5 ms·

Bill Gates Applies for Patent on Electromagnetic Engine

40 points by ccarpenterg 18y ago

noonespecial 18y ago
Can anyone actually read this thing? Did he just replace the mechanical flywheel with an electrical one?
- ccarpenterg 18y ago
  This is the source: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/bill-gates-car-engine,7517.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/bill-gates-car-engine,7517.... However, I couldn't figure out whether the article was accurate so I decided to post the patent application instead.
  - noonespecial 18y ago
    Ahh. Thanks. That link has a picture right up front. Looks like an internal combustion version of the flashlight you shake to light it up. That makes a little more sense. http://www.tomshardware.com/gallery/engine,0101-194921-0----jpg-.html http://www.tomshardware.com/gallery/engine,0101-194921-0----... Since there is no flywheel (or connecting rod) for that matter, they have to power the piston through its intake phase and then induce power from the ignition phase. I like it. You could make a very small very fast little motor out of it. edit: I still think this: http://www.gizmag.com/go/6245/ http://www.gizmag.com/go/6245/ and this http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5386004.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5386004.stm are more they way of the future than a magnet being blasted back and forth inside a tube.
    - 10ren 18y ago
      Steam engines used to work like that diagram (without the coils).
    - Retric 18y ago
      http://www.gizmag.com/go/6245/ http://www.gizmag.com/go/6245/ is just a generator it's not a engine. And at 95 percent efficiency it's not even that great of a generator. As to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5386004.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5386004.stm you are going to have heat issues because at best you are going to be ~60% efficient which means you are generating a lot more heat than a battery. (Think of the worst laptop battery and then think about it generating 3x as much heat.)
- gills 18y ago
  It looks like they replace the crankshaft with electromotive components, attaching the piston rod directly to either a linear actuator or a rotating generator. At first I was pretty skeptical if the usefulness of such a device. The crankshaft in an engine transfers power to a load, but it also performs an elegant and complicated synchronization task for multiple cylinders and ancillary systems (like lubrication, cooling, fuel supply, ...). But the crank also imposes a practical limit on stroke length because a long stroke in a small space gives you pretty high angles and less efficient power transfer. The short stroke puts an artificially-low limit on the fraction of energy from the combustion that can be recovered. Attaching a kinetic-to-electric conversion device directly to the cylinder allows the stroke length to be longer (basically unbounded) so a larger fraction of the energy can be captured, and less wasted as heat. Then a multi-cylinder engine basically becomes a computer program, where it's easy to implement fine timing, synchronization, load-balancing and load-prediction tasks using sensor networks. I'm skeptical that it would be more useful than just dropping the mechanical conversion and it's relatively high losses, and using something like a fuel cell instead.
  - Andys 18y ago
    Lubrication, fuel, and cooling systems all work more efficiently when powered by electric motors. The reason is they increase drag unnecessarily at high motor rpms. (But they also cost more). I think this would be a logical way of making a car engine more efficient. Fuel cells are cool but the infrastructure already set up to refuel and maintain petrol engines is vast and not ready to go away yet.
    - rbanffy 18y ago
      "the infrastructure already set up to refuel and maintain petrol engines is vast and not ready to go away yet." And that's precisely why ethanol engines are such a nice idea. I have been driving ethanol-running cars since my youth and can tell you they work just fine and have a pretty low carbon footprint, specially when compared to fossil-fuel based ones. I sincerely doubt they got their math straight.
      - 18y ago
aurora72 18y ago
Replacing the mechanical parts with some more efficient electromagnetic innovation is good and such inventions might help the >110 years old Otto-cycle engines go on a bit more. However, that was October 2007, and the search towards alternative energy sources & radically efficient engines, still keep growing. By leaps and bounds these days. This PATENTED innovation still concerns itself with the "pistons" i.e. an Otto-cycle which is doomed. So it's not much of a real innovation.
mindslight 18y ago
Sigh, yet another bogus (probable) patent obvious to a practitioner of the art (of power electronics/control systems). We brainstormed about this concept several years ago where I was working (unfortunately nothing formal, just as an interesting problem). It'd certainly require the right materials and engineering to create a practical realization (and perhaps there's some patentable details), but that doesn't mean the first to create a prototype should be able to claim the general concept of combining a combustion cylinder with a linear motor. It will be interesting to see if the implementation is actually viable (and how efficient it can be), given the power levels required by a typical vehicle.
rbanffy 18y ago
This looks fairly obvious to me. And mind you I haven't really been an engineer for at least 10 years.
yurisagalov 18y ago
someone will have to excuse me, since I've yet to go to bed, but after briefly reading this + the toms hardware article, I couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of the "If Microsoft made cars..." jokes that circulated the web in the late 90s
TrevorJ 18y ago
There is still a lot of kinetic energy loss due to piston inertia - it seems that the circular engine designs hold more promise.
cabalamat 18y ago
It's an interesting idea, and it's a good illustration of why the patent system is broken. This idea is the sort that a clever person could get in half an hour, but in inself it isn't fully worked out, and therefore lacks utility. To turn this idea into a working practical engine would take many man-years of engineering effort. The patent system is supposed to be a bargain: an inventor gets a limted-term monopoly on an invention, in return for teaching that invention to others. But this invention doesn't teach others how to make the device; to do that you'd need exmpensive man-years of engineering. Similarly, in 1930, Frank Whittle patented the turbojet. But his patent didn't teach others how to make a turbojet -- how could it when Whittle didn't know himself how to do it, and only had a working engine in 1937? Probably the patent system is unreformable, but if it is reformable, then one necessary reform would be for any patent application to include a working example of the invention, and all technical drawings and documentation (in computer-readable formats).

