Just wondering if anyone else has seen this engine? 100 pounds and producing 2 hp per pound and can be scaled up? Supposedly Duesenberg is a company again and will use a supercharged version (300 hp) . I read somewhere else that at 200 hp in an average car it would get 70mpg??? www.epindustries.com The CEM Engine is being developed by E.P. Industries. The CEM Engine will be an efficient method of converting fuel energy into electrical energy. E.P. Industries is now offering interested parties an opportunity to purchase a license for this technology. Please contact [email protected] with licensing inquiries. The CEM Engine will be capable of delivering substantially greater performance with greatly reduced manufacturing cost. A novel concept for significantly increasing the efficiency of the four-stroke cycle internal combustion engine, the Department of Defense in 1997 awarded the engine concept an SBIR. The super-charged CEM Engine has the potential to become one of the first self-lubricating, air-cooled, multi-fuel, four-stroke cycle engines to deliver two horsepower/pound. http://www.epindustries.com/cemintro2.html
The article in the news yesterday says the USA has 'proven reserves' of gas and oil equal to 36 years at our current rate of consumption. theres no danger of running out.
Whether there is a danger or running out of oil or not, is not the issue. The fact that there are engines being built that can produce such power, while only "sipping" fuel, is a good thing. 100 pounds, 100 hp, 70+mpg.. That is impressive.
Oil company greed is infinite. Thats why my 53 chevy gets the same mileage (23 mpg per my last receipts) as most 2006 chevy cars. New technology is welcome. If I could, I'd put a biodiesel burner in my custom and run on yard waste. I almost bought a wrecked 2wd cummins dodge for just that reason.
So is consumer greed and stupidity .....It's not the greedy oil companies forcing soccer moms to drive Hummers to the mall or suburban cowboys to use a 4wd extended cab pickup to commute from suburbia to town with only one butt in the cab. Some folks burn a LOT of fuel just to be "stylish" or "manly"......
this is true, as much as i hate to admit it i sold my 96ss last year and now drive a civic to and from work $100 a week reduced to 30-$40.
Biodiesel is a good way to save $$$. My brother-in-law owns nothing but diesels and brews his own biodiesel from used vegetable oil. Using the methanol-sodium hydroxide method it costs him about $1.64 a gallon using free oil from a local restaurant. And the cost is going down because he is recovering about 90% of the methanol to reuse in the next batch. Diesels will fit in a lot of cars. A 7.3L Ford Powerstroke is about the same size as a big block Ford. Only difference is weight cause that diesel weighs in at 938 pounds dry. Frame and suspension will need to be beefed up to carry the weight. You'll also need to find space for the intercooler up front with the radiator. But its nothing that a thinking hot rodder can't accomplish. To some people the only problem will be that a modern turbo-charged diesel is not a "traditional" engine to put in a hot rod or custom. Oh and they need a computer to run them. When push comes to shove and the price of gasoline hits $4.50 a gallon then a diesel running on home-brewed biodiesel at $1.75 a gallon looks pretty good.
E85!!!!!! Why it isn't already replacing pure gasolene is beyond me. The oil companies are screwing us rotton, and in the meantime we're actually subsidizing farmers to NOT grow corn that could be used to create ethanol. Makes no sense to me.
E85 takes more gasoline to make than it saves. Isn't that motor very similar to Jocko's watchamacallit engine? I see also that the "inventor" is Eddie Paul, the car customizer. Something doesn't seem right.
Since I live pretty modestly, and consume as little as possible in electricity, natural gas and the like, I think my use of gasoline and diesel is well within my right as a consumer. We hear how bad we are for driving "gas guzzlers" but how about the people who never turn off a light, business's who keep the lights on 24/7 and light up the night with their parking lot lights? How much energy did it take to manufacture that new Prius in comparison to keeping my ten year old Lincoln on the road? Or any of my old stuff? I'd guess my Lincoln has a smaller impact on the planet than any new gas saver from Japan! There's more to energy conservation than just gasoline consumption....and I've been doing my part for over 40 years....
oh, we won't run out of oil....the price will keep going up, and eventually we won't be able to afford to waste it like we do now. The press release for that miracle engine sounds like a typical bragging fund raising effort. I don't see all the stuff on that engine that would be required to actually make it work in a car. And unless it uses a quite different thermodynamic cycle than a normal engine, it won't have noticably better fuel efficiency. What cycle does it use?
It'll be toward the end of mine and after reading the last front page news article bashing my generation and stateing that we will break the economy etc I'm pretty well set on not leaving a damned thing to anyone that comes after me. The new little motor thingy looks interesting, not sure why I was told how to get liscensing info, maybe it should have been put in the classifieds. I don't think I'd want to run it on a hoodless car though. I wonder how you get it up past 400 HP? Ya know it doesn't take any more energy to make methanol then ethanol and it would give us the opportunity to use up sawdust that normally gets burned. If you're gonna go off on a tangent why not use the byproduct of an industry one that gets destroyed and damages the environment rather than produce a product that needs to be grown new every year, and be subject to changes in weather, fertility etc.
