As a spinoff to all the turbo development work I've been doing, I came across an Idea that I thought might be worthwhile to help with fuel saving.
The results were looking like it might be worthwhile so I filed a patent on the design .

Rather than post the details in several locations I have set up a Facebook page with the entire document recorded there:

https://www.facebook.com/rotarypatent/


Please take a look and give it a like .

Cheers
Brett

Here is the crux of the design:




Exhaust gas diverted passed APV sleeves into APV ports.





EGR accumulates at one end of the chamber








As compression takes place exhaust gas stays mainly at far end of chamber

 

Very Interesting......

 

I'm not going to pretend I understand any of this ...
But it's awesome seeing more Brett-speed products

 

Very nice! Was your testbed a stock renny or a boosted one?

 

It all started when I noticed good economy at cruise from my boosted bridgeport engine. See this thread for the initial discussion: https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-tec...enesis-264156/
I then bought another rx8 to test a design (slightly different from what you see above) in an NA engine . The latest design is in place in my current boosted engine.

 

Gonna have to do some reading, I'm not near educated enough to weigh in. But I hope you've come across something significant.

 

I’m confused about what it is you’re doing that wasn’t already being done or supplied by Mazda? If you could just explain it in simple terms rather than imply and force people to read patent lawyerese it might make more sense.

 

I tried to do that with the diagrams in this thread but I take your point . I'll do something for the FB page that makes it easier to understand. FB doesn't make it easy to display things the way I want them unfortunately.

 

I have Changed the Slideshow at the top of the Facebook page to try make it easier to understand . Click on each page individually.

 

It's not clear what you as an inventor specifically did that makes a unique idea. The engine itself already generates EGR, so I just don't get what you specifically did, how you specifically did it, and what is specifically unique enough about it to quality for a patent.

My first job out of college was working for the US Patent Office. I only stayed there 6 months though. It wasn't the job for me, which most people do this and then use the federal school tuition program benefit to become a Patent lawyer. It was just too boring for me, but back then they were real hard-nosed about handing out patents. A bunch of lawsuits later now they hand them out like candy.

 

novel idea to stratify the charge. 10% is a good improvment.

is it just leaking out of the aux ports?

 

Basically : I increased the amount of egr and changed where and how it gets introduced into the chamber.

The stock engine recirculates around 10% , it fires most of this up into the intake and it is then sucked back into the engine randomly . My design increases this amount (obviously it can never be less than 10%) under certain conditions only . It does this by allowing egr to transfer into the chamber (intake phase) via a channel drilled into the side plate (see pic 4 in the slide show) , before the exhaust phase is complete . I use the back of the AUX port valves to allow a passage to the aux ports. The valve can shut off this passage at wide open throttle so no power is lost . Also :when the aux port valves open at 6250rpm .... the passage is closed.

It is hard for me to know what it is you aren't seeing .... the channel itself is just a drilled hole but where it was drilled had to be incredibly precise. There is also a small notch taken out of the housing (similar to how they do a bridgeport notch) to open up the passage into the exhaust phase.

 

EGR comes in through the aux ports ..... yes . The idea is that the amount is controlled rather than a random leak.

 

This picture of the actual port may help clarify things :
Note that the hole is drilled at an angle to intersect with the aux. port valve above it .

 

So now that you have applied for a patent how would someone apply this to their own car? Technically drilling holes on our own would violate your patent, but are you going to produce modified housings? or drilling templates?

I think its brilliant and has supporting evidence, so genuinely asking for the case when mine needs a rebuild.

 

Ah, so it generally is a emissions improvement modification?

Has there been any tests to show that it significantly reduces emissions?

 

That’a great explanation that clears everything up for me. I really do appreciate you taking the time to type it out with such clear detail and word choices. Maybe I’m just dense , but I don’t see how you can expect anyone to get that same level of understanding from what you have posted here before that explanation. Frankly I’m going to BS to the people who in my opinion are pretending they can see and understand that based on those diagrams. It’s easy from your perspective because you already know. You do show the general idea of how egr is collected and transfered to get thst effect, but not the details that I requested to understand how you did it.

Again, I had a short stint at the US Patent Office located in Pentagon City, VA and have a general feel for what they’re looking for to determine how valid the request is, which is pretty much those specific questions I asked you to explain. I’m not a Facebook member. While I can access what you posted there, reading the patent pages in the proper order with all the usual lawyer bs lingo is a real pita even without the Facebook aspect. So again, thanks and good job responding.

 

Thanks

I wouldn't be doing anything about a single person doing this for themselves , it would only be if someone were making money off it .
There is a little more to it than the drilling though....EG: valve modification plus control of the valve.
TBH , I don't really see this as something people would want to do as there is a risk that you could lose some power if the valve doesn't seal 100%.

 

Well ... I was more interested in potential fuel savings but the two go hand in hand to a large extent.
I haven't done any tests re emissions , just lots of mileage testing . One of the big surprises for me was how good the mileage can be on a stock 8 if you drive like a grandma. For a while there I thought getting 27 plus mpg was pretty special !

 

Yeah I do see what you mean and tried hard to make it easy to understand . As you know , when you get immersed in something it all seems pretty simple so it is hard to know what people will or wont understand. Do you have any suggestions for what would help clarify it for people ? Unfortunately doing a 3d diagram of it is outside of my drawing abilities.

The patent doc. is more about covering off every conceivable way of achieving the same outcome and less about making it easy to understand. The way I've done it was convenient but there are a host of other possibilities which could potentially work better .

 

very interesting, i'll act like i understood any of that

 

Looks like you placed the channel so that it'll only start recirculating exhaust gas when the next-ahead rotor face is near the end of its intake phase. Correct?

So how do you reckon this helps with fuel economy? I.e. what's the mechanism?

To my amateur eyes, it looks like it might reduce pumping losses a bit.

I also wonder if the extra recirculated exhaust gas might be displacing some usable fuel-air mixture, but only from the trailing edge of the combustion chamber which I believe I've read is the least efficient part in terms of combustion anyway. Might be interesting to see the dynamics there in detail.

I'd imagine varying the placement of the inlet of that channel would vary the amount of EGR and alter some of the dynamics slightly. Have you played around with different placements, by chance?

 

Yes, the next rotor face is at the end of it's intake phase and starting into the compression phase.

Yes , through a reduction in pumping losses and displacement of air/fuel mix.There should also be some improvement in thermal efficiency as more heat will be retained inside the engine. Placing the egr at one end of the chamber , I believe , could be somewhat of a breakthrough as it could allow much more egr to be recirculated than previously thought possible.
There are a couple of technical articles on my page that go into the benefits of hot/cold egr in some detail.

I have tried sending the egr into the intake and then back into the engine . That showed similar gains but was causing the engine to misfire badly under certain conditions. That failure led me to the idea of recirculating within the engine and I realised there was a nicely placed valve already supplied by Mazda that would do the trick! I have since thought of multiple ways of achieving the same or a better result but have yet to explore the possibilities. Ideally I'd like to bring the engine to the point of misfire to see how much egr could be tolerated. The only reason I didn't place the hole further down was that it was a physical impossibility within the constraints of the Mazda Casting.

 

Transferring a conversation over from another unrelated thread:


I actually answered the same question earlier in the thread. You seemed to accept my answer back then (see post #17) so I wondered why you asked again?