Why Solid State Might Save The Combustion Engine

With all the buzz around electric motors, lithium-ion batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, and sustainable fuels, I was totally surprised to hear about a solid-state combustion engine! 🚀 Imagine an engine that's nearly 80% efficient (compared to just 40% for traditional combustion engines) and can run on any fuel! 🤯
Could this be the game-changer we've been waiting for, or is it just a pipe dream? Let's dive into this exciting discovery and figure it out together! 🔍✨

》》》SUPPORT THE SHOW!《《《

》》》OUR PARTNERS《《《

》》》GOING SOLAR?《《《

》》》COMPANY OUTREACH 《《《

》》》CONNECT WITH US 《《《

Chapters
0:00 - Introduction
1:20 - How it works
2:30 - Benefits
4:00 - Electricity Generation
7:30 - Challenges
8:45 - Other Approach
10:37 - Engineering Breakdown

what we'll cover
two bit da vinci,toyota engine,internal combustion engine,lightcell,light engine,light cell engine,solid state engine,combustion engine with no moving parts,hydrogen fuelcell,thermophotovoltaic,thermophotovoltaic engine,mesodyne,light cell,light cell technology,solid-state engine,solid-state internal combustion engine,solid-state combustion engine,gas engine with no moving parts,This Solid State Combustion Engine is 2X More Efficient!, Why Solid State Might Save The Combustion Engine

[uNails]

"Solid State Engine" - sounds more exciting words than photovoltaic gas lantern.

[LaMirah]

I'm no photovoltaics specialist, but I worked in a lab at a university where the people next door worked on micro-scale heat exchangers, and one of their projects was related to recovering waste heat from Concentrated Photovoltaic Cells (CPV), a system where a relatively cheap, large Fresnel-type lens diverts sunlight into a relatively expensive, small PV cell. The problem with that is that the cell efficiency was inversely proportional to its temperature, which is why they were trying to match these tiny heat exchangers with the tiny PV cells and use that heat to convert alcohol and plant oil into biodiesel.

This engine obviously works at high temperatures. Low-Pressure Sodium Vapor lamps work at about 300°C, and the assembly seems too compact for meaningful insulation, so these cells would be working at high, temperatures, and therefore at lowered efficiencies. I'd wait for independent confirmation of these numbers before believing these are even in the correct order of magnitude.

[michaelgimenez]

This would work if thermodynamics would go for a coffee break while this is running...

[slo]

Where does the heat go? If it is so efficient then the thing would not get hot. But there is a huge flame coming out of one end! I say BS. Total complete BS.

[AmaroqStarwind]

Solid state combustion engine just sounds like a fuel cell with extra steps

[antoinepageau]

The only legit science in this episode is the shaver.

[SilverTreasures]

I feel like we’re going in circles. Burning something to make energy from a solar panel to charge something … uhhh

[junkerzn]

So many issues with this thing I don't even know where to start. The pollution alone would be extremely difficult to control. It reminds me of cheap Chinese diesel heaters, actually.

* Pollution. There is no way to fully burn the fuel across a swath of power levels. They might be able to fully burn the fuel at a particular power level.

* Backpressure from dealing with exhaust products to remove unwanted byproducts.

* Efficiency of 60% with a hot exhaust? Not even possible. And 80% combined-cycle? I don't think that's possible either.

* The high temperature of the system will greatly shorten the equipment lifespan, let alone the solar cells.

* Build-up of byproducts on heat exchanger surfaces.

* Multiple conversion steps... another nail in the "efficiency" coffin.

The biggest red flag is having multiple conversion steps (fuel to heat, heat to light, light to cell, cell to electricity) and still claiming extreme efficiencies. That gets into "sell me the Brooklyn bridge" territory.

I don't think this thing is real.

-Matt

[Berkana]

I knew Danielle when she was doing her prior clean tech start-up, LightSail (grid scale energy storage). Unfortunately LightSail didn't beat out the battery tech that hit the market, and they folded.

I think her use of "LightCell" as a trade name is a riff off of her old company's name.

[antoinepageau]

Propane camping light check, solar panel check, save the planet, done 😂

[anydaynow]

Combining this with a modern Sterling engine of some kind (like Karno), to make electric power directly from the waste heat would really squeeze the extra efficiency out of it.

[bigbasil]

A pulse jet engine is a solid state internal combustion engine.

[paulstewart]

I like how your mind works on problem solving…. I spent a weekend with a heating engineer who would be great to capture the waste heat from the car engine using phase change materials… so that when you came home, you could dump this heat into your home water storage system. Not as fancy technically as PV but workable…. Until you look at weight being carried around. Still… always great to pull problems apart and see where you end up.

[maxpeterson]

So you get an animation and an explanation. Still seems sus to me. Thermal efficiency claims are unbelievably high. Extraordinary claims...yadayadayada.

[AaronSchwarz]

catalytic converters already get 1000 centigrade hot, so a large one built with quarts encapsulated sodium low pressure lamps & tuned band-cap matched photovoltaics could convert exhaust heat energy into HEV traction battery charging while the engine is on, radically improving overall system efficiency or radically lowering fuel consumption

[mikeyned]

I was not too impressed with the "Light Cell" until the end of the video when you brilliantly combined it with a normal piston based internal combustion engine. The problem might be in getting a high enough temperature from the exhaust to, more or less, fluoresce the sodium. Anyone interested in working on the idea might want to try an old school automotive mechanics tool called a "vortex tube" to provide an incredibly high temperature air flow to heat the sodium.

[byronwatkins]

pn junctions are inherently thin so that most of the light passes through without exciting electron-hole pairs. The bottom material is mostly reflective so that the light passes back through and generates more electricity. The reflection coefficient is 90% or so. If the reflected light excites more sodium, then a little less than half is emitted toward the photocell again. The rest is absorbed by the heat exchanger surface and converted back to heat. This (sufficiently) hot surface does excite sodium, but it also emits significant blackbody radiation to be radiated away and to heat up the photocells and reduce their efficiency.

[wanderingbufoon]

fun tangent fact: "this orange light is the superior green + blue screen CGI replacement that Disney used back in the old times where CGIs weren't a thing.

[zolitakacs]

Heat is accelerating the aging proccess of pv-panels. Ageing is lowering the efficiency through lifetime exponentialy and the heat lowers the lifetime.

[tkfg]

I'm not smart enough to even begin to understand the little details, but the optimist inside me is always looking for "the next evolution".... Great video.