Yes, it's funny how we were led to believe that we were "running out of oil" during the Arab oil embargo of '73-'74. How many billions of gallons have been consumed in the 32 years since then, and it's still spraying out of the ground? As for myself, I did my part by buying a '96 S10 2WD pickup from a guy that lives a mile from me for $500. It gets 10mpg more than my full size truck does on my 40 mile round trip to work every day, and the original owner already paid to have it built, so I ain't robbin' no future generation of nothin'! The S10 should pay for itself before the end of the year, and I can still fill the back of it with hot rod parts at swap meets.
I really don't know why a practical steam car couldn't be built for mass consumption. If you read the history of Stanley Steamers, the Stanley brothers made vast improvements over their first cars with the last ones produced in the '20s. With modern technology, I think that steam cars make more sense that the questionable designs that have been tried lately.
elcornus, Doin well my friend. I wish you could have been there when me and mrs beaner were loading that tool box. What a hoot. Heathen Just think we could make nuclear powered cars just like a sub or a flat top. After the initial fill up that would cost you a fortune you'd never ever have to fill up again. BTW Oakland made a few steamers also. I used to tinker with one at a place called the Candy Store in N Cal. it was a neat car.
I saw a segment on CNN a few months ago showing a woman who worked for a power co. in California driving a hydrogen powered car built by Ford. She was in traffic like you and me and keeping up. She drove it as part of her job showing people how to save money on their electric bills by buying more efficient appliances and insulating better. Her conversations always went to her car outside. Ford says it cost them a million to build the car by hand. It has a 4.5 gallon tank and gets 50 mpg on hydrogen. They also said it would be 10 years before they could get them in production. For what we are spending a day in Iraq....we could have subsidized Ford and gotten these cars on the road in two years..... Ford link : look at " whats on the road now" as for our hobby...... I think ya'll are right....we will not run out of oil and gas....our hobby will just get more and more expensive. if you want to invest in a company making engines that will give you a great return on your investment.....I'd look for electric motor manufacturing companys....like leeson.... there's your future I'm afraid...
I agree with Krooser here. If the consumer is willing to pay the price for their energy consumption, what's the beef? The increasing cost of energy will let the market regulate its rate of consumption. Americans as a whole consume more energy and dispose of more trash per capita than any other culture on the planet. So - we pay for it at market rates. Markets are self regulating if not overly regulated by governmental forces. I personally try to consume energy in an efficient manner but that's because I choose to do so. My personal market forces (i.e. income) dictates that I do so. If I were swimming in cash I may choose a different approach, but for now my personal situation and constitution tell me to be conservative. I don't feel a swelled sense of earth pride or the urge to grow dreadlocks and become a vegan either. I simply prefer to use my energy dollars as wisely as I can. If others have the finances to drive a Hummer I don't care. I personally don't ike the things but if they choose to drive it that's OK with me. NOW- if we could just get some of them to learn HOW to drive them I'd be happier and have fewer stains in my undies. HEY BONEHEAD - Get that damned phone out of your ear and get back in your lane!!!!
and where does all the hydrogen come from? splitting natural gas? electrolysis using electricity from coal or oil or natural gas fired power plants? You can't get something for nothing.
The reason that biodiesel, E85, hydrogen and other stuff is not on the market is because at $3.00 per gallon, gasoline is still cheaper to produce and distribute. Simple economics. If ethanol were cheaper to produce and distribute, it would be in the pumps now. But the true cost of Ethanol is probably closer to $5.00 a gallon when you add in the added energy costs. Gasoline probably has to approach $6/gallon before Ethanol becomes an economically viable alternative. Same for biodiesel. In the current state it is far more expensive than produce than petro-diesel. Even growing more and cheaper celulose based plant material only reduces the cost a small amount. It's the processing that gets you. This is similar to the way that Walmart has outsourced so much to China. We have homegrown products that could stock the shelfs, but we flock to Walmart in search of lower prices. Same with fuel. Sure, there are alternatives, but we prefer the cheaper middle eastern crude oil. Dammit, why can't I have my cake and eat it too?
I don't know how old you are Chris, but I remember 1970 quite vividly. On the grand scheme of things, 36 years years is nothing.
your right squirrl...we need nuclear reactors to make electricity. and we need cheap convienient public transportation. The electricity is used to make hydrogen from splitting water molecules....but even with the oil and coal burning plants we have now....we will have taken millions of pollution sources and knocked it down to a few hundred....and we can clean up emissions more easily from a few hundred big sources than from millions of small sources.... no easy answers...but we can burn lots of things to make electricity..... Politically and economically we would be better off without the daily need for gas(oil) to get to work.
It's a myth that production of Ethanol requires more energy than it produces, mostly originating from a single researcher at Syracuse University working on grants from the oil companies. His methodology is to count every bit of energy used from planting the corn to hauling the fuel, coupled with process efficiencies and yield levels from the 1970s. Almost every factor in his calculation is now obsolete and Ethanol is now widely considered by researchers to provide a positive net yield in energy and a much more neutral fuel than oil in terms of greenhouse gases. As to why we aren't already using more of it? Because we as a nation dragged our feet for 20 years while getting deeper and deeper into energy dependence. Brazil has been working on this for 30 years and now and has decreased its depedence on foreign oil to almost nil.
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