Stored mechanical potential can kill everyone around you. The same energy stored electrically is much, much safer.

 

What happened to making them out of carbon fiber? It supposedly turned into a bird's nest when it disintegrated. I need to re-subscribe to "Popular Science".

 

This is true. It has the potential to instantly expel all of that stored kinetic energy. That's what makes it cool though

 

Twin turbine electric drive on all 4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MmQuEKsSw4

 

I work on KC-135's

 

"it's noise cancelling so it cancels out the drone of the JETS behind your head"

I'll take my jet engines loud and clear, please.

 

true...but say for a 1/4 mile run, throw a tank in the bed with enough air for the run...who knows lol...im sure if it was worthwhile, it would have been done already

 

Wasn't there a company (Turbonique)back in the early 60's created by ex-Nasa engineers that did this. The only problem they had was they could not control the unit once it was fired up. I actually owned one of their superchargers. Wish I could own one of their turbine axles.

 

There would be nothing to adapt. All that would be needed is to fab up some cold side piping, fuel supply and some electrical. Everthing is self contained in the units. Hard to know how it would perform, my best guess would be it would run like a N/A engine that is run in an atmosphere that is twice to three times that of earth depending on the boost levels.

You'd have to see one of these to understand the simplicity of mating it to a vehicle. They are self contained units that can be adapted to various things, hence why Arlen Ness, and the company Y2K slapped them into motorcylces. Other people have put them on smaller and bigger platforms. Military uses them as portable generators, so in essence the control systems your thinking of are minimal. The practicality of fitting it to a truck it is another issue.
That being said, there would be no gearbox necessary. The compressor wheel is already mated to the APU's output shaft, and gas turbines spin at similar RPM's as compressor wheels do. Regardless it's all integrated, turbine's spin at a constant rpm's which would give a fixed amount of flow out of the compressor, all you would need to regulate it at the TB would be some recirc/bypass valve references by an external source.


Running continuously is an option, or it could be thought of as a nitrous set-up where it's not always on tap but with a turn of a **** here and there it's be ready to go. Fuel wise it would consume a bit, it's not something that I'm imagineing would function as well on a DDriven vehcile. More like tractor pulls, 1/4 mile runs or just the cool factor of having a gas turbine powered compressor.

I originally thought of it when I went to a tractor pull competition in Sacramento, seeing these elaborate twin and triple compoud boost systems that were need to get 70-100psi in addition to nitrous just to light off the turbo's got me thinking there's a simpler way to get 100-150psi without all that B.S. And for roughly the same amount of weight that some of those systems add to the vehicle.

Have a valve that would divert the excess air during varying load conditions as a wastegate does. And either dump it to the atmosphere or recirc it back to the compressor intake. Another option would be to use that air and route it to blow over the heat-exchangers/intercoolers to provide lots of air-flow over the cooling fins.


Enough for the idea not to be used in a DDriven capacity, but then again I had thought of it as an on/off kinda system. Basically drive your vehicle normally and then if you see a reason to...turn it on. I would think a 2-3 gallon fuel cell would provide enough for an hour's worth of play time but gas turbines use lots of fuel.

Yup yup! All things I thought about and your absolutely right, it could very well be a waste of time. I had no intention of using the ones yourself or Foose work on, the cfm's those flow would overwhelm my small time ambitions. Those are industrial versions meant to power massive systems and designed from the get-go with a specific application in mind. If I were to use something like that I'd most likely blow an engine up, as 200+ psi on a gas motor wouldn't last long!
There are much smaller versions that are around that were designed for much smaller planes or systems. Some of the used ones in decent shape go for $10-15K and some of the units the FAA has deemed in excess of hours for use in flight go for cheaper. In essence it's similar to what we pay for our F/I systems. But like you said and I acknowledge, finanically, practicality and sensibly this could very well be a waste of time, but theoretically it can work and quite well. I'm not looking to re-invent the wheel. I'd think of this more as a one of those hobbies where someone puts a jet engine on a go-kart...like it's dumb idea but can be fun as ****!

I/C's FTW!!
The system isn't radical at all, it's not gonna produce any more heat than a regular turbo will, if anything it will use less because it would use a bigger compressor wheel for less cfm's and there's alot less heat due to conduction/convection and radiation as there is in other forms of F/I.

And there's a company out of texas (forgot the name since it's been so long) that built a system similar to what you were describing, they had a small storage tank that they adapted to be filled by of all things the A/C system. Once it was filled it was kept there until you desired and it fed that compressed cool air into the charge system for that additional boost. I found them about 6-7 years ago when I had my Typhoon and was looking at mods to it, found them on the SyTy boards, not sure whatever happened to them or how their systems ever performed.

 

I asked because I was fantasizing about using it to power the vehicle while cruising. A piston-turbine hybrid, the piston engine would get you up to speed, and the small, low output engine would maintain the speed while the main engine idles. It seems like if you could set it up so that the small engine directly drives the drive shaft, it would be more efficient than my engine going through a 4L80. If it takes 50 HP to maintain 65 mph in my truck, it seems like a small engine that makes only 50 HP would be more efficient (I don't know about a gas turbine) than my engine, which has all those extra pistons and valves, and 4L80, sucking my $4.29 gasoline down the drain.

Do I sound the same as when I was in fourth grade, with my fantasy?