Cyclone Power Technologies, Inc. (fka CYPW)

[BuddyWhazhizname]

Except that you're comparing apples to coconuts.

The CRD Pump is just one of many pieces of equipment that have bearings that are lubricated by Demineralized water. The CRD pump has multiple stages and is under significantly more pressure than the Cyclone engine. Just look at the massive casting on the CRD Pump. The CRD Pump runs 24/7 unless the Reactor is refueling. Refueling of most Boiling Water Reactors are once every 2 Years.

Here's a more common example of water lubricated bearings: the cutless bearing. Boats with inboard motors have shafts that poke below the hull and there is a strut with a cutless bearing just before the propeller. Inside the bearing is a ribbed rubber surface. Rubber isn't so good of a low-friction bearing material, but that's OK because the propeller shaft rides on a film of water.

But neither your pumps nor propeller shaft bearings have any relevance here. When you look at the loading on those shafts there is very little in the radial (outward) direction acting on the bearings. Yes the centrifugal pumps are operating in a very high pressure environment, but the pressure is acting from all sides so the net load on the bearing is very little. The bearing then has sufficient area for a hydrodynamic film of water (more on this in a minute) to support the shaft with no contact and no wear.

Now let's look at the Cyclone engine. The "ingenious" Mark 5 engine is a reciprocating piston engine supposedly operating with steam at over 3200 psi. The pistons are 2" in diameter. The steam acts on only one side of the piston (otherwise there'd be no point...). Area times pressure gives a load on the piston of more than 10,000 lbs. That's five tons of unbalanced load on a two inch circle.

Bad enough? Oh, but it gets worse.

Cyclone's main patent is at https://patents.google.com/patent/US7080512B2/en Here's a bit of the engine cross section showing two pistons, rods and the crank:



I've drawn in red the sections of the piston pin bearings and connecting rod bottom end bearings (Because of Harry Schoell's stupid "spider bearing", the bottom end bearings are just as small as the piston pin bearings.)

All that pressure load on the piston needs to be transmitted through the connecting rod via the piston pin and its bearings. These bearings scale out to 0.79" diameter by 1.08" long, giving an area of 0.85 square inches. 3200 psi steam on the piston means bearing pressure is 11,800 psi. So you need a film of water that won't squeeze out of the bearing under a load of six tons per square inch.

Bad enough? Oh, but it gets more worse.

Bearings on the centrifugal pump spin constantly at high speed. A natural result is that they pull fluid (oil or water) in where there's clearance, and this gets pulled into any loaded area of the bearing creating a film with its own pressure. Google "hydrodynamic bearing" or look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_bearing

The hydrodynamic effect only works when there is continuous rotation at a high speed. The connecting rod bearings in the Cyclone engine (at both ends due the Schoell design) only oscillate a little bit. They never rotate. It is impossible for a hydrodynamic lubricant film to build up due to the lack of rotation.

So every time Cyclone claims there are applications where water lubricated bearings are successful and therefore their engine bearings are not a problem is a false equivalence, and they know it.

And it still gets worse.

We can look at the complete cycle in a cylinder. From top dead center steam enters at 3200 psi, squeezing any water out of bearings. At the bottom of the stroke the piston has to decelerate and re-accelerate up the cylinder, and the crankshaft is pushing on the rod and piston to do this, squeezing any water out of the bearings. On the up stroke the piston traps steam which is compressed, causing an increasing load pushing the piston towards the crank, and squeezing any water out of the bearings.

Notice that the load on each bearing is always in the same direction, continuously, while the engine is operating. How can any water even get into the loaded side of the bearings? The loaded sides are always compressed, and they don't rotate so can't carry any water in. Remember, there's up to 11,800 psi of pressure acting on these bearings, always in the same places. How can you have water lubrication when water can't get into the bearing?

OK, well what about the crankshaft main bearings? They rotate fully, and could potentially pull water into themselves.

Maybe, but a couple problems to overcome.

There is the bearing characteristic number C = Viscosity × velocity/unit load. C has to hit a threshold before hydrodynamic lubrication will work. It is directly proportional to the lubricant viscosity. The viscosity of water is about 1/250th that of oil.

Now we can decode what the Ohio State University engineers said at in their analysis: https://web.archive.org/web/20150923212126/http://www.cyclonepower.com/2014/IAASP_Presentation_OSU-CAR_Cyclone_March-8-2014.pdf

Slide 30:

Calculated life using just the bearing load and the scaling factors for the viscosity of the lubricant indicate that very high ratio of load capacity to applied load is required.

Since the viscosity of water is 250 times lower than that of oil, the unit load must be 250 times lower to keep the bearing characteristic number the same. Put another way, water lubricated bearings will need to have 250 times the area of oil lubricated bearings under the same loads.

The 100 hp Cyclone Mark 5 engine is smaller than a 100 hp gasoline engine and has fewer crankshaft bearings, yet those bearings are supposed to be water lubricated without being any bigger. How?

The OSU engineers didn't make a false statement, they just phased it so the common investor wouldn't understand they concluded the Cyclone design is fatally flawed.

And -- wait for it -- it gets still worse.

One of the fairy tales Harry Schoell tells everyone is that his engine is wonderful because it won't need a transmission to power a car. It "develops full torque at 1 rpm". (Cyclone has never shown any evidence of having a dynamometer that could actually load an engine at 1 rpm, so like every other claim about the engines, this is just a figment of his imagination.)

That hydrodynamic bearing characteristic is also proportional to velocity. As the velocity goes to zero, so does C and there is no chance that even bearings with huge areas would work with water lubrication.

Oh, and the "proof" they periodically trot out about water lubrication working because you can slip in the bathtub? Let's think about unit pressure in the equation. A 200 lb man with 10 square inches of contact under his foot has a unit pressure of 20 pounds per square inch. I scale the crankshaft main bearing area to 2.54 sq. in., so the peak crankshaft bearing pressure will be at least 3960 psi. That's about 200 times higher than the bathtub example.

Of course Harry Schoell and Frankie Fruge know full well after spending tens of millions over 15 years and not even being able to power a go-kart that water lubrication does not work in their engines, but that doesn't stop them from continuing to lie to investors.

As for Cyclone still being in business, they are so far behind in their SEC filings, even after the trading halt last year and the latest warnings, that they could soon be delisted completely. They closed their facility by June of last year and still haven't told investors. Their website is years out of date. Their only activity in the last year has been several misleading posts on Facebook.

So what makes them still an active and viable company?

Just askin'