Flamewars in SPAAACE: cooler fires hint at energy efficiency A fire on the International Space Station (ISS) – intentional of course – has provided hints at the kinds of research needed to make engines on Earth cleaner and more fuel efficient. Surprisingly, the experiments turned up flames burning at lower temperatures than thought possible. In the research, astronauts set fire to large …
... ran a storyline at one point in the mid-late 70's where the lead characters escaped from Heathrow in a Concorde Mk3, at which heat-seeking missiles were fired - cliffhanger, until in the next episode it was revealed they missed because, handily, the Mk3 had super-efficient cold engines with no heat signature even on afterburners to get airborne. They neglected to mention the plane needing to carry any sort of microgravity field generator, which now seems like an obvious omission of essential equipment to keep the pace of the storyline going (a bit like the way the characters just jumped into the plane, pressed 'start' and flew off).
Again, rusty memories on the dates and details, but, much as I'd love to see Concorde fly again, I'd rather have the VSTOL SR-71 from X-Men: First Class.
Considering that heat of chemical reactions expanding gasses is what makes internal combustion engines work
No it's not, the expansion due to heat does have a slight contribution but the main force is the creation of gasses by burning liquid fuel, gasses occupy a greater volume than the progenitor fuels and it's that change that drives the engine.
A steam engine does utilize the expansion but that's a phase change not just gasses expanding as they get hotter.
I could have worded that better. Remove "heat of" from mine. Mia culpa.
That's not "liquid fuel", that's the air-fuel ratio (stoichiometric mixture). The closer to a vapo(u)r that the intake system can make the fuel, the better ...
Steam engines burn fuel outside the actual cylinder(s), and are not germane in this particular conversation.
The problem with 'cold' burning is also efficiency: the ultimate (theoretical) efficiency of a heat engine depends on the ratio of hot & cold absolute temperatures (e.g. Kelvin), and the "cold" one is always above ambient in practice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_Engine#Efficiency
This data is probably only useful for static flames in low gravity environments, not for a moving flame in low gravity or a flame on Earth, because the more fuel to moves away from the flame before it can burn; I also doubt that a probably highly variable heat output flame would be useful for doing work in a given time period.
I once worked for a company who decided not to waste time on research and instead spend all its time on "real product development."
Not too surprisingly, they ended up with no ability to develop actual new products and instead spent all their time coming up with new paint schemes, minor UI tweaks, and copies of competitors features (6 months too late). From stopping all research to bankruptcy took all of three years. (It was in a highly technical/highly competitive field.)
(The CEO made a bundle of money on his stock holdings the first few quarters that the R&D expenses approached zero, so there is that viewpoint.)
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