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by johnward
3656 days ago
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Trying to understand what is different and found this: "The basic idea is similar to a Wankel rotary, but turned on its head. Where the rotor holds the seals in a normal Wankel, the housing does that job in the X1 engine. This allows significant reduction in oil consumption over a regular rotary motor. Other enhancements include direct injection, a high compression ratio at 18:1, and a dramatic change to the geometry of the combustion chamber, which maintains a constant volume during ignition. This change means the air-fuel mixture auto-ignites like a diesel, and can be burned much longer than normal. The result is a more complete combustion ending in low emissions and very high chamber pressures. This high pressure is allowed to act on the rotor until it reaches nearly atmospheric pressures, so almost all the available energy is extracted before the exhaust is physically pushed out. Again, this is different than a normal internal combustion engine, which releases very energetic, high-pressure exhaust gas." http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a8174/liquidpistons-hyp... |
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Also, my memory of the workings of the wankel is a bit rusty, but I believe it is inherently balanced, so no counterbalance is necessary, but this one requires a counterbalance. On the other hand, unlike the wankel's one combustion chamber, this one has 3, so it doesn't need to deal with asymmetric heating issues. The combustion chambers themselves are very interesting. Due to the dorito shaped nature of the wankel rotor, there seems to be an inherent limit to the compression ratio because of the planar sides of the rotor can't get any closer to the wall of the housing. But on this one, the rotor can get completely flush with the housing, allowing more direct control over the compression ratio. Definitely an intriguing design.