Comments on: Scuderi Split Cycle engine

By: Ned Lloyd

Ned Lloyd — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 13:44:10 +0000

Yep, NOTHING NEW! The Backus engine Company of Newark New Jersey was building & selling split cycle engines in the late 1800′s. I have a brass tag off one of their engines which clearly states “Patented June 12, 1894″.

By: Geoff Gunning

Geoff Gunning — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 22:48:54 +0000

After I read “Ralph Sarich the man and his engines” about 12 years ago, I realized that no matter how clever your new internal combustion is, the chances of it toppling the standard Otto-4 Cycle engine is pretty remote. The man made millions from selling his engine rights to just about all the world’s big engine manufacturers, but as far as I know only Mercury Marine used his technology in their outboard motors. Having failed to change the world, he went into real estate (bah!) and is now exceedingly rich. But, I bet when he is sitting in his plush office in downtown Perth, Australia, he still dreams of what might have been. I can sympathize – from 1967 to 1970 I worked in fuel cell & advanced battery research. We thought then that the fuel cell powered car was “just around the corner.” Well 37 years later, that dream is even further away.

The Scuderi engine is interesting, but as others have pointed out, it has been done before and I wish them the best possible luck. I believe we are going to be using liquid fuels for a long time yet, so if anyone can produce an engine that is SIGNIFICANTLY more efficient, it should succeed. Whether the Scuderi engine achieves this remains to be seen. Battery, ultracapacitor, compressed air powered engines, etc. may be fine for city & local driving, but I cannot see them replacing the I.C. engine for truckers, sales reps, couriers, servicemen, delivery vans etc., who may need to drive hundreds of miles a day and at 70 mph. Only liquid fuels contain the amount of energy required.

By: Chuck Kottke

Chuck Kottke — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 03:15:14 +0000

I began to wonder, before I had even heard of split-cycle engines, why was it that 4-cycle gasoline engines, based on the Otto thermodynamic cycle, could achieve 24% efficiency at best, when Carnot efficiency predicts a theoretical maximum around 85%? Looking at the issue of where all of the rest of the energy was going, I began to wonder.. While the Otto cycle is not as ideal as the Brayton, it still puzzled me why more energy couldn’t be captured. Then it struck me that the power stroke was too short to allow for more of the gas expansion to push on the piston as fully as is practical! A longer power stroke was necessary, or much of the energy would continue to be lost in the exaust. So, a little searching later, and I ran across Scuderi’s split-cycle engine concept. Perhaps the newer Brayton-cycle auto engines will achieve higher efficiencies, but they require some extremely close tolerances and special materials to work – a longer ways off technologically speaking than the spilt-cycle concept. Add this engine to a better slip-stream body, and we could well see triple the current mileage.

By: Rob Chaston

Rob Chaston — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 19:01:20 +0000

Well I’m not going to pretend that I know anything about this, but if I know
one thing, it’s that “dreamers” have a pretty damn good track record. Imagine all those poor souls whose revolutionary ideas never had a chance
simply because the “nay-sayers” got their way. The sooner we “humans” admit we know nothing, the sooner we can begin to learn.

By: Peter Wepplo

Peter Wepplo — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 13:58:02 +0000

I agree with John Simpson. It appears to be a cylinder-compression version of a supercharger. Looking at their patents, it would appear easy to build a prototype engine to demonstrate efficiency. The compression cycle is unnecessary to efficiency (as Simpson points out). One could build a two stroke engine and simply connect a compressed air cylinder to the combustion chamber. Modify the camshaft to provide the intake timing required and measure the output. If such a two cycle engine is better, then any technology to generate the compressed intake air or air-fuel mixture could be used, supercharger or split-cycle.