TheFuture|MDI Technology - the air engine and it many uses
How to mess-up
good technology? Deep Concerns about the fate of MDI
3 Mar 2011
We are a group of concerned stakeholders who seek to enter into a constructive dialogue with all other stakeholders and interested parties, potential customers of products, would-be or actual licensees, shareholders and/or potential investors as well as with the heads of MDI, in order to consider how best to take what was a promising technology out of the trouble it appears to have fallen. This also includes exploring how best to protect minority and licensees' interests. Read More
From F o s s i l
F u e l to Compressed
Air and Solar
lifestyle, ecology,
economy ...
MDI REVOLUTION
Reproduced with kind permission of Dr Louis Arnoux from his e-book
"Peak Oil, Climate Change & All That Jazz"
One of the most exciting point-of-use emerging technologies is that developed by Moteur Development International (MDI). MDIs technology has received much publicity (because of the famous air car) without its importance being well understood.
Dr Louis Arnoux considers that the MDI technology, has the potential to be used as a catalyst for the radical transformation of point-of-use energy systems as well as for the revolution of all forms of transport. That is to say, the MDI Technology enables the extremely cost effective harvesting of solar energy, mostly on the customers premises, and the close matching of the qualities and quantities of energy supply and use at their point of use. It has the potential to enable achieving the objective of shifting from less than 20% to over 80% energy efficiency in a competitive market-wide fashion. It is for this very reason that IndraNet Technologies has invested significant time and resources into assisting MDI in its development and commercialisation effort as part of their aim of developing a cost-effective converged ICET package for the emerging Post-Oil, Solar Era.
The MDI Technology encompasses four components: the MDI Compressed Air Engine, the MDI Power Generator, the MDI Transport Applications and the MDI Manufacturing Process.
MDI Compressed Air Engine
Unlike petrol or diesel engines, the MDI technology does not use any form of internal combustion. Instead, it incorporates four key breakthroughs.
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First
Second
Physics tells us that heating a gas at constant pressure results in its expansion. In the MDI power block that incorporates the MDI compressed air engine, the heated, compressed air and/or combustion gases expand by a factor of three to five.
Moving the energy input from inside an engine to the outside provides a wide range of substantial advantages. High temperature explosions inside the combustion chambers of internal combustion engines result in the production of nitrogen oxide gases (NOx), uncombusted volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and particulates (soot).76 Instead, in the MDI system combustion takes place in a steady state fashion at much lower temperatures (typically less than 900°C) in an excess of oxygen. The combustion is
lean and clean, with near nil NOx, uncombusted particulates or VOCs, and if biofuels are used, it is also green.For mechanic buffs here, in essence, is how an MDI Engine works when configured to operate in a multi-fuel mode. With the inlet valve open
5, compressed air at 30 bar pushes the smaller of the two pistons during its entire down stroke while the larger piston stays put at the top of the two piston chamber (it can stay like that because of the special configuration of the connecting rod). The inlet valve is then shut and the compressed air located on top of the first piston and in the active chamber common to both pistons now expands and pushes the second larger piston. When the latter is all the way down the pressure is about 1.2 bar and the air exhausts into the atmosphere on the upstroke of that larger piston.
The larger piston is also associated with a small extension on top of it that functions as an air compression piston used to produce the initial volumes of compressed air that are then expanded by heating outside the engine. On the down stroke of the larger piston air is breathed in and on its upstroke the larger piston causes the air compression piston to compress the air intake to 30 bar and push it through the external heater/combustor where it will be heated at constant pressure.
This heating at constant pressure expands the compressed air by a factor of 3 to 5 before it is injected on top of the smaller piston.
The functioning of the MDI active chamber, as described above, achieves twice the amount of work produced in an ordinary internal combustion engine, for the same amount of compressed gas used to push pistons. Put another way, the combination of two pistons pushes on the crankshaft over 270 degrees rotation instead of just 180 degrees.
The MDI active chamber also means that the engines torque curve is very flat, that is, the torque and engine efficiency both remain essentially the same from very low to high revs. This allows for much simplified clutch and gear box components in the case of automotive applications and substantially higher performance for point-of-use power generation applications.
Furthermore, the heating of the compressed gas stream can be
achieved through a wide variety of means including the combustion of fossil or
biofuels, the recycling of waste heat from other processes, or the use of direct
or indirect solar energy, all carried out in low cost, highly efficient and
environmentally sound fashions. Ordinary engines are devoted to one type of
fuel. A diesel engine only burns a diesel type of fuel. Most petrol engines can
only accommodate a maximum of 10% ethanol without risking substantial damage.
