Filed under: Diesel, EV/Plug-in, MPG, SEMA Show
Biodiesel turbine, super capacitor, series hybrid... HUMMER! (60 MPG and 0-60 in 5 seconds)
Johnathan Goodwin is the patron saint of green cars (although as of yet, this honor has gone unrecognized by the Vatican). Last April, John was the guy behind the Chevy Impala conversion that smoked a Lamborghini in a quarter mile on the Earth Day special of MTV's Pimp My Ride. Arnold Schwarzenegger was so impressed that when he did a guest appearance on the Earth Day Pimp My Ride special, he hired SAE Energy (where John is co-partner) to make his Jeep run on biodiesel. Recently, John made the cover of Fast Company magazine for an article describing a green gearhead's wet dream.
Fast Company visited John's garage and found a 2005 Hummer H3 on jacks. John is going to put a 60,000 PRM, 1985, turbine, jet engine in the Hummer. The turbine engine will run on biodiesel or waste vegetable oil with a hydrogen-injector. John plans to make a series hybrid with this turbine engine. A beauty like that going to waste as a range extender? No, it charges a set of super capacitors in a matter of seconds, giving the car 600 horse power.
That's not all. Jon says "it'll get 60 miles to the gallon. With 2,000 foot-pounds of torque. You'll be able to smoke the tires. And it's going to be superefficient. ... Think about it: a 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!" John is not just making drool worthy cars for stars like Neil Young (John is converting a 1960 Lincoln Continental to biodiesel, electric hybrid for him.) John said he wants to make a 100-mile-per-gallon car one day and he is working on a $5,000 conversion kit that make diesels run 50 percent more efficiently and emit 80 percent less pollution. John estimates his bolt-on kit will pay for itself in a year for bigger SUVs and two years for a normal car. He is getting patents hoping to license them to the big carmakers but he thinks automakers can do a lot more right now.
Go below the fold to see how John is using Ace Hardware better than you.
[Source: Fast Company]
John is clearly a genius and SAE Energy is doing really amazing things, but the conversions cost $28,000. I am no defender of the big automakers but I think they played up (just a little) the poor guy from Kansas. Without a high school education, John is a throttling loving environmentalist, showing GM things they thought were impossible at SEMA, and he just might save Detroit's image. John could probably slap together an electric car with parts from ACE Hardware (might not be a big seller, though). I also think the article is a little too hopeful about the future of diesel. Here are some quotes;
"They could do all this stuff if they wanted to. ... The technology has been there forever. They make 90% of the components I use... I've just been messing around and seeing what I can do. ... Everybody should be driving a plug-in vehicle right now. ... I can go next door to Ace Hardware and buy a DC electric motor, go out to my four-wheel-drive truck, remove the transmission and engine, bolt the electric motor onto the back of the transfer case, put a series of lead-acid batteries up to 240 volts in the back of the bed, and we're good to go. I guarantee you I could drive all around town and do whatever I need, go home at night, and hook up a couple of battery chargers, plug one into an outlet, and be good to go the next day."
It does make you wonder why we have not seen at least mild hybrids sooner though. Anyway, John's turbine biodiesel, super capacitor, series hybrid Hummer is freaking cool!
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
doggydogworld 8:04AM (10/30/2007)
Owen, your turbine efficiency numbers are WAY off. The big utility single cycle gas turbines are about 33% efficient. They use exotic materials, a dozen or so compressor stages and fancy turbine blade cooling schemes. (Note: combined cycle turbines can do 50-60%, but are not applicable to this discussion). Small turbines (e.g. Capstone) max out around 25% efficiency. I'd be surprised if Goodwin's military surplus turbine beats 20%.
Goodwin's MPG numbers are basically bogus. He goes 100 miles on 2 gallons of biodiesel plus a bunch of hydrogen or natural gas. He only counts the biodiesel in his MPG number. Want higher MPG? Easy, just burn a higher percentage of natural gas! It's like those 150 mpg numbers you see for plug-in hybrids, which only count the gasoline and exclude the grid electricity. If you only drive short distances you never burn any gas and thus get infinite MPG.
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Johnny Cip 10:15AM (10/31/2007)
Of course the big automakers can do this if they want to. But that's just it, they don't want to. If wouldn't be profitable for them. Bio-diesel hasn't taken off like it should because the real owners of major corporations, (our politicians), haven't cornered the market yet on Bio-Diesel yet, like they have on Big Oil.
Right now, they're too busy, trying to set up major ethanol corporations, making deals with Brazil, and other ethanol rich countries. That's why there's only a few mom & pop ethanol stations.
