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