The MDI engine can accommodate any type of fuel. For example, bio-oils do not
have to be refined into biodiesel. Ethanol can contain significant traces of
water without this being a problem. This means that one can begin to use those
higher efficiency engines well ahead of biofuel supply chains being fully in
place and thus achieve a smooth transition from fossil fuels to biofuels.
Third
The MDI Active Chamber enables the energy efficiency of an engine, relative to an internal combustion engine, to be more than doubled (see figure 16).
Fourth, Cool Combustion using the Giant Magneto-Caloric Effect to drastically cool the air (or other gas) intake. The use of GMCE, dubbed Cool Combustion by MDI, aims, when implemented, to achieve further substantial energy efficiency gains. Much less work is required to compress to 30 bar the substantially cooled air. The drastic cooling of the air also substantially reduces the temperature of the primary energy input at the level of the heater-combustor to below 350°C. This means that biofuel requirements are greatly reduced. It also means that a wide range of other sources of relatively low-grade heat can be used, including the advanced forms of thermal solar.
The fully configured MDI engine (as diagrammatically opposite) combines the four above breakthroughs with the use of heat exchangers enabling solar energy inputs from both direct thermal solar and also from the ambient heat stored in the atmosphere (as we have seen earlier, this is the largest source of solar energy on Earth).
The MDI Active Chamber alone results in around 40% energy efficiency.
solar augmented cool combustion.The integration of the Cool Combustion and solar heat exchangers are expected to increase efficiency to over 80%. Efficiency here means energy output versus purchased energy input. Those high efficiency levels do not contradict Carnot Cycle maxima since the MDI power block combines a compressed air (or other combustion gases) engine with a GMCE heat pump (or more specifically an entropy pump). In this configuration, the system extracts and mobilises solar energy stored in the atmosphere as ambient heat, hence the label of
The implementation of solar augmented cool combustion, in commercial versions of the engine, offers the prospect of a drastic reduction in fuel requirements. For vehicles, the prospect is a progressive reduction in fuel uses from the present level of around 2.5 litres per 100km in the current engine model down to 1 litre per 100 km or less through a planned series of new engine releases and upgrades.
MDI Power Generator
MDI has also developed a variable speed point-of-use power generator designed to be fully integrated with its advanced compressed air engines.
The generator makes full use of the near constant torque and efficiency of the engines at a wide range of rotation speeds. The electronics operating the system sense the point-of-use power demand and power the generator up or down to constantly match that demand. This means that only the minimum of fuel required is used at any time.
Through a series of product and service releases, this technology has the ability to shift domestic, commercial and industrial energy costs from current retail costs in the order of AU$0.15 to $0.20 per kWh to below AU$0.10/kWh and then to substantially below AU$0.05/kWh in parallel with a progressive shift towards 100% solar energy as the primary energy source and 100% sustainable outcomes. Similar orders of magnitude also apply to the use of the MDI technology for land, sea and air based transport.
Reproduced with kind permission of Dr Louis Arnoux from his e-book "Peak Oil, Climate Change & All That Jazz"
From F o s s i l
F u e l to Compressed
Air and Solar
lifestyle, ecology,
economy ...
Saturday January 12, 2008
By Pierre Thebault,
CARROS, France --
In an
interview with Guy Nègre he explains -
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What seemed like a pipe dream may soon become reality, as Frenchman Guy Nègre hopes versions of his compressed air car will be produced in India this year by Tata Motors. It follows a 15-year quest for backers for his invention. Nègre believes the time is right for his design with oil prices at record highs and pressure on carmakers to improve the fuel efficiency of their vehicles. "It is clear that with oil at US$100 ($130) a barrel this will force people to |
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change their use of fuel and pollute less," Nègre said at
his firm Motor Development International (MDI), near Nice in the
south of France. "My car is zero pollution in town and almost no pollution on the highways," he added, saying the vehicle could travel 100km at a cost of 1 ($1.88) in fuel. The former Formula One motor racing engineer's invention depends on pressurised air to move the pistons, which in turn help to compress the air again in a reservoir. The engine also has an electric motor, which needs to be periodically recharged, to top up the air pressure. The bottles of compressed air - similar to those used by divers - can be filled up at service stations in several minutes. The latest versions of the cars - MDI made an entire series of prototypes of engines and vehicles - also include a fuel engine option to extend the car's range when not in reach of a special power plug or service station. Tata, India's largest carmaker with revenue of US$7.2 billion in its last financial year, concluded a deal last year investing 20 million.
He aimed to set up mini factories in regions where the car is used. "No transport, no parts suppliers. Everything will be made at the place of sale in production units that can make one car per half hour," said Nègre. "That is more profitable, more ecological than the big factories of the large carmakers." MDI Air Car will hit the roads of India and Australia first, France will have to wait until 2009 |