Until the politicians set up there companies, they will make every effort to scutinize and turn down applications and permits to use these resources.
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will bourne 5:40PM (10/31/2007)
Hello all, Fast Company here. Interesting comments here. As expected, this story is generating a lot of interest and even controversy--both of which are fine by us. I did want to point out, though, that Goodwin's use of a turbine at the beginning of the article was a one-off experiment, not part of his standard procedures. The article moves on to look at more practical, reproducible technologies, including a $5000 bolt-on kit that pays for itself in a year or two.
Anyway, we're glad to contribute to the conversation.
Best,
Will Bourne
Executive Editor
Fast Company
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jed_clampett 11:03AM (11/07/2007)
This is not a new idea people. Nikola Tesla was championing the idea of using the ICE as merely a driver for an electric generator and use the electric motor as the prime mover. By 1908 he had already convinced the navy to use electric motors rather than the customary huge clunky diesel engines that were in use at the time.
Electricity has to be the main engine to drive our vehicles. The power source could be an electric generator powered by and Internal Combustion Engine or other future generating device, but we must move away from gasoline as our prime mover.
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Red 12:07AM (11/09/2007)
Will Bourne, if the generative turbine was just a side experiment, then what is the "more practical, reproducible technologies, including a $5000 bolt-on kit." What is he doing different? What is this $5,000 bolt on kit? I have the magazine and the article was certainly not written by anyone with a technical background and leaves the how very vague.
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D-wayne 6:49PM (11/24/2007)
There almost seems to be no end to the amount of non-comprendo .. I'm so disgusted with the responses that I'm referring to that I can't bear to copy them.
Heres the Deal.
1. Jet Turbine fed by compressed Nitorgen and biodeisel/WVO/Deisel.
2. Generator fed by jet turbine.
3. Super Capacitors fed by Generator.
4. Electric motor powered by Super Capacitors.
once power is low in the Caps the Turbine is fired up to it's optimal operating speed spinning the generator and refilling the caps. you don't need to throttle the turbine or really control the speed beyond getting it to a stable optimal rpm .
This isn't too hard to understand if you just READ what the article says. I'll ASCII you a picture..
Jet Generator Capacitors Electric Motor
|====\ |////| |\\\\|
| }---| | | |----
|====/ |////|--{=}{=}{=}{=}{=}--|\\\\|
Not all to hard :)
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FRED 8:36PM (11/24/2007)
SEE MY COMMENTS
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no.it.u.lov(s)eR 7:37AM (12/21/2007)
I think almost anything is possible with enough research and development, keep arguing we will find solutions. In the past 50 years the U.S. spent at least one trillion dollars in atomic bomb research, now include all the money that is spent to protect foreign oil resources, its not about democracy and constitutional rights, our biggest trade partners are China and the Arab states, uhh what kind of government do they have????
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Larry 10:18PM (12/28/2007)
I am currently promoting a product/process that lowers emissions, adds power to engine output, and extends mileage of my '02 Jeep Liberty, up around 19-22 mpg in town, and 24 ~ 26+ highway. The product I use only cleans the cylinders and allows fuel to burn efficiently, thus lower emissions and power increase.
In the city, I drive for high mileage and I get it. Highway, the same. I have found a few techniques that get me great mileage at highway speeds and stop/go driving.
I'm havin a site developed at the moment but you are welcome to veiw what I have so far. It seems I'm ALWAYS in a learning curve somewhere!
www.globalsolutionz.biz
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John 11:06AM (12/30/2007)
I am confused, why does the picture have a Humvee, and not a picture of an H3? This story is full of holes and typos - doesn't sound accurate.
Can anyone comment?
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andrew dames 12:15PM (3/26/2008)
OK Lance, looks like your calcs are wrong. Cd 0.51 x area 32.9 sqft @ 60mph gives 49.5 lb force on vehicle, 7.93 horsepower against the air, say 12 hp at the crank if you turn the AC off, needs 27% efficiency. Hey, not so hard after all.
Andrew
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david 10:41PM (4/01/2008)
This guy is no dummy, he is the co-founder of SAE energy. He is NOT going to make outlandish claims because it would make a negative impact on the company.
I think some people are missing the point, but other have already state that. Also controls for the turbine would not be a nightmare, unless you were a bad controls engineer; everything has lag.
I dont know why he uses a turbine instead of a small diesel engineer, because gas turbines are less efficient than diesel, when looking at the carnot cycle. The reason why turbines are used in aircraft is because they have a higher energy to weight ratio.
