Jaguar Land Rover, Bladon Jets and SR Drives are in a joint venture consortium to develop a new ‘micro jet turbine’ for use in range extender hybrid drives. By now all of you should know what a range extender series hybrid system is, since once was featured in the Proton EMAS Concept.
The aim here is to replace the piston combustion engine in the range extender with a very compact jet turbine that is capable of burning a wide range of fuels. The turbine would be hooked up to a high-speed switched-reluctance generator to produce electricity to either recharge the batteries or power the electric motor that drives the series hybrid. The consortium has been awarded a juicy £1.1 million grant by the UK government’s Technology Strategy Board for the research and development. The total project cost is £2.2 million.
According to the consortium, replacing a petrol-powered piston engine with an axial flow micro jet turbine can save up to 15% of overall vehicle weight. Some of the weight savings will be from the engine’s supporting parts such as the lack of needing water cooling, oil or catalytic converters. You can also reduce emissions by burning cleaner fuels other then regular petrol.
But more importantly, Bladon Jets says the actual physical size taken up by the micro turbine is much much smaller, and could potentially only take up 5% size, weight and parts count of a typical piston engine. A prototype christened the BJ-300-P measures only 4 inch in diameter and 12 inches in length. Also, with a turbine there is only one moving part.
Production versions of the ‘Ultra Lightweight Range Extender’ as it is called could take between 5 to 15 years though – hopefully by then it will still be relevant to the motorist, as it definitely sounds like a cool idea.
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Jet, means like the 1 behind the "Bat Mobile"?
Hmmm…. this is great idea to…. UK grant the consortium the money for R&D ?.. Will UK ppl shout like Malaysian ppl about tax… hehehe…
Reminds me of the Akira motorbike. Has a turbine engine sound to it :O!
I'm not surprised if this really goes into our car. Turbine engine has been used widely to generate electic in places too far from power grid.
Turbine engines are highly efficient means of generating power and they can run on a lot more fuels. They are efficint as they have only one moving part and ,low friction. and low moment of inertia. Besides they can burn any sort of bio gas, alcohol, or methane, means the fuel used is as green as can be.
Makes sense for hybrid powertrains. Question is, why no one did this till now. GM themselves did showcase turbine power waaaay back in the 50s with thier Firebird range of prototypes during thier Motorama days……
Besides, Turbines have travelled more miles in history over any other motive powertrain…so I really wonder why they still need 5-15 years to "perfect" it?
Just to give an idea how small and "easy" this can be, you can turn a regular turbo to run as a turbine…its works on the same principal anyway- just add a combustion chamber between the turbo outlet and the turbine exhaust inlet. :)
bat mobile for the future! love to see that in the next dark knight.
Fyi, lotus UK also will apply for uk gov grant.
they wanna make a better and good motors/servo for cars too.
I don't think that turbin kind of engine are good as pistoned engine.
turbine and Wankel/rotary are good for massive output power, but not for fuel consumption.
Even it's for a small turbine, still hard to make it done. Beside that, it's also about overheat things. Turbine kind engine not good in cooling.
but well.. technologies is nothing impossible but some might skeptical about Land Rover and Jag. They were not that great in tech.
Bear in mind that the M1 Tank turbine engine eat fuel faster then your toilet bowl. So how good they are in micro version?
And why no need cat converter?
Turbine engine has power ship, tanks, power plant and so on. But was never practical to be put on car. I think Jay Leno has one motorbike in his collection powered by a helicopter engine called Y2K. American M1 Abrams tanks use turbine engine and yes GM did market turbine powered car. All these vehicles share 1 common drawback. They are and was a fuel guzzler. But this one is quite small. And looking at it's functions maybe it'll work. and possibly consume much less fuel that it's predecessors.
now this is impressive
this also can clean up the road since it sucks everything including people,animal,rubbish,etc..
let's imagine putting this in a Kancil …
Fuyoh! If this happens I can use the car I'm stuck behind to toast marshmallows.
i would love to hear the sound of a turbine powered car!
turbine was not practical in the car because turbines works best when it's a single consistent load. this contrast with normal road use when there's sudden acceleration and declaration.
fuel consumption wasn't a problem if the engine load is constant. the airbus a380, which uses 4 huge turbine engines sip as much fuel per person as a guy riding a car..
