Dave G and I kicked this around and thought it might be worth a thread - kind of a joint project. And yes, there may have been some joints involved. He thinks he has some pics so hopefully we can add graphics as it goes along.
This thread will be about a stupid waste of taxpayer dollars. In support of the EPA I have to mention that for the most part we pinched every nickle until the buffalo hollered but sadly this is an actual example of government waste and those of us doing the work had no ability to stop it.
So the engineering challenge: You expend a fairly large amount of energy to accelerate the mass (the weight of the car) to cruising speed and not much energy to maintain that speed. Then to decelerate the mass you turn the kinetic energy into wasted heat thru the braking system. The goal of hybrid vehicles is to use wheel motors to do most of the stopping by activating the wheel motors as generators so that waste heat is reduced and, in this case, turned into electrical energy which is stored and used the next time the mass needs accelerated. So far so good. (I'm leaving out the part of the extreme level of resources to build the darn thing in the first place, battery disposal, and 100 other drawbacks - just saying this is the concept)
Now comes the government waste part. Some Knucklehead who shall remain nameless (anyone can sue for anything) who had the power to get government money allocated decided that the same process described above could be accomplished with hydraulic storage and recovery. So....an IC (internal combustion engine) with hydraulic energy recovery. Thru a string of poor decisions and bad luck Dave G, a young engineer named Paul B (again, I don't have permission to use his name) and I were among the otherwise honorable people who got delegated at to work on this mess. I remember the 3 of us sitting around our newly-assigned test cell that first day after the kickoff meeting discussing how this would never work and for 3 specific reasons:
1) Safety. The proposal was to send the American public out on the roads with enough hydraulic pressure to cut their vehicles in two. What could go wrong?
2) Weight. Comes from 1 above. Enough shielding to make this thing safe meant that the mass would be more or less unmovable.
3) Cost. The only way to alleviate 1 & 2 was cubic money (carbon fiber, titanium, etc.) Ain't gonna happen
The part Dave, Paul, and I were assigned was to come up with some bizarre form of IC engine to make the thing work. We were given some cast-off VW experimental engines that the Knucklehead was convinced could be made to run on neat (100%) methanol. I'll let Dave tell that story 'cause I was just the lowly tech in that work.
Along with this, a chassis was needed to bolt all this mess onto. Here Dave's buddy Jim was brought in as an outside contractor to whip up a couple of chassis to which almost anything could be bolted allowing for quick changes of pumps, pressure vessels and so on so that innumerable failed ideas could be attached. I'm hoping Dave has a pic of the chassis which looked sort of like a military-grade dune buggy.
This project drug on for - what - a decade with really sharp engineers and techs spinning their wheels in hydraulic oil. Dave quit and went to the State of New York, I was reassigned to a project adding aftertreatment to Diesel engines (that one actually worked) but still the project ground on. Maybe it's still going though I doubt it now that the Knucklehead has also retired. I don't really want to know.
So Dave - over to you.........
This thread will be about a stupid waste of taxpayer dollars. In support of the EPA I have to mention that for the most part we pinched every nickle until the buffalo hollered but sadly this is an actual example of government waste and those of us doing the work had no ability to stop it.
So the engineering challenge: You expend a fairly large amount of energy to accelerate the mass (the weight of the car) to cruising speed and not much energy to maintain that speed. Then to decelerate the mass you turn the kinetic energy into wasted heat thru the braking system. The goal of hybrid vehicles is to use wheel motors to do most of the stopping by activating the wheel motors as generators so that waste heat is reduced and, in this case, turned into electrical energy which is stored and used the next time the mass needs accelerated. So far so good. (I'm leaving out the part of the extreme level of resources to build the darn thing in the first place, battery disposal, and 100 other drawbacks - just saying this is the concept)
Now comes the government waste part. Some Knucklehead who shall remain nameless (anyone can sue for anything) who had the power to get government money allocated decided that the same process described above could be accomplished with hydraulic storage and recovery. So....an IC (internal combustion engine) with hydraulic energy recovery. Thru a string of poor decisions and bad luck Dave G, a young engineer named Paul B (again, I don't have permission to use his name) and I were among the otherwise honorable people who got delegated at to work on this mess. I remember the 3 of us sitting around our newly-assigned test cell that first day after the kickoff meeting discussing how this would never work and for 3 specific reasons:
1) Safety. The proposal was to send the American public out on the roads with enough hydraulic pressure to cut their vehicles in two. What could go wrong?
2) Weight. Comes from 1 above. Enough shielding to make this thing safe meant that the mass would be more or less unmovable.
3) Cost. The only way to alleviate 1 & 2 was cubic money (carbon fiber, titanium, etc.) Ain't gonna happen
The part Dave, Paul, and I were assigned was to come up with some bizarre form of IC engine to make the thing work. We were given some cast-off VW experimental engines that the Knucklehead was convinced could be made to run on neat (100%) methanol. I'll let Dave tell that story 'cause I was just the lowly tech in that work.
Along with this, a chassis was needed to bolt all this mess onto. Here Dave's buddy Jim was brought in as an outside contractor to whip up a couple of chassis to which almost anything could be bolted allowing for quick changes of pumps, pressure vessels and so on so that innumerable failed ideas could be attached. I'm hoping Dave has a pic of the chassis which looked sort of like a military-grade dune buggy.
This project drug on for - what - a decade with really sharp engineers and techs spinning their wheels in hydraulic oil. Dave quit and went to the State of New York, I was reassigned to a project adding aftertreatment to Diesel engines (that one actually worked) but still the project ground on. Maybe it's still going though I doubt it now that the Knucklehead has also retired. I don't really want to know.
So Dave - over to you.........
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