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This years’ LCV Cenex 2013 includes an SME and Microenterprise Technology Showcase supported by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Technology Strategy Board and the Carbon Trust. 10 companies have been selected to participate in the 2013 Showcase and The Dearman Engine Company won the opportunity to exhibit on Wednesday, September 4th.
The Dearman Engine Company will also be exhibiting as part of Productiv’s stand on September 4th and September 5th.
The Centre For Low Carbon Futures has revealed that liquid air could power cars in the future. In simple terms, it is created when excess energy from a renewable source such as a wind turbine is used to cool (say) 700-litres of air to -196C. This reduces its bulk to 1-litre which is then stored in an insulated vessel.
When energy is required, it is heated to boiling point which forces it to expand back to its original proportion (in gas form). This expansion could power a wind turbine that might then produce electricity for the national grid. It could also fuel cars, ships, trains, lorries, motorbikes, etc.
As liquid air continues to gather pace and plaudits, gasworld looks at its feasibility, at the heart of which are industrial gases and expertise.
The Dearman Engine Company is in fact currently on track to demonstrate a first engine for waste heat hybrid and combined power and cooling, later this year. This can meet the here-and-now challenges facing niche, but still significant, markets and could therefore be deployed sooner than the next decade, we understand.
With two companies working on liquid air engines, the technology is gearing up to become a viable option in the low-emission vehicle stakes.
So far, the peak pressure achieved inside the Dearman engine test cylinder is 103bar. But the system is constrained by a pressure relief valve. Typically, the peak pressure inside a petrol engine cylinder is around 100bar, while that in a heavy-duty diesel engine is 200-300bar. The rate of pressurisation within the Dearman engine is similar to that of a petrol engine.
Faced with an uncertain environmental future, industry has to adapt and innovate as its dependence on conventional power supplies and fuelling methods are pushed to the limit. One innovation that could play a crucial role in facilitating decarbonised future is Liquid Air technology - an environmentally friendly “cryo-power” pioneered by British inventor, Peter Dearman. Euroasia Industry’s Leonard Owen speaks to Toby Peters, CEO of the Dearman Engine Company, and Professor Richard Williams, Head of the College of Engineering & Physical Sciences at the University of Birmingham, for their views on how Liquid Air could be developed to meet future power and vehicular needs.
Can excess renewable energy be stored as liquid air and then be transported to the grid? Yes, says British inventor, Peter Dearman, who has invented a new system that can harness and store excess energy, while using low grade waste heat and omitting only cool air.
Dearman’s invention is starting to garner huge attention. Earlier in the year a major new report from business and academic experts stated that Liquid Air is a proven energy storage technology that could play a critical role in Britain’s low carbon energy future. As things begin to take off for Dearman and Liquid Air, Heidi Vella speaks to the inventor and also the company director, Toby Peters, to find out more.
尽管被很多工程师视作一种破坏性的技术，但实际上液化空气的用途还远不止于此。降温至-196摄氏度的低温液化空气可以被视作一种储能机制，这种思想将有可能颠覆我们对现有活塞式发动机和储能计划形式的认识
Dr. Andrew Atkins, Ricardo’s chief technology engineer, says the Dearman engine is also highly suitable for use with the Atkinson or Miller cycles to improve efficiency. And Colin Garner even posits future examples of the Dearman engine which could be built of low-cost plastics or alloys, which would give significant price advantages compared with complex batteries. Such a drivetrain would also have significant end-of-life recycling advantages compared with batteries.
Liquid Air could be be a fuel for the future, says Andrew English.
Certainly the idea has potential. Just one litre of viscous blue cryogenic liquid air, stored in a vacuum flask is the equivalent of 700 litres of atmospheric air. On release the liquid quickly boils, expands by 700 per cent and returns harmlessly back to the atmosphere. It’s that expansion that can be used to drive turbines, or piston engines such as the Dearman Engine. “Engineers like that expansion,” says Colin Garner, Professor of Applied Thermodynamics at Loughborough University, “they can do things with that.”
Published by the Centre for Low Carbon Futures (CLCF), the report concludes that liquid air technologies could also significantly increase the efficiency of road vehicles, particularly in Britain’s fleets of buses, vans and refrigerated lorries.
The Dearman Engine is a piston engine that runs on liquid air, with a commercial demonstration engine is currently being built with Ricardo. Meanwhile, the Ricardo split-cycle engine is a highly efficient diesel design that uses liquid nitrogen to capture heat from its own exhaust. Liquid air technologies require no rare or expensive materials such as lithium or platinum.
Results of this key multi-partner research project being presented today at a conference at the Royal Academy of Engineering in London.
Ricardo has authored the report chapter focusing on the potential of liquid air for transport applications.
