[tawnybill]

Thanks for enlightning me...
(the following was coped from; http://www.eng-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=1147 )

Taking a scale of the amount of heat that is produced during combustion, and where it is used shows some interesting things:
In a diesel engine (not spark ignited), about 35% of the combustion energy actually goes to the rear wheels. The rest is consumed in the following ways, within reason, and with some flexibility due to engine and vehicle differences. This is further broken down in three separate areas:
Actual brake engine power
Thermal losses from radiation
Thermal losses from the exhaust
From these numbers, we then extrapolate these figures:
12% is radiated from the engine radiator;
10% from thermal losses through the block through heat radiation;
45% is lost through the exhaust waste heat (a little less if the engine is turbocharged);
About 5% of the energy is consumed by the process of combustion, the physical conversion of chemicals into gasses;
About 10% is lost due to engine motoring friction losses, piston drag, camshaft bearings, lifters, crank drag, oil pump, water pump, valve and rocker arm friction, etc.
Unless a magical means of eliminating these values is discovered, you will NEVER see an engine produce much more than about 40% efficiency, from BTU's of raw heat from burning the fuel, to usable power at the wheels.

This is another ?engineers? claimed understanding of these common known facts also ....

Accounting for 100% of the energy;

Adding it up........ 35+12+10+45+5+10 = 117% on my paper too ..... really? well that is a 17% increase in fuel efficiency just through math!

Fantastic! Since (some other engineer claims that) a 15% increase in efficiency is the threshold of viability, we can all go home now?? Right?

My opinion in this regard is that our universities turn out thousands of engineering graduates every year that have learnt a reasonable percentage (a 70% passing mark/understanding maybe?) of the regurgitated knowledge that they were taught, they have no application for it, constructively. (that?s why the Big Mac I just had was prepared by a PhD?. kind of a waste of tuition eh?)

In my view, ?creativity? is exercising imagination beyond known knowledge and you either have it or not, and although creative thought can be explained, ?it? (creativity) can?t be taught, being dependent on the individuals imagination (or lack of it).

However, by me applying the useful information that I have learnt, pays me 4-5 times what an 'applied PhD.' (my friend the engineer flipping burgers) gets paid.. (Coincidently I am a grade 10 dropout from 1967)

When I give my explanation on the waste of fuel (on a previous post) to my engineering friend, he asked me where I read that......excuse me... this is an analysis... I'm writeing 'The Book' on it for future 'Engineers' (like him) to learn this fundamental reasoning from and hopefully grasp the understanding of.

Makes me wonder though, by the 'magical means' refered to above could he mean my system? (The one I'm writeing the book on here and now)

In conclusion may I include a couple of quotes;

Engineering
A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.
Freeman Dyson (b. 1923), British-born U.S. physicist, author. Disturbing the Universe, pt. 1, ch. 10 (1979).13

Errors
"Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume so great an authority over us, that we forget their terrestrial origin and accept them as unalterable facts. They then become labeled as 'conceptual necessities,' etc. The road of scientific progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such errors." - Einstein

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