Water-Powered ICE Is Here!!! | The Revolutionary 6-Stroke Engine

Samuel Griffin patented his 6 stroke engine design the 'Griffin Simplex' in 1886 as well as other related patents. These engines were used to power generators as they were too heavy for a mobile use. However, they soon built up a reputation as reliable and dependable engines working long hours without missing a beat. Unfortunately Samuel Giffins business went bankrupt in 1923. Two working examples remain at the Bath at Work Museum in Bath England.

Water injection in the 4 stroke IC engine was developed in aircraft engines in the 1930s as well as in the gas turbine engine for jet planes. Although the 6 stroke may offer higher thermal efficiency it comes at the cost of lost additional crankshaft power to power the last two strokes. The question becomes whether the power gain from that scavenging cycle is offset as a gain by the power used to complete the last two cycles.

This is ingenious. Basically it's an ICE/steam engine hybrid. Using residual heat from the power stroke to create steam is a good idea. It is heat energy that otherwise would've been wasted through the radiator.

This is actually the Crower 6-stroke, named after famed cam and valvetrain tech Bruce Crower. The injection systems and valve controls to acheive this cycle were not available in the 1860s. The engine showed great promise... but didn't see much in the way of success, due to inherent nature of water (freezing, corrosion, etc.). In stationary applications where freezing temperatures aren't a considerable factor, and weight/space isn't an issue... it's a great option.

I can see this working well for a generator or anything stationary. In a vehicle you've got too many variables, freezing temps being one of many.

Would have loved if this video provided sample power and torque numbers for comparison. Also, I think this “6-stroke” engine can actually benefit from a camless design aka freevalve using solenoids to push the valves instead. This will result in even better efficiency and more finely tuned timing.

A nice side effect is the valves will not retain carbon.

I have patents for this, Bruce Crower made a running engine with this basic concept. The main problem is that conventional valves will oxidize over time. I have patents that eliminate conventional valves and replaces them with a rotating shaft with angled ports in it. As the shaft turnes it opens and closes intake and exhaust ports. This also allows the intake to open at 0° TDC and close at 0° BDC which is a must for this concept

That second exhaust stroke would play hell on a catalytic converter...

This 6-stroke engine is interesting mainly for stationary applications, where both the injected water and the combustion water can be reclaimed and recycled using a large radiator to cool and condense the hot gases. That eliminates the need to continually supply new purified water from elsewhere. Radiator air temperature will still be easily hot enough for making domestic hot water, and for heating buildings, which will be great for reducing or eliminating power draw from the electric grid if the combustion fuel is still available... preferably natural gas or propane, for clean burning. Off-grid would also be possible.

😢 It's not well known, but the combustion of a fuel yields a weight of water equal to the weight of fuel burned. Since water weighs about 8.4 lbs/gal and liquid fuels weigh around 6 lbs/ gal, you'd have to provide extra if you need equal weights for this engine. The British navy experimented with condensing water from motor lifeboat exhaust during WW ll, along with their Army (from truck exhaust) during the African desert campaign. They had problems filtering out contaminants such as oil and tetraethyl lead to make it safe for drinking. Perhaps todays filtration technology would make this idea more practical.

Use the exhaust to distill the water! Use a replacable stainless steel evaporator and a condensor chamber then store the water in a pre injection tank. The evaporator evsporating water at about 2,x tfe usesge rate, when the preinjection tank is full. A valve opens/closes to keep the evaporator from burning up. It being only about 22,,gauge stainless steel about 1pint to ,,1qt. For smaller engines , on larger engines it can be mounted on the back of the cat converter. Using some of its heat basically ab1 gph tiny stream into a hot chamber between 20& 80% full of water, after a certain number of hours and loss of efficientcy the boiler/evaporator can be change or cleaned removing water deposits! Remove and soak in CLR or something!

