Fuel-Efficient-Vehicles.org

Steam-o-Lene Engine

winner of the 2007 PopSci INVENTION AWARDS
Nothing dramatic but, an easy(?) improvement and, Proof that there are inventors and inventions "out there" that just need mass adoption !
Six Strokes of Genius By Dan Carney May 2007 POPULAR SCIENCE

After a lifetime of making race cars go faster, Bruce Crower's new engine uses steam to squeeze more mileage from gas with a radical six-stroke engine that tops off the familiar four-stroke internal-combustion process with two extra strokes of old-fashioned steam power.

Bruce Crower's Southern California auto-racing parts shop is a temple for race car mechanics. Here's the flat eight-cylinder Indy car engine that won him the 1977 Louis Schwitzer Award for race car design. There's the Mercedes five-cylinder engine he converted into a squealing supercharged two-stroke, just "to see what it would sound like," says the now half-deaf 77-year-old self-taught engineer.

A typical engine wastes three quarters of its energy as heat. Crower's prototype, the single-cylinder diesel eight-horsepower Steam-o-Lene engine, uses that heat to make steam and recapture some of the lost energy. It runs like a conventional four-stroke combustion engine through each of the typical up-and-down movements of the piston (intake, compression, power or combustion, exhaust). But just as the engine finishes its fourth stroke, water squirts into the cylinder, hitting surfaces as hot as 1,500 degrees F. The water immediately evaporates into steam, generating a 1,600-fold expansion in volume and driving the piston down to create an additional power stroke. The upward sixth stroke exhausts the steam to a condenser, where it is recycled into injection water again.

Crower calculates that the Steam-o-Lene boosts the work it gets from a gallon of gasoline by 40 percent over conventional engines. Diesels, which are already more efficient, might get another 5 percent. And his engine does it with hardware that already exists, so there`s no waiting for technologies to mature, as with electric cars or fuel cells.

The inventor, winner of the 2007 PopSci Invention Awards, has been keeping the details of the system quiet, waiting for a response to his patent application. When he gets it, he`ll pass off the development process to a larger company that can run with it, full-steam.

In addition to producing extra power, the injected water cools the piston and exhaust valve, which suggests to Crower that he could raise the compression ratio. "I`ve done this many times on regular engines: 15-to-1 on gasoline for the first five seconds works pretty good until you get some chamber heat and then suddenly it gets into pinging. But with the chamber being chilled, I bet 12-, 13-to-1 will be no problem on cheap fuel.

Bruce`s Background

"You`ve kinda got to be in the cam business and know the dynamics of engines," Bruce Crower says about how the idea occurred to him. And he certainly has that background.

He was building and racing hot rods (and hot bikes), manufacturing speed equipment and operating his own speed shop in his home town of Phoenix when he was still a teen.

After moving to San Diego in the 1950s, among other exploits he dropped a Hemi into a Hudson and drove it to a 157-mph speed record at Bonneville.

Inevitably, the inventive and inexhaustible Crower built up a major equipment business in superchargers, intake manifolds, clutches and, especially, camshafts. He`s also credited with first suggesting a rear wing to Don Garlits -- in 1963, three years before Jim Hall`s winged Chaparral. Bruce Crower is now in Florida`s Drag Racing Hall of Fame.

Crower actually had introduced a wing two years earlier, during practice on Jim Rathmann's 1961 Indianapolis car -- five years before Jim Hall`s winged Chaparral. Bruce had been crewing at the Speedway since 1954 (Jimmy Bryan, second place), and had been part of Rathmann's 1960 victory effort. He was likewise on the winning teams in 1966 (Graham Hill) and 1967 (AJ Foyt). Three decades later, in 1998, Eddie Cheever won with Crower cams.

Bruce even produced his own complete Indy engine, a flat-8 that didn`t quite make the field in 1977 and then was rendered obsolete (due to its width) by the advent of ground-effect tunnels. But the Crower 8 and its automatic clutch did win an SAE award for innovation.

Today, Crower Cams and Equipment Company employs about 160 people in five facilities, and manufactures not only cams but crankshafts and connecting rods -- including titanium rods for (unnamed) Formula One customers.

Bruce Crower can`t be called retired now, but he`s happy to let the company he founded "roll along" while he "plays with cars." That`s how he looks at the intensive R&D work he carries out in the privacy of his 13-acre horse property near the rural community of Jamul.

One of several projects is building up Honda S2000 engines for the Midget raced by his granddaughter, Ashley Swanson. ("I think she`s on par with Danica Patrick," says the proud grampa.)

But his prime focus is proving his six-stroke engine is as revolutionary as he believes it is. "I`ve been trying to find something wrong with the whole basic idea for almost a year," he says, "but I think we`re going to have a very marketable item."

Then he adds philosophically, "If it turns out to be great, fine. If it doesn`t, it`s just another year out of my life that I`ve had a lot of fun doing something."

Q/A with Crower; March 27 2008

Mr. Crower phoned Sterling Allan on March 27 to provide answers to a few questions. The responses are as follows.

Q. What do you do when the engine is cold?
Answer: The water does not start being injected until the engine reaches ~400 F.

Q. What about rust?
Answer: Engine will run for 30 sec without water before shutting off.

Q. When will it hit the market?
Answer: We're waiting for someone like Ford to step forward to engineer for production. Many companies have approached us.

Q. How much water will it use?
Answer: We will cycle the water in a closed-loop system, running it through a condensor.

Q. How will you heat the cabin?
Answer: There will be plenty of heat coming off the condensor coil.

No Cooling System Required

"Besides providing power, this water injection cycle cools the engine from within, making an engine's heavy radiator, coolant, and fans obsolete. Despite its lack of a conventional liquid cooling system, his bench engine is only warm to the touch while it is running." (Ref)