The report calculates that a vehicle food refrigeration system using liquid nitrogen or liquid air to provide both additional shaft power and cooling would cut emissions from 47 tonnes per truck per year (diesel refrigeration) to 10 tonnes, a reduction of almost 80% on the basis of current grid average electricity. The same approach could also provide refrigeration or air conditioning for passenger ferries, cruise ships, freight trains and buses, with greatest benefits in hot climates.
According to a report by the Centre for Low Carbon Futures (CLCF), liquid air could reduce diesel consumption in buses or freight vehicles by 25 per cent using a liquid air Dearman engine/diesel hybrid.
The report says that in all but one scenario, per-kilometre costs for a car running on liquid air would be lower than for a petrol car with average UK fuel economy, and while electric vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf have lower running costs, the capital costs of a liquid air car would be around those of a car with an internal combustion engine, with the potential to be lower in the long-term, due to the fact that the engine can be produced from lighter materials.
The new white paper, Liquid Air in the future energy mix: A new industry for UK plc, investigates whether liquid air could provide a credible alternative to existing energy storage systems and low carbon transport solutions to better harness renewables and deliver energy security. It also considers the potential economic value to UK plc.
By choosing liquid air, Dearman believes he has created one of the most sustainable cars on the planet. His engine is very light, allowing manufacturers to build a car that could be made cheaply, and, perhaps, out of plastic - no metal required. And by not using any batteries, manufacturers can avoid using any scarce materials.
Soon, his homemade invention will be put inside a very professional package.The engineering company Ricardo, which helps design engines for, among others, McLaren race cars, is creating a state-of-the-art version this year.
Cleantech Innovate Showcase: inspiring green innovations and technologies shaping our world. The event took place on 13 February, 2013 at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Over 80 applicants submitted their technologies and the finalists 40 British growth-oriented and venture-ready technology companies presented live at the largest innovation showcase of its kind in the UK. Jeremy North, Chairman of DEC gave a presentation of the Dearman Engine.
Dreamt up by a British garage inventor, the nitrogen car could challenge electric and hydrogen vehicles and provide renewable energy storage.
The Dearman Engine on Bloomberg West, a US TV show focused on technology, innovation and business hosted from San Francisco. A segment of Planet Forward, online series on energy, climate and sustainability based at the Center for Innovative Media at the George Washington University.
Watching Peter Dearman at work amid the clutter in his garage cum workshop it’s easy to see why one of his sons refers to him as a sort of “nutty professor.” The British inventor has been tinkering with “liquid air” engines at his home in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire for more than three decades. All that hard work is now starting to pay off.
This webinar in the latest LowCVP Technology Bites series takes place on Wednesday, 7 November at 12:30pm BST. Featured this week are Dearman Engine Company Ltd and PI Innovo. The webinar is chaired by the LowCVP and participants will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session. Recordings of past webinars in this series are now available to view/listen again.
Following the successful formula of Engine Expo Stuttgart for 14 years, North America’s dedicated international trade fair for automotive powertrain design, production, components and technology has been launched at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Detroit. Engine Expo Novi created perfect conditions for evaluating new components and products, meeting the industry and keeping up with the latest concepts and ideas.
Staged at the same time as Automotive Testing Expo, where many of the world’s leading engine test equipment companies were also exhibiting, The Dearman Engine Company presented its innovative liquid air engine technology at the UK Trade and Investment stand. On Day 1 of the conference programme, Jeremy North, Dearman Engine Company’s Chairman gave a presentation at the Open Technology Forum, on the Dearman Engine as a high yield thermal energy recovery system.
A COUPLE of dozen electric cars with fuel cells under the bonnet (in place of the more usual flat-pack of batteries beneath the floor) have been zipping around your correspondent’s neighbourhood for the past few years. Most are FCX Clarity models from Honda, all in the same rich crimson colour. A couple of others are silver F-Cell station wagons made by Mercedes-Benz. These experimental vehicles are leased to selected users for trial periods while their manufacturers see how the hydrogen-fuelled cars survive the cut and thrust of Los Angeles’ traffic.
Cars, homes and factories could be powered using the air we breathe in the future, according to engineers at a special summit. British scientists developing the technology say normal air can be used to store energy by cooling it to -190C, turning it into a liquid.
Liquid air made a splash. Sadly it’s not often that an engineering story – unless it’s a nuclear reactor going into meltdown or an aircraft downed by a birdstrike – gets a lot of airtime in the mainstream media. But yesterday’s carefully co-ordinated effort by the IMechE, Highview Power Storage, a number of academics and the automotive engineering consultancy Ricardo to make the world sit up and pay attention to liquid air paid off.
Turning air into liquid may offer a solution to one of the great challenges in engineering - how to store energy.
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers says liquid air can compete with batteries and hydrogen to store excess energy generated from renewables.