A couple of ideas and notes. First of all, I think many people seem to think that the steam expansion is why you get the boost in efficiency. But I think the main point is that you can use the water to absorb heat and thus improve engine cooling, which allows for more efficiency in the first four strokes. Whatever energy you can extract from the steam expansion is just bonus. The video mentions a claim of an efficiency increase from the usual 30% to 50%, which would mean 67% more power, while the 6-stroke cycle would of course take 50% more time. But there are already engine designs that - under specific conditions - can achieve more than 30% efficiency, so it still may not be worth it unless there are other benefits. One additional benefit of improved cooling may be lower NOx emissions. The changes to the engine compared to the 4-stroke engine, are mainly about the timing, which changes to enable 6 strokes instead of 4. We can nowadays manage this electronically and I think it should be possible to create a design that can switch between 4 and 6 stroke operation. That can be done based on load and engine temperature. One engine design that might benefit from the ability to switch is Mazda's SkyActive-X engines. It uses compression ignition, but only in specific conditions. Engine temperature is a critical factor in this technology. If we can cool the engine using 6-stroke mode, we might be able to broaden the range of where it can operate in compression ignition mode. So, we might be able to alternate 4-stroke and 6-stroke cycles and still achieve near 50% engine efficiency with reduced water consumption. About the use of a condensor to reduce water consumption: maybe, but you'd need to add a particle filter.

Maybe? How to keep the water from freezing when the engine is not running. The engine has industrial uses. Ships, stationary, trucks, and farm.

My thought was a 3-valve head, instead of a double lobe cam. 2 valves for fuel intake exhaust, 1 for water exhaust. That way you could separate straight steam exhaust to keep away from things such as a catalytic converter, as mentioned by someone in the comments, and O2 sensors and the like that may be damaged, and could possibly be recondensed as in some steam engines.

That could work well with a straight six cylinder engine ensuring that at least one cylinder per rotation would be in power stroke.

I thought of this 40 years ago, however my idea to take maximum utility of the waste heat was to stay at 4 cycle and gate the exhaust heat into another cylinder of suitable size to take advantage of the expansion of water which is 240 volumes, on a common crank.

This engine is an attempt to capture energy left over in the exhaust of a conventional 4 stroke engine. This energy is contained in the exhaust as heat and pressure. However, by opening the exhaust valve at the end of the combustion power downstroke, the energies of the remaining pressure of the exhaust gasses, and the thermal energy of the hot exhaust gasses, are lost. The only captured thermal energy is that of the piston and cylinder walls, which are at a lower temperature than the exhaust gasses. Perhaps a better approach would be to build a conventional 4 stroke engine with liquid cooling jacket filled with a low boiling point substance (Freon?) , also equipped with an exhaust heat exchanger which uses the 4 stroke exhaust heat to help boil the Freon. The Freon "steam" would drive some sort of piston engine or turbine engine to provide mechanical power. I was fortunate a few years ago to get a tour of a combined thermal cycle electric power plant. It used a Rolls-Royce aircraft gas turbine driving an electric generator. The hot gas turbine exhaust heated a (water) boiler which drove a steam turbine driving another electric generator. The gas turbine was fired by natural gas. The natural gas had to be compressed to 900psi to get it into the turbine combustor section. This implies that the compressor section of the turbine was operating at a compression ratio of 60:1 . !!!!! The plant operators claimed an overall plant efficiency of 60%. Electrical output/BTU Natural gas input. Another Youtube video showed an engine concept where two 4 stroke cylinders have their exhausts alternately routed to a third, larger "expansion" cylinder. This is a very old concept, obviously derived from multiple-expansion steam engines. Possibly this "expansion-cylinder" concept could benefit from water injection as the exhaust(s) from the primary cylinders pass into the shared larger expansion cylinder. This configuration does not let any exhaust heat or pressure escape.

It would probably be better to think or this as a compound engine. Turbo compound aircraft engines like the Wright R 3350 took energy from the exhaust and geared it to the shaft. Napier took this concept to its logical conclusion with the Nomad 2 which gave a thermal efficiency of about 40% It ran with an overall compression ratio of about 27:1 and a manifold pressure of 89psi above atmospheric. The engine was a simple piston ported 2 stroke but the turbocharger was effectively a gas turbine and the engine pushed a lot of technical boundries for 1954. With modern common rail fuel injection and computer control the system the turbo compound deserves another go round but the Net Zero loones have killed IC development stone dead.

I've read somewhere (Don't have the link) that the water vapor from the burning gasoline is extracted before the outflowing combustion products leave the exhaust. (The result of the combustion is carbon dioxide and water). It is possible to condense the vapor and store the water for use.