Here is my Turbo Compound presentation at the World Motorsport
Symposium held in Oxford England in November 2008.

http://www.rotaryeng.net/Oxford-640-4802.wmv

This is a high rez half hour long video. It is a 300 meg
file and will take a couple of hours to download with a high speed
connection. I suggest you do it before you go to bed.

If you send money for postage and a DVD jacket with your mailing
address on it I will mail you a DVD as an option instead of downloading
it.

Some of you that were there are in the video.

Randolf from Paris asked a question :)

My fellow speakers list reads like the who's who of Formula 1 and
other series race car designers. The question and answer period was
rather revealing.

Paul Lamar


Great video Paul, you briefly stated in answer to a question that
magnetic/electric motor coupling with a turbine was impracticable.
Would you mind expanding on this?

Michael Decker

Thanks for the complement Michael.

Well anytime you convert one form of energy to another there
is a price to be paid in terms of efficiency.
The example at the symposium was converting mechanical energy
from the turbine to electric energy with a generator or alternator.
Let's say the generator is 90% efficient. Now we must convert it
back to mechanical energy to drive the car. That requires a
motor or sometimes we can store the energy in a battery or
a capacitor and use the same generator reconfigured as a motor.
Since the motor mode may also be only 90% efficient the total overall
efficiency is .9 times .9 or .81 efficient. We have now lost
almost 20% of the recovered energy.

The same principle applies to electric cars. Lets say we are
burning coal with a low eff. external combustion steam generating
plant to generate electricity.
Coal is used by over half the power plants in the US and that
includes all other methods of producing electricity. The coal
fired steam plant is lucky to be 30% efficient. BTW There is a move
afoot to convert those plants to high eff. compound gas turbines
where the waste heat exiting the turbine is used to generate
steam for steam turbines connected to generators. In this
case these power plants can have efficiency's as high as 60%.

Now we must transmit that electricity to
where it is going to be used and that involves high voltage lines
that also suffer some loss. When it gets near were it is going
to be used the voltage must drop down to 220 volts or so from several
thousand  volts with one or more transformers. Perhaps as many as three.
Each transformer has an associated efficiency. Perhaps as much as 95% each.

Next it must charge the battery in the car and that too involves
an eff. So you have a chain of efficiency's and it is:
Eff1 X Eff2 X Eff3 X Eff4 X Eff5 = total overall eff.

It could wind up as low as 10 or 20% overall.

IMHO it is best to use gasoline and convert it once with a high
efficiency internal combustion engine such as a turbo
compound engine. This results in a lighter weight car
to begin with (no heavy generators, motors or batteries) so
less energy is used for acceleration and climbing hills.

Also look at the big picture and ask why things are the way
they are.

BTW carbon dioxide is good for plants and it is heavier than
air so it should fall to the ground. You would not drink
a soda with a real pollutant would you? :)
Carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant!

Paul Lamar