that mark our species. Think of it as a sort of primitive TED Talk. Uh when we learned to control the combustion of coal and oil and gas, that was the Industrial Revolution and it gave us modernity.But now the cost of those fires has simply grown too high. The very future
go into the technical details uh but you can more than double the efficiency of combustion this is looking pretty good just by changing fuel injectionscut World oil consumption in
electricity almost certainly unless we can change the assumptions it'll be an internal combustion engine so doubling the efficiency of an internal combustion engine would be a great thing to do andit's probably not that hard we had three efforts to do the same thing three
Over the next 50 years, this transformation happened. Internal combustion engines, jet airplanes, right? Antibiotics, vacuum tubes, transistors, semiconductors, Information technology, the internet, all of these amazing technologies
wind, and biomass, and so on. So combustion is the area in which I used to know a lot in a very narrow field. Since I became a technocrat in the government, I know very little but in a wide range of areas.
So now you've got this high-pressure gas from the combustor that just wants to expand, and now it's got an incredible amount of thermal energy. But between the combustion chamber and the outside air is this. Rows of turbine blades.
And during my 200-day mission, we had 250 different experiments. We had combustion experiments, materials science, basic engineering. There was some psychological experiments on us, some astronomy and cosmology.
I moved very quickly to the energy field. And the combustion is suitable also, of course, for energy generation. And I worked initially for research in an academy,
Part of what I find interesting is the way in which these ironsmiths were able to manipulate air supply. To initiate combustion and control it. To know what kind of trees were required to provide wood with good charcoal.
And nobody orchestrated that. It was just spontaneous combustion from the black campuses all through the south, and then it spread to the north. And then, 1961 and 1962 were such things as the attempted
So we'd rather burn it to completion than just dump it outside. I did combustion engineering at my previous job.
So we'd rather burn it to completion than just dump it outside. And you get complete combustion .
And I'll mention that again a little bit later, when we talk about some of the technology stuff that we're trying to do. large-scale combustion . And we've done a lot of work on flames in space, but it's all been very small, very contained.
Too much fuel blocks air flow. And it causes incomplete combustion . And it produces smoke.
So, looking at this, you can improve the efficiency of the engine in two ways, either fly where the air is colder or raise the temperature in the combustion chamber. One problem with that, though, is that it turned the inside of a jet engine into one of the harshest environments we have ever built
with the smallest explosions possible and put two tiny internal combustion engines on board it, and it works. And it sounds like a combustion engine, which is probably my favorite part of it. - Cameron's penny-sized engine runs on a constant stream of methane and oxygen.
and stopping the flame from traveling back up the line. With just two of these combustion chambers on a little robot, one for the front legs and one for the back, Cameron can control its heading. - You can actuate just one of the two sides at a given time if you want because both sides are operational.
On top of being designed as a reaction to the corruption of the East Coast LA is also a much younger city, meaning The invention of the internal combustion engine had taken the world off horseback and placed it in a fabulous horseless carriage. Los Angeles exploded during the car era, leading to rapid suburbanization. As farmlands urbanized and neighborhoods
Child support payments-- this guy, stay away from this guy. That's where you have combustion .
At any point of time, don't touch the carburetor. So don't touch the internal combustion . So this is how you are going to eliminate the fuel in the internal combustion engine.
And those competencies were about combustion and the driver interface to get the ultimate driving machine.
You're going to have combustion , maybe not fossil fuels.
So this is a traditional combustion engine, and you've got an electric motor on to the right-hand side.
Prosperity is driven by internal combustion .
I think about the internal combustion engine.
It's worse than the internal combustion engine.
But the problem is, for each gram of fuel that you burn, you're still emitting all this smoke. You're not really getting complete combustion . You're not getting intimate mixing between the oxygen and the fuel molecules.
I am fan of the internal combustion engine.
Here's how your internal reproductive combustion engine works.
We use machinery and internal combustion engine for doing everything in the world around us, and releasing the effort of our own muscles.
Number two, use an insulated, upright, internal chimney immediately above the fire, to promote mixing of the gases-- the pyrolated gases-- and to complete the combustion . Number three, design a stove to heat and burn only the tips of the sticks as they enter the combustion chamber.
But my experiments keep showing that the best results came out of a metal combustion chamber. So Damon designed his metal combustion chamber, and wanted to build and test his barrel stoves in the field, where the experiment would do some good. So he soon found a place that needed some stoves.
You use the heat of combustion to break down the complex molecules of the wood, release those producer gases and the vapors,
plants instead of just you know the combustion engine is actually savings and I feel like it's one of those things where if I were to try to do something
And just by doing that, the air heats up to around 600 degrees Celsius. This compressed air is then forced into the combustion chamber, where fuel is sprayed in through a ring of nozzles and ignited. That chemical reaction gives off a lot of heat.
They really determine how efficient you can make the engine because you can't make the engine so hot that the blades can't withstand that temperature. So they determine the maximum temperature of the combustion chamber, and therefore, the maximum efficiency you can realize with a jet engine. So what kind of metal could possibly survive these conditions?
But some oils were extremely flammable and prone to spontaneous combustion .
- We just said, like let's just sail past all of that and just use a video game cheat code and just power our robot with the smallest explosions possible and put two tiny internal combustion engines on board it, and it works. And it sounds like a combustion engine, which is probably my favorite part of it.
noted for his discovery of the role that oxygen plays in combustion .
Lavoisier wanted to understand how the chemistry of combustion worked in diamonds.
And so Lavoisier is interested in this question of combustion more generally.
I mean, combustion cars exaggerate the mileage that they get.
Do you have any data about longevity in EVs versus internal-combustion engines?
First, insulate around the fire with a low-mass, heat-resistant material. The objective of this is to create a refractive combustion chamber. The goal is not to heat the stove, but to heat the pot.
Damon traveled there in 2007. And he brought with him through customs a dozen different combustion chambers, each made from different high-temperature alloys not available in African markets.
Certainly surprised by the suddenness in Egypt and the spontaneous combustion that Tunisia entered into.
When I look at whether to buy a high efficiency combustion engine versus to use something like a hybrid electric
Because inherent in the limitations of the internal combustion engine was that binary distinction. And when you set out to design a car the first thing as an engineer you had
And so that if all you had was the steam engine and you didn't discover electricity, growth would have slowed. Or if all you had is electricity and you didn't discover internal combustion engines and semiconductors, growth would have slowed. And so the straight line would have bent, the arc would have bent here.
So don't touch the internal combustion . So this is how you are going to eliminate the fuel in the internal combustion engine. Then suddenly, you switch from internal combustion engines to you make a lot of noise and EV.