Bob O'Neil Air Engine

[Motorcoach1]

here some info on air engines

[Motorcoach1]

Pleas post all question and comments in fourm as this will be open source invention

Thanks Mike

[AlanA]

We need someone who has a good workshop to prove all this theories. There are too much papers out there ...

P. S. The inventors name is Bob Neal  .

[Tom Booth]

In looking over the patent application, there are a few things I find somewhat puzzling which lead me to wondering if there are not some intentional blinds and/or omissions.

1. There doesn't seem to be any account of any exhaust from the power cylinders. That is, there are inlet ports and an outlet port, but where exactly the outlet port goes is not specified, as far as I can see. After driving the piston, does the compressed air get vented to atmosphere or is it recirculated back to the tank or what ?

2. There is an electric generator that powers some electric heaters situated at the power cylinder inlet, supposedly to bring the incoming air up above freezing ? This seems rather extraordinary to me. Why would the air from the tank be so cold ?

3. There is a water (cooling jacket) surrounding the compressor pistons. There are two water pumps with inlet and outlet pipes shown. It can be assumed, I suppose, that the hot water goes to some sort of external radiator to be cooled by the fan. The first illustration of the engine suggests that the water jacket probably continues to the front and around the power cylinders as there is no step in the side. That is, the jacket appears to be continuous but in the drawing of the power cylinders no water jacket is shown surrounding the power cylinders.

Anyway, after looking at all this for a while, I came up with an idea as to how this thing might work, but it is quite different from what is generally assumed, and it would depend upon the idea that there are some intentional omissions from the patent. That is, there was some intent to hide or keep secret the true mode of operation which, if I'm right, had nothing to do with any "special valve" or "equalizer" but rather with how this engine recirculates heat.

Anyone who has used an air compressor is no doubt aware of the tremendous amount of heat generated.

The water surrounding the compressor cylinders, we might assume, is scalding hot. Possibly superheated.

Apparently, for reasons to be touched upon later, the air in the tank is extremely cold.

Suppose this engine is not running on "compressed air" from the tank at all ?

Rather, VERY COLD air is being injected into the power cylinder and EXPANDED.

That is, the heat generated by the compressors is being circulated through the water jacket to heat the power cylinders. The cold air that enters the power cylinders picks up heat from the scalding hot water in the water jacket and expands rapidly.

This would mean that the ambient heat driven off from the air being compressed is being used to drive the engines power pistons.

It is fairly well known that when air is expanded while doing work at the same time it can get very very cold when exhausted.

If this cold air from the power pistons is being sent back to the air tank it might explain why the air coming back from the tank is so cold.

The reason then, that the air can be pumped back into the tank is not because of any special valve or any resonance or pulse jet effect or anything of the sort but simply because the engine is not running on compressed air at all. The tank is simply a COLD AIR STORAGE TANK. The pressure then, would be just enough to keep the air moving along. Pumped rather than actually pressurized.

The pressure to run the engine is developed AFTER the air enters the power cylinder. It is expanded by the heat generated by the compressors, delivered by the circulating hot water in the water jacket.

This is of course, speculative, like any other theory about this engine, but it makes sense to me. It is also not outside the realm of possibility in that no actual radiator or cooling system is shown. It might be assumed that the hot water taken from the compressor cylinders is actually cooled by being delivered to the power pistons to heat up and expand the apparently, very cold air returning from the tank so that no radiator is actually necessary.

As no account is given as to what happens to the very cold air leaving the power cylinders, it might be assumed that this goes back to the tank, which would explain why the air coming back from the tank is so extraordinarily cold as to need pre-heating by electric heaters just to bring it up above freezing.

In other words, the engine is not running on compressed air at all but rather on the ambient heat extracted while air is being compressed. The compressed air then would be available for other uses (the auxiliary tank briefly mentioned) while the cold air from the engine is simply being recirculated rather than compressed.

[Tom Booth]

   Over the last 5 years I've been working on some of my own engine designs. I looked at just about everything avalible on the Bob O'Neal designs and have been disappointed with many peoples explanations on how this engine runs. 
   Even though it said in the patent [ compressor ] that does not mean it runs on comprest air. If you look closely at the drawings , you will see the check valves,  will not let compressed air into the cylinders.
   It takes much less work to pull a vaccume to do work , than try to compress volumes of air to do the same work. Compressed air in this operation is the waist product [exhaust] . This doest not mean we do not use some of this waist exhaust.   

    If their is more intrest this topic let mo know  via e-mail , Mike                             

Your comments about the check valves and how the engine apparently is being used to "pull a vacuum" got me thinking along different lines.

There is nothing, as far as I can see, telling where the water to chill the engine is coming from. For the sake of argument, lets say that the engine is circulating extremely cold water being drawn from a cold running stream.

What you say about the valves appears to be true. The engine is not compressing air. On the contrary, at least at one part of the cycle, it is, as you say "drawing a vacuum". Or rather, mechanically EXPANDING the air.

The valve at the top of the cylinder has what appears to be a very stout (strong) spring holding the valve closed. There is no valve lifter to open and close the valve. Therefore what this amounts to is a "throttling valve". At the same time the piston is going down expanding the air in the cylinder. Simultaneously the air is being chilled. Put all these processes together, Throttling, Mechanical expansion, and cooling, and what this is starting to look like is not a compressor at all but rather an Air Liquefaction machine.

All of these processes, rapid expansion, throttling and cooling are processes that are used for the liquefaction of air.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquefaction_of_gases

At a minimum, it seems that the combined effect would result in, if not actual liquefaction of the air, extreme COOLING of the air, which would result in its contraction. The air then is not being forcefully compressed, but rather COOLED to an extremely low temperature which could very well result in its condensation into a liquid.

If this were the case, of course there would be no possibility of the HEAT generated by compression being used for the power cylinders. There wouldn't be any heat generated by such a process of cooling by rapid expansion. But then, if the engine is cooling the air to such extremely low temperatures then there wouldn't be any need for using any such heat.

What you would have, in effect, would be a liquid air engine.

The liquid, or near liquid air delivered to the tank would pick up ambient heat causing the liquid air to "boil". Ambient heat alone would be enough to create the necessary pressure to drive the engine, possibly supplemented by the electric heaters at the air inlets of the power cylinders.

Here is an interesting article explaining how liquid air can be used to run an engine:

http://www.unz.org/Pub/McClures-1899mar-00397