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Oct 2008:
Sun Photo by GREG MARTIN
Engineer designing cleaner hybrid motor
PORT CHARLOTTE -- The first automobile powered by compressed air rolled out of a Frenchman's garage in 1838, and hybrid car buffs are still building and buying tiny specialty vehicles incorporating the technology today.
Now, however, a semiretired manufacturing engineer from Port Charlotte, Dennis B. Bischof, 63, believes he's on the cusp of solving the biggest problem with the air-driven motors, a problem that has kept air-powered cars from going mainstream.
The problem: They typically blow through a tank of air just to go 20 to 40 miles. The air is typically stored in onboard air tanks under pressure.
Bischof is designing a more efficient rotary motor to run on the compressed air. The design includes a series of valves to feed air into chambers within the motor under varying pressures.
"The solution to the world energy crisis and global warming are one and the same," said Bischof of his invention, which he calls the 2.0 Solution.
The invention will allow the engine to deliver torque for bursts of acceleration and to back off on air consumption for steady cruising, he said.
The system would still require a gasoline engine to run an onboard air compressor in order to refill the tank.
The gasoline engine could continue running while the vehicle was parked between trips until the tank was refilled to 150 pounds per square inch.
That would still enable an average-sized car to achieve 100 miles per gallon or more, he said.
Bischof is currently working with a local machine shop to manufacture a prototype engine. After testing, the motor will be fine-tuned.
In the next year, Bischof and a partner, Pascal Schreier of the Port Charlotte business EcoGanicO, plan to have four of the motors built and retrofitted into a used car.
Built out of high-density plastics, Bischof's motors are about the size of a soccer ball and weigh less than 30 pounds.
The car's engine, radiator and transmission will be replaced with an air tank.
Born in Patterson, N.J., Bischof graduated from a technical high school and apprenticed designing guidance systems for missiles for such contractors as Raytheon and Sperry Rand.
He then worked in machine shops in California and upstate New York, becoming a general manager for Quick Cast Limited, a dye-casting plant. After eight years, he started his own business, Marsh Stream Enterprises.
"We made machines to make widgets," he said.
After 15 years, he moved to North Carolina and became a real estate investor. He moved to Port Charlotte with his wife seven years ago.
Bischof said he got the idea for the invention after researching air-powered vehicles on the Internet. Most of the cars forced air into large, piston-driven engines that consumed large volumes of air.
Then he visited a Web site for EngineAir Research and Development in Australia where an engineer had developed a rotary motor to run on air.
That engineer was Angelo Di Pietro, a former engineer for Wankel, the German company that invented the rotary engine in the 1950s.
Di Pietro was using his air motors to power small vehicles about the size of a golf cart.
The EngineAir motor uses air pressure to force a rotor around inside a round casing equipped with valves. The rotor is mounted off-center on a drive shaft inside the casing.
"When I saw his motor, I thought, he's got the answer," said Bischof.
Bischof's design would create air channels inside the drive shaft to feed chambers within the casing varying amounts of air pressure.
That would allow the motor to build up more force when needed for acceleration, called torque, and yet back way off on air consumption and torque to maintain a steady cruising speed, he said.
Schreier said he plans to install one of the motors on a tiny, 1960 Messerschmitt three-wheeled car he owns as a demonstration vehicle.
"It should get 200 mpg, in that car," he said.
For more information, contact Bischof at 941-255-6904 or visit www.solutionhybrid.com.
E-mail: gmartin@sun-herald.com
By GREG MARTIN
Staff Writer
June 2008:
PORT CHARLOTTE -- A local entrepreneur is about to begin marketing hydrogen-assisted fuel system kits that manufacturers say could turn even gas-guzzling American cars into vehicles that get as much as 70 miles per gallon.
It's the fuel system the big oil companies don't want the motoring public to know about, according to Pascal Schreier, founder of EcoGaniCo, a Port Charlotte company that also markets small electric vehicles.
There's only one problem: The technology works in theory, but making it work in ordinary cars has proven tricky, Schreier said. And, he said, he doesn't want to start selling the kits until he can provide assurance they will perform as intended.
Now, Schreier thinks he has the solution. He's teamed up with a hydro-fuel system technician, Stefan Reindl of California, to offer seminars here. The goal is to train mechanics from across the state how to tune the modified fuel systems.
Schreier and Reindl held their first seminar June 27-29. Nine mechanics from as far away as North Carolina participated, Schreier said. They worked on tuning cars at Schreier's garage throughout that weekend.
Schreier plans to bring Reindl back each month to continue holding the training programs.
"Right now, there's a big failure rate (with the hydro systems)," said Schreier. "But we're right there, close to solving it."
Schreier said he equipped his family's Jeep Wrangler with one of the systems a few months ago. Its performance actually declined. He said the fuel economy dropped from 18 miles per gallon to only 12 mpg.
The system wasn't delivering the appropriate mixture of air and gasoline to the engine, and the device's draw on the electrical system, which amounts to about 15 amps, was dragging down the performance, he said.
That's because, in ordinary cars, the automakers have preprogrammed the vehicles' computers to automatically adjust the air/fuel ratio so that it amounts to about 14.7 parts air to 1 part gasoline, explained Reindl.
The hydrogen fuel system enriches the fuel to the point a car engine will run on a mixture of more than 20 parts of air to 1 part gasoline, he said.
The trick is to modify the vehicles so their computers will let them run on the leaner mixture, Reindl said.
The system zaps water with electricity in a device similar to a battery to generate hydrogen and oxygen. The water must be periodically replenished.
The enrichened fuel is then fed through another device that uses magnets to ionize the fuel molecules. That reduces their size by some 100 times, from 300 nanometers to 3 nanometers, according to Reindl. And that makes the fuel more combustible, he said.
In theory, that reduces the amount of gasoline needed to run the car. It also reduces emissions to the point water is the primary emission, he said.
To tune the vehicles, Reindl hooks up a laptop computer that reads various parameters of the engine's performance. It measures the mixture of air and fuel and engine temperature.
Using a voltmeter, Reindl then installs resistors and other devices that alter the electronic signals from the vehicle's computer. He keeps tinkering until the computer tells him the fuel mixture is optimum.
He said he's not worried that other companies will beat him to the breakthrough.
"The retrofit market is $169 billion," he said, referring to value of the units that could be placed in cars already on the roads. "So, why would I worry?"
A request for comment from the American Petroleum Institute was not answered Friday. A request for comment from the Association of International Automakers was declined.
For more information, call Schreier at 941-628-6000 or visit www.EcoGanicO.com.
-- gmartin@sun-herald.com
By GREG MARTIN
Staff Writer
