For what it's worth ... According to my sister-in-law, who contracts to Ford in
their castings division, Ford is still looking at ceramics for things like
intake manifolds.
Wes
> Joe,
>
> You are correct it was referring to BTUs, but lost BTUs is lost power,
> isn't it. I was not saying that running hotter would give more HP with
> the limitations we have to deal with. However, it still seems to me that
> if you could use more of the heat produced, then you would have better
> performance. It just isn't practical yet.
>
> Tom, Redding CA - #216 D/CC
>
> Joe & Lynne Lance wrote:
>
> > Tom, I think what the old textbook really said was that only 30% of the BTU
> > content of the FUEL is converted into engine power to drive the car, and all
> > the other percentages are also percentages of the input fuel BTU content.
> >
> > Smokey Yunick's adiabatic engine, I believe, was intended to minimize the
> > amount of fuel BTUs lost in waste heat in order to increase efficiency but
> > that approach gets very complicated. Years ago (10-15?) some research was
> > being done on ceramic engines along the lines of Smokey's idea, but I
> > haven't heard anything about that lately.
> >
> > Sometimes equating high temperatures with high efficiency can be misleading
> > because it deals with only the First Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law
> > of Thermodynamics deals with effectiveness or what percentage of Carnot
> > efficiency you can get--which means that you want the lowest peak combustion
> > temperature possible for a given power output from the fuel. All of this
> > stuff is very important for fuel burning electric utility power plants, but
> > don't think it means much for Land Speed engines (as long as friction and
> > other parasitic losses are minimized) where the objective is to maximize the
> > amount of fuel/oxygen pumped in to maximize horsepower and the hell with
> > Carnot effectiveness! So I don't think trying to run at much higher engine
> > temperatures will payoff.
> >
> > Lance
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