EMP ENGINE Watch out, I've had another crazy idea. Earlier on I described my idea of using sequentially-switched old starter motors to build an electric car without shelling out for a proper high-power DC motor. The main problem there was that you still had to buy the same expensive batteries (or hydrogen fuel cell), and they alone would cost much more than I could afford for a vehicle. Especially with that recurring every ten years when the battery's expected lifespan expires. So to that problem... I still have no answer whatsoever. BUT, I do have a new idea for an alternative to replacing an internal combustion engine (ICE) with an electric motor. I present to you, the EMP engine! EMP stands for Electromagnetic Pulse, and it's commonly associated with fairly nasty destructive effects, particularly when caused by the detonation of a large nuclear bomb. In fact web searches for existing work with EMPs and engines just turns up a lot of prepper forums about people concerned that the engine management electronics in their cars will get fried by the EMPs likely to radiate throughout a nuclear armageddon. But the effect itself isn't limited to an end-of-the-world occourence, all it means is a very massive magnetic field, and as such its effects aren't just limited to electronics, but to all conductive materials. In industry, EMPs are put to practical use by the technique of Electromagnetic Forming, where their magnetic force is used to press metal around a solid form so that it bends instantly into the same shape. In hobbies, they're used rather more entertainingly for crushing aluminium drink cans and shrinking coins: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Electromagnetic%20forming http://www.capturedlightning.com/frames/shrinker.html http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/surge.html http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/destructotron.html http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/amateur/capexpt.html The principle is as simple as sending an extremely high voltage at an extremely high current through a coil of thick wire which, for a brief moment before the power runs out or the wire melts, turns into an incredibly powerful electromagnet. The main technology behind it is just capacitors with a very high voltage/current capacity, which are charged up to many thousands of voltage and then rapidly discharged through the coil by some sort of high voltage+current switch. So what if you pulled the top off a regular ICE engine block, put a coil (ideally shaped to maximumise the directionality of the produced electromagnetic field) in the top of the cylinder, then instead of ignighting fuel to move the piston, you energised the coil and used the force of the EMP to push it instead? The first "www.electricstuff.co.uk" link above includes this little piece that mentions an outward pushing effect at least being present: "Some time ago I remember seeing a demonstration where an aluminium ring is levitated above a large coil of wire carrying AC. I put a sheet of plastic on top of the crushing coil, and placed the aluminium platter from an old 2.5" hard disc on top. at 1KV it jumped about a foot. At 2.5KV it flew up and nearly smashed the fluorescent light above! The disc also makes a nice 'ding' sound as it jumps. An aluminium can placed above the coil jumps about 3 feet in the air. Must get round to trying the platter outdoors sometime to see how high it goes!" However the obvious first problem is that these Electromagnetic Pulse machines take time to charge up their capacitors, so running many times a second like a petrol-powered engine is rather tricky. Also tricky is that the capacitors and switches generally wear out after so many discharges. The "Captured Lightning" coin shrinker page above mentions that their caps are rated for more than 300,000 discharges at 100,000 amperes, which is a lot of coins, but not so many kilometers. Perhaps using an electric vehicle's batteries directly and breifly switching parrallel combinations via high voltage/current diodes to generate the high voltage for the pulse would be an option. High-current LiIon batteries are produced for things like lightweight starter motor batteries for race cars, but not exactly this high of a current. Such an EMP engine is also unlikely to be any more efficient than an electric motor, because there will probably be many more mechanical losses due to all the complex linkages in an ICE which electric motors don't require. This also eliminates the advantage of electric motors having fewer moving parts to go wrong or require servicing. There's probably no way to do regenerative braking with it either. But overlooking the glarring impossibilities, and limited economies, there is some unique potential for the EMP Engine. For the task of converting an existing car to electric, something that can save an enormous amount of resources compared to producing an entirely new one, installing a conventional electric motor still requires a great deal of mechanical work and custom-manufactured parts. The old motor has to be removed and the electric motor needs to be mounted, as well as precisely coupled to the car's existing drivetrain. This necessitates the custom design and machining of parts for each particular car model. An EMP engine conversion, however, requires minimal change to the mechanical parts of the car, and a single conversion kit could likely be used for a wide range of vehicles with similar engines. This would make the conversion cheaper, quicker, and with less chance of problems when converting different models. It also makes the conversion reversible. In fact an interesting possibility would be a partial conversion, where for example in a V8 four cylinders were converted to EMP and the other four were left connected for petrol-power. There you'd have something of a combined hybrid engine, where you could run on only electric power at light loads, then automatically add in petrol power under heavy loads or if the battery runs out of charge. This might be particularly attractive to people wishing to adapt classic performance cars to electric power due to future increased cost, or reduced availability, of petrol. Overall I think it's an interesting concept, but probably not something that can be built practically with current off-the-shelf parts. I'd be interested in whether any new technologies in batteries or capacitors can be applied to EMP generation, which is generally rooted in pretty old and basic electronics technology, but simply haven't been because there isn't a big existing application. Either way the cost of developing a practical EMP engine conversion system as things stand at the moment, if possible at all, would be very high. Perhaps a bit too high for something intended as a relatively low-volume cheap alternative to conventional electric car technology. - The Free Thinker, 2022