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Greasy Fingernails 2:27PM (5/12/2008)
Chrysler built a turbine powered car in the early 60's... they built 50 cars for real-world evaluation. Supposedly they were going into production in the 70s but Chrysler almost went down the tubes about then so they cancelled the program.
And if you go to the Union Pacific museum in Ogden Utah, there is a turbine powered locomotive. They built two of them, and actually used them for a time. They were so shatteringly LOUD that they took them out of service very soon.
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joe blow 5:08AM (10/21/2008)
you guys do realize that the friggin turbine has nothing to do with moving the Humvee right?? I read all of the post, and what a waste of time. 90% of you guys are missing the point. I will pin some of the confusion on the writer/editor of the story, cause it frankly sucked. But in retrospect, only one post here by D-wayne hit the nail on the head, and he even had a lovley picture for all the see.
We all know what alternators and generators do right, and we know how they do it right, magnets and wires. We get a movement of electrons across a field. We can move these electrons into some type of storage, or use them. In the above stated case, he is using the turbine to "Spin" the generator at a high RPM and thus producing massive amounts of electrical energy. That would probably fry batteries, but not capacitors. The caps are the storage, and the electric drive motor is the prime mover. So stop referencing Chrysler and their turbine car from the 60's, cause this is like apples and oranges. People see the word jet turbine, and they immediately think thrust, and movement, but this not the application for it here. You can use turbines for many applications.
Oh, and the reason why he is only calculating MPG for the gaseous fuel used is because that is all the fuel that is used!!!!!!!!!! C'mon simpletons, think about it, he is not plugging the darn thing into an outlet. He uses bio diesel to turn the turbine, that creates rotational force, that turns a generator at high speed, that creates globs of electricity, that is stored into super capacitors. That is then used in the electric dc motor in the truck the prime mover. Brilliant! If you want you can calculate how much the friggin water costs to electrolyze and then supplement the bio diesel burn in the turbine, but that's just stupid, why don't you wipp out your math there and calculate the cost of the air rammed into an ICE when calculating the MPG, cause it would be insignificant. Bingo, the only fuel he is using is Bio diesel, and that's it. He built a hydrogen generator (9th grade science on steroids) and uses it to burn less bio diesel. Achieving a better MPG.
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Nathan Scott 4:44PM (11/25/2008)
Haha, idiocy at work. It is not possible for a vehicle with these aerodynamics and wheel friction to get 60+ mpg. Maybe if you start a fusion reaction with the biodiesel, but I don't know how the greenies feel about lead as an exhaust.
Series Hybrids are indeed a great concept but this vehicle is a joke. How will charging capacitors after you spin up the turbine reduce the throttle time? You are just siphoning the energy through more wires and components that all have losses. Maybe if he added a 100% efficient solar panel to the entire surface area of the vehicle and drove it through a desert it might get 60 mpg.
Pat Goodman 9:50AM (5/05/2009)
Pure Hype. And we all want to believe it. Turbines are terribly inefficient at anything but full power, and make a tremendous amount of hot air. much of it used to keep the engine cool. In aircraft the 'by-pass' cooling air adds to the thrust by reaction, not torque twisting the shaft, which in theory woould be turning the generator/alternator. Idle fuel consumption is usually about 70% of full throttle. And the old theory about 'My electric motor can spin the wheels at 60 MPH---not a chance. Lower the polution by 80%??? We are already down to grams and fractions per mile, on a new car the new car smell emits much more hydrocarbons than the fuel system, that is why they take the interiors out when doing evaporative emission testing.
For years my job was to check the lunatic fringe claims--and they truly creative. PAFF had a special gaseous fluid that expanded in bright light, all you had to do was change the sparkplugs for light bulbs, Turn them on, the gas would expand, piston go down, off, and the piston would be 'sucked' back up as the gas contracted. Parr, Ogle. Bourke. Moody, just to name a few. On the other hand, the gummint does measure the fuel consumption by measuring just part of the exhaust, and with the hood up, and on 100 Octane gas with 19,200 BTU per pound, not at all like the '87' octane alchol enriched (and water diluted) 16,000 btu per pound swill we must use.
The old trick of 'I've only used 1.2 gallon of gas to go xxx number of miles, they always neglect the hydrogen and the electricity. One fellow who claimed wonderful mileage for his diesel was adding propane to the inlet. Of course he didn't calculate that into the fuel mileage.
Another thing--2,000 ft pounds of torque?? Not with the standard gearbox!! Or 'U' joints either. Welcome to the land of the painfull truth.
Your comments welcome, as always,
Pat
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