I don't know whether to put this post in 'Fragile Earth', 'Science & Technology', 'Automotive'...or 'Rant'. It has elements of all of these, so I
guess I'll just stick it here for now and if it needs to be moved, well, then so be it.
The Wankel Rotary engine was (and is) a novel invention. It saw all sorts of budding uses in the 70's and 80's, but for various reasons the
conventional piston engine prevailed. One of the big reasons the Wankel engine didn't take off better than it did was because of timing and fuel
consumption issues. The other reason was emissions (as a result of these fuel consumption issues), but this problem was overcome. However, the fuel
economy of the Wankel engine was compromised because of incomplete ignition of the fuel in the combustion chamber when using gasoline. Gasoline
doesn't ignite fast enough to burn completely in the combustion cycle of the rotary engine. More on this in a moment. (Automotive)
Wankel Rotary Engine
Now, if you've been watching the news lately, Mazda, one of the original big champions of the Wankel rotary engine, has been hinting at the Wankel
making a comeback. Although it looks like the application they're looking at is as a "pony" motor to run a generator on a hybrid electric car, not an
actual production car with a Wankel rotary engine. (Science & Technology / Automotive)
So, when you look further into the Wankel rotary engine and the incomplete ignition issue due to gasoline's slow ignition, almost everything you read
about jumps immediately to using Hydrogen as a fuel instead of gasoline. Well, Hydrogen is a horrible idea! First of all, Hydrogen is nasty stuff to
work with. It's dangerous to transport, extremely difficult to store because of its molecular structure and positively deadly if you get in an
accident. Why not use CNG instead? This would resolve the incomplete ignition issue much the same as hydrogen would. (Science & Technology /
Automotive)
So my question is this...we have more natural gas in this country than we can ever possibly use. We have thousands of wells which are just capped off
all over the country because the prices are so low it doesn't make sense to extract the gas. Why not use Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) with the Wankel
rotary engine? CNG has proven to be a viable fuel, we have fleets of vehicles running on CNG all over the country. CNG burns virtually emissions
free. Heck, in my CNG work truck the oil would look brand new after 20,000 miles, so good the oil guys would freak out when they saw it! At the
consumer level, CNG didn't take off due to lack of availability, but I'm sure the big oil companies had a lot to do with this! (Rant)
If the issue with the Wankel rotary engine is incomplete ignition due to gasoline's slow burn, then why not use CNG? Why jump from gasoline straight
to Hydrogen? Why are we skipping CNG? (Conspiracy)
Here's the facts:
- The Wankel rotary engine is more efficient mechanically than a piston engine. (Automotive)
- CNG is a readily available resource (Fragile Earth)
- CNG is a clean burning fuel for the environment (Fragile Earth)
- Hydrogen is also clean burning, but extremely dangerous (Fragile Earth)
- Hydrogen has zero availability to the consumer (Rant)
- CNG is cheaper than gasoline (Rant)
Why is no one developing a Wankel rotary engine to run on CNG
PS - It's "green", it's efficient, it's cheap and it's smart!
edit on 9/27/2019 by Flyingclaydisk because: (no reason given)