if a turbine is just used to recharge a battery (constant load), the turbine engine in theory can be smaller than a internal combustion engine, sips less fuel, have less moving parts. we are talking about just recharging a battery, not taking to sub-sonic speeds, so, again in theory it will uses less exotic parts than those in jet engines…
good in theory, hopefully works in the real world…
lighter and quiter engines needs less Noise and vibration components, hence, lighter cars… not forgetting we have solar panel sunroof technology , and some bodykits to generate lift as oppose to downforce to lower fuel/(electric) consumption…. 15 years time onwards with electric throttle and steering , cars as we know it will be very2 different indeed….
bb said,
March 4, 2010 @ 6:53 pm
this also can clean up the road since it sucks everything including people,animal,rubbish,etc..
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come on, the size is just 4×12 inches. can you fit inside that? then you must be a smurf.
please, plase, please read before jumping into conclusions.
if the jet location as the bat mobile..then people can have a free hair dryer / blower…. :)
quite interesting idea….think out of the box.
erwinkarim said,
March 4, 2010 @ 10:31 pm
turbine was not practical in the car because turbines works best when it’s a single consistent load. this contrast with normal road use when there’s sudden acceleration and declaration.
fuel consumption wasn’t a problem if the engine load is constant. the airbus a380, which uses 4 huge turbine engines sip as much fuel per person as a guy riding a car..
if a turbine is just used to recharge a battery (constant load), the turbine engine in theory can be smaller than a internal combustion engine, sips less fuel, have less moving parts. we are talking about just recharging a battery, not taking to sub-sonic speeds, so, again in theory it will uses less exotic parts than those in jet engines…
good in theory, hopefully works in the real world…
>>> The Airbus A380's f/c is said to be 2.9L/100km per passenger, which is about half of Myvi's f/c. Its CO2 emission per passenger per km is also less than a Toyota Prius.
Mmm… kinda agree that theoretically, this micro jet turbine is promising. Let's hope that British engineering won't let us down ;)
that turbine might be small,light weight and fuel-flexible…
but can the turbine produce torque???
we know turbine can handle massive HPs….but the torque (twisting force from rotational movement of the engine) might be low and not really suitable for generators?
but hey..who knows what's up behind their sleeves….put this in PROTON EMAS….sure can be a jet…. :lol:
I agreed with edwinkarim, jet engine is just nice for constant drive, not for normal road.
If the turbine is used for the car, the heat dissipation is the major issue.
As far I knew UTM also did study on using jet engine as one method to move a car.
Dear erwinkarim,
Do you understand the range extender concept?
Let me make this simple… They do not use power from the turbine engine to move the car like bat mobile..
what they do is to make the jet engine becoming a generator to charge battery and provide power to drive the motor.
That's it la…
Remember that you can hear all the Air Buses and Boeings roaring over your head hundreds of KM away from the skies.
Even thou this is a micro turbine, but the micro noise generated might be equivalent to V12 trucks.
rexis said,
March 5, 2010 @ 1:15 pm
Remember that you can hear all the Air Buses and Boeings roaring over your head hundreds of KM away from the skies.
Even thou this is a micro turbine, but the micro noise generated might be equivalent to V12 trucks.
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hurm.. quite true. and some malaysians would definitly modify it to make it even louder than aeroplanes. arrggghhh… i hate rempits!
it cool…
In UK people create jet engine.
In Malaysia people steal jet engine.
Malaysia tarak boleh!
klau kereta guna jet injin. insuran pun kene beli insuran untuk terbang. hahaha
the stolen jet turbine engine?
ooo.. I see.. it sold to Jag and land rover right?
Still need and engine or a motor to rotate the gas turbine to run by itself.
Gas turbine run on very high temperature and the material used to very high tensile steel Cost and maintenance will be high. Material failures will be high due to high temperature operation.Same as gas turbines very short life.Believe me.
they can even add trust vectoring to the exhaust nozzle to create downforce! not just a normal downforce but a multi-directional one. definitely can improve on cornering grip.
what is fun in hybrids, wind turbines and other things like patents are ready plasma ignition, the engine with an efficiency of 90% called Gun-Engine