40 points by ccarpenterg 18y ago

noonespecial 18y ago

Can anyone actually read this thing? Did he just replace the mechanical flywheel with an electrical one?

ccarpenterg 18y ago
This is the source: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/bill-gates-car-engine,7517.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/bill-gates-car-engine,7517.... However, I couldn't figure out whether the article was accurate so I decided to post the patent application instead.
- noonespecial 18y ago
  Ahh. Thanks. That link has a picture right up front. Looks like an internal combustion version of the flashlight you shake to light it up. That makes a little more sense. http://www.tomshardware.com/gallery/engine,0101-194921-0----jpg-.html http://www.tomshardware.com/gallery/engine,0101-194921-0----... Since there is no flywheel (or connecting rod) for that matter, they have to power the piston through its intake phase and then induce power from the ignition phase. I like it. You could make a very small very fast little motor out of it. edit: I still think this: http://www.gizmag.com/go/6245/ http://www.gizmag.com/go/6245/ and this http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5386004.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5386004.stm are more they way of the future than a magnet being blasted back and forth inside a tube.
  - 10ren 18y ago
    Steam engines used to work like that diagram (without the coils).
  - Retric 18y ago
    http://www.gizmag.com/go/6245/ http://www.gizmag.com/go/6245/ is just a generator it's not a engine. And at 95 percent efficiency it's not even that great of a generator. As to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5386004.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5386004.stm you are going to have heat issues because at best you are going to be ~60% efficient which means you are generating a lot more heat than a battery. (Think of the worst laptop battery and then think about it generating 3x as much heat.)
gills 18y ago
It looks like they replace the crankshaft with electromotive components, attaching the piston rod directly to either a linear actuator or a rotating generator. At first I was pretty skeptical if the usefulness of such a device. The crankshaft in an engine transfers power to a load, but it also performs an elegant and complicated synchronization task for multiple cylinders and ancillary systems (like lubrication, cooling, fuel supply, ...). But the crank also imposes a practical limit on stroke length because a long stroke in a small space gives you pretty high angles and less efficient power transfer. The short stroke puts an artificially-low limit on the fraction of energy from the combustion that can be recovered. Attaching a kinetic-to-electric conversion device directly to the cylinder allows the stroke length to be longer (basically unbounded) so a larger fraction of the energy can be captured, and less wasted as heat. Then a multi-cylinder engine basically becomes a computer program, where it's easy to implement fine timing, synchronization, load-balancing and load-prediction tasks using sensor networks. I'm skeptical that it would be more useful than just dropping the mechanical conversion and it's relatively high losses, and using something like a fuel cell instead.
- Andys 18y ago
  Lubrication, fuel, and cooling systems all work more efficiently when powered by electric motors. The reason is they increase drag unnecessarily at high motor rpms. (But they also cost more). I think this would be a logical way of making a car engine more efficient. Fuel cells are cool but the infrastructure already set up to refuel and maintain petrol engines is vast and not ready to go away yet.
  - rbanffy 18y ago
    "the infrastructure already set up to refuel and maintain petrol engines is vast and not ready to go away yet." And that's precisely why ethanol engines are such a nice idea. I have been driving ethanol-running cars since my youth and can tell you they work just fine and have a pretty low carbon footprint, specially when compared to fossil-fuel based ones. I sincerely doubt they got their math straight.
    - 18y ago

aurora72 18y ago

Replacing the mechanical parts with some more efficient electromagnetic innovation is good and such inventions might help the >110 years old Otto-cycle engines go on a bit more. However, that was October 2007, and the search towards alternative energy sources & radically efficient engines, still keep growing. By leaps and bounds these days. This PATENTED innovation still concerns itself with the "pistons" i.e. an Otto-cycle which is doomed. So it's not much of a real innovation.

mindslight 18y ago

Sigh, yet another bogus (probable) patent obvious to a practitioner of the art (of power electronics/control systems). We brainstormed about this concept several years ago where I was working (unfortunately nothing formal, just as an interesting problem). It'd certainly require the right materials and engineering to create a practical realization (and perhaps there's some patentable details), but that doesn't mean the first to create a prototype should be able to claim the general concept of combining a combustion cylinder with a linear motor. It will be interesting to see if the implementation is actually viable (and how efficient it can be), given the power levels required by a typical vehicle.

rbanffy 18y ago

This looks fairly obvious to me. And mind you I haven't really been an engineer for at least 10 years.

yurisagalov 18y ago

someone will have to excuse me, since I've yet to go to bed, but after briefly reading this + the toms hardware article, I couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of the "If Microsoft made cars..." jokes that circulated the web in the late 90s

TrevorJ 18y ago

There is still a lot of kinetic energy loss due to piston inertia - it seems that the circular engine designs hold more promise.

cabalamat 18y ago

It's an interesting idea, and it's a good illustration of why the patent system is broken. This idea is the sort that a clever person could get in half an hour, but in inself it isn't fully worked out, and therefore lacks utility. To turn this idea into a working practical engine would take many man-years of engineering effort. The patent system is supposed to be a bargain: an inventor gets a limted-term monopoly on an invention, in return for teaching that invention to others. But this invention doesn't teach others how to make the device; to do that you'd need exmpensive man-years of engineering. Similarly, in 1930, Frank Whittle patented the turbojet. But his patent didn't teach others how to make a turbojet -- how could it when Whittle didn't know himself how to do it, and only had a working engine in 1937? Probably the patent system is unreformable, but if it is reformable, then one necessary reform would be for any patent application to include a working example of the invention, and all technical drawings and documentation (in computer-readable formats).