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Re: Increasing efficiency - converting heat?
Instead of trying to reclaim wasted heat, how about designing an engine that extracts more useful energy from the fuel by converting more of it to motion and less to heat.
Diesels are better at this than gasoline piston engines because diesel fuel can operate at higher compression ratios.
BTW rotary gas engines are less thermodynamically efficient than piston gas engines, hence their mileage is worse.
As far as I know, one way is to raise the operating temperature of an engine, without melting the pistons, rings or cylinder walls.
For years, manufacturers have experimented with ceramic coatings, ceramic parts, eliminating oiling systems (oil would just burn at really high temps anyways) and eliminating fluid cooling systems.
My guess is that no commercially-viable major tech breakthrough has been made in this field.
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