New concept on turbine hybrid cars

[stormfish]

the current mode of thinking suggests that the only use for turbines in automobiles is to power electric engines, but I have an idea I would like to see come to fruition. a true electric/gas turbine engine.

turbine engines are horribly inefficient at low rpm, and electric engines are limited to relativly small run times with current battery technology.

but why not combine both of these engine to run in tandem depending on how the car is driven?

an electric motor could drive a car up to an effiecient running speed and then transfer power over to a turbine engine to run rather efficeintly.

this idea would primarily be useful in semi trucks, trains, and ocean liners, but racing enthusiasts could also benefit from the huge amounts of horsepower available in turbine engines.

check out the new Ecojet car. or any electric car on the market and simply imagine a new type of transmission to combine the two.

 

I don't get onto the forums much, so if anyone wants, they can email me at thundersalmon@hotmail.com and share some thoughts.

[chilehed]

There were some turbine locomitives made in the U.S. back in the '70's, but they were so loud that their use was restricted to remote locations. They were abandoned after a few years.

[Ndi]

Gas turbines are very demanding, they are quite unsuited for road use. Spin time, fuel, exhausts, and many others make them very hard to use in an automobile (such as mentioned noise). There's a bike that has such an engine but may people consider it "not a bike" because it can't drive over anything than a straight line. While they might be quite efficient in a jet or a helicopter, a car typically varies speed so much you're probably better off with an IC engine form a lot of POV.

 

Additionally, such a car would be quite expensive. Also, nobody would race you unless someone has another turbine engine. Speed records are held separately for piston engines and turbine/rocket powered vehicles.

[insane_alien]

turbines are suited to constant speed jobs and for it to produce electricity would require a whole other bunch of machinery that makes the car unfeasibly heavy. better sticking with the fuelcell method, requires much less precision engineering.

[stormfish]

if the "driveshaft" were brought up to speed without using fuel (running on electricity) the turbine would be able to run at a nearly constant rate.

and using an infintley variable transmission it would theoretically easy to take extra horsepower off to run generators. but you do have a valid point with the car being extra heavy.

[stormfish]

I think you missed my concept on how the engine would be utilized. the turbine is completely enclosed and drives a driveshaft, not a turbo prop. the thrust is still controlled via a transmission. similar to the m1a1 abrahams tank.

google the ecojet, or chevy's gas turbine car of the fifties.

[K@meleon]

There were some turbine locomitives made in the U.S. back in the '70's, but they were so loud that their use was restricted to remote locations. They were abandoned after a few years.

 

The canadians built a new "high speed" train recently using a P&W turbine that could deliver 10,000 BHP they said. Had it boxed in noise absorbing materials to keep it quiet.

 

http://www.bombardier.com/index.jsp?id=1_0〈=en&file=/en/1_0/1_0.jsp

[K@meleon]

turbines are suited to constant speed jobs and for it to produce electricity would require a whole other bunch of machinery that makes the car unfeasibly heavy. better sticking with the fuelcell method, requires much less precision engineering.

 

Well, the point is, to have cheap fuel cells, you need a lot of precision engineering. Currently the american fuel cells cost around 90$ per kilo, and require 99% pure hydrogen, expensive to make. The state of the art japanese fuel cells cost around 9$ per kilo (approximately the same as a combustion engine) and only need a 97% hydrogen which is much cheaper to produce too..

 

Using a gas turbine to produce electricity in a car would only be interesting if you could use it with hydrogen. But the turbines have some temperature issues related to hydrogen combustion that dont allow them to reach the fuel cell total efficiency yet. However size is not a problem since the power to weight ratio of a gas turbine is low. Complexity neither. In the Netherlands for instance, the next generation central heatings will have small gas turbines incorporated to make use of the wasted heat to produce electricity.