Post-Turbo Oxygen Concentrator Race Engine

If you listen to motorsports enthusiasts, which is often not a choice, they will drone on about how racing drives technology forwards and that the road cars of tomorrow will benefit immensely from the expensive, fun & noisy circus that is a typical race series. This is of course largely nonsense. Almost all the innovation in F1 for example, is getting around the rules. You can get more out of creative interpretation of the guidelines surrounding the rear crash structure than you can with engine design. The point is, this idea, like careful vortex management and damper packaging isn't useful in the real world, but might represent a creative rule work around.

F1 engines are limited in terms of capacity, i.e. the swept volume of the cylinders is limited to 1.6l, or 0.8l/revolution. They are allowed to mess with this by using a turbocharger, typically they boost 4-5 Bar (60- 75psi, 4-5 atm.). They generate 850-1000bhp, which is impressive for a 1.6l engine, except turbocharger means it's really an 8l engine that consumes 9l engine amounts of fuel because of all the efficiency losses caused by spinning so fast*.

To get more power, you need to burn more fuel, but, the rules constrain the engine size/rpm & turbo pressures, so there's not much left, or is there?

What do we have to work with, well, we already have a supply of 5 Bar compressed air from the turbo, this is to all intents and purposes infinite. We are allowed 2 waste gates electronic or pneumatically controlled, these are to control flow out of the compressor stage. We have an intercooling system. My system fits in just after that.

So, after the intercooler, 5 bar air enters one of two chambers, these will be carbon fiber and a little balloon- like springy if possible to allow pressure buffering. In that chamber, will be zeolite, or whatever exotic high performance material is best. At turbo pressure and below (2Bar normally), this mineral** adsorbs nitrogen causing the remaining gas to be O2 enriched. Adsorbing N2 will cause a volume/pressure drop that will increase the efficiency of the compressor/intercooler stage. Now the engine may breath air deficient in useless N2/enriched for O2. More fuel, more bang, more go.

Obviously the capacity of the adsorption material isn't infinite, hence the dual chambers, once chamber one becomes saturated flow is switched to the second and the first chamber is allowed to depressurize/dump N2 into the exhaust, ahead of the turbine where the flow will help drive the turbo.

What we've built here is a pressure-swing adsorption O2 concentrator. These exist for people who need supplementary O2. In that application, they deliver say, 10l/minute of 90% O2. This is minuscule compared to the 1000's of litres needed for an engine. But, given the high- pressure pump is built in, and expense/exotic materials not a problem, I'd say F1 engineers could build a 1000l/min system into a car. Then, of course, it doesn't need to run all the time. Braking periods & part-throttle cornering are at least 1/3rd of a lap & additional power isn't always advantageous. Also, lower concentration ratios will be exponentially more efficient, taking O2 from 20-30% rather than 90% is likely to be achievable at 10x the rate.

*the positively agricultural NASCAR push-rod V8 engines develop similar power with less fuel, but, you know, smaller engines, more efficient you know.

**available as cat litter