And the product could potentially have far-reaching consequences. Sakrisson claims that the technology could be adapted to agricultural and marine engines, as well as 4-stroke internal combustion engines of all types and sizes, from lawn mowers and generators, to autos and trucks, farm machinery, pumps, motor boats, construction equipment and nearly any other application that uses an internal combustion engine.