Cyclone Power Technologies, Inc. (fka CYPW)

[BuddyWhazhizname]

The only fake news is in Cyclone's own statements.

You're not the only one to have been taken in. Fruge and Schoell are experienced con artists. Before the massive dilution wiped everyone out there were more than 5000 shareholders, all expecting these wonder engines would be in production in six months.

Periodically someone shows up on this board having been fed a bunch of BS by the pair. The last person was sure that water lubrication of Cyclone engines would work because the pair convinced them ceramic ball bearings that could run in water were working.

After posting bearing manufacturers' data showing that ceramic bearings lubricated with water that could withstand the loads in the Cyclone engine needed to be so big they wouldn't fit in the engine, that person called me a "comic book engineer" and disappeared.

The one and only Cyclone Shareholder Open House was on December 9th, 2011. The slides from the presentation were filed with the SEC at https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1442711/000139843211000968/exh99_1.htm Harry Schoell himself spoke. Here's his slide for progress:



First hurdle he said was overcome: bearings.

Immediately after talking, and before taking any questions, he announced he had to catch a plane and left for the day. At the time their president was Chris Nelson, a lawyer, who probably arranged for the "plane" knowing that if Schoell went off-script he would blatantly lie to investors.

Also at the open house they wouldn't run any engines claiming "the insurance" wouldn't let them.

Later Cyclone hired an engineering group at Ohio State University to fix the problems with the waste heat engine (WHE). Here's one of the PRs (emphasis added):

Cyclone Completes Build of Next Generation Waste Heat Engine With The Ohio State University’s Center for Automotive Research

POMPANO BEACH, FL, November 5, 2013. Cyclone Power Technologies Inc. (CYPW), developer of the all-fuel clean-tech Cyclone Engine, announced today that it has completed the build of its next generation Waste Heat Engine, in conjunction with The Ohio State University’s prestigious Center for Automotive Research (OSU CAR). The model engine, called the WHE-DR, is currently in testing and is expected to be ready to transition into limited production by the end of this year.

The WHE-DR boasts several important advancements over the previous engine model, meant to decrease manufacturing costs and increase operational durability without loss of performance. For instance, the new engine replaces six cylinders with three slightly larger bore cylinders, and utilizes more robust and less complicated admittance and exhaust valving systems, and simplified rod bearing connections. Overall, the WHE-DR has approximately 60% fewer parts than the earlier version. Initial testing has demonstrated significantly smoother and quieter operation, which is expected to result in the successful completion of durability tests over the next two months.

Dr. James H. Durand, Director of Testing, Engineering & Software Development Services at OSU CAR, stated: “We have made great progress in a short period of time, and are very pleased with the resulting engine design of the WHE-DR. We believe this is an engine that will ultimately achieve the reliability and durability expectations of Cyclone and its customers. We feel confident that together with Cyclone’s team we will complete our project goals in the short term.”

“We are very proud of our improved engine. This is a technological and business milestone that must not be understated, as we are fast approaching our transition into phase one manufacturing with our team that we have been preparing in Ohio. For small-scale waste-to-power applications, we believe this product has enormous market potential,” stated Harry Schoell, Chairman and CTO of Cyclone.

The "simplified rod bearing connections" was the elimination of the Schoell "spider bearing" and the connecting rods attached to the crank journal of the crankshaft, just like almost every other piston engine on earth.

Notice the statement of reduced noise and vibration, and their confidence the engine would now meet durability targets, going into "limited production" by the end of 2013, i.e., within two months. Harry was even "very proud" of the new design.

Translated, what this meant was the "spider bearing" would flop around and beat on the connecting rods like a hammer. Hence the noise and vibration. This would quickly break the rods and stop the engine. The OSU people redesigned the engine without the "spider bearing" and eliminated the rod breakage. They predicted the engine would soon meet durability goals, which, if memory serves, for the WHE was 200 hours of operation.

That was the beginning of November 2013. Production did not start before the end of the year, or since.

The presentation by the OSU people that said problems with water lubrication was the critical path issue was made in early March of 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20150923212126/http://www.cyclonepower.com/2014/IAASP_Presentation_OSU-CAR_Cyclone_March-8-2014.pdf

So they stopped the most rapid engine failures by eliminating connecting rod breakage, and the engine ran a little longer but was stopped by bearing failures.

Slide 30 of the OSU presentation says

•Little or no data exists outside Cyclone’s own experience for the use of water lubrication for either ball bearings or roller bearings in our environment and under our loadings. 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.
•Minimal data exists for the use of water lubricated polymer journal bearings in our environment and under our loadings. Factors of a 4:1 increase in life have been shown with submerged operation, but little long term wear data is available with pressurized water lubrication.
•For long term durability, we will need to test bearings and bushings under different lubrication schemes and determine to what extent the lubrication can extend the life of the bearing. Test data will be used to complement bearing analysis and will be used to determine accelerated testing factors.

And they recommended building a bearing test machine and trying to develop bearings that would work with water lubrication in the Cyclone engine. Cyclone stopped funding the OSU work before that was done.

What was Cyclone's experience? Harry Schoell, before everyone caught onto him, used to post to a steam car club board. Here's his take on bearings: (https://steamautomobile.com:8443/ForuM/read.php?1,11677,12195#msg-12195 because of the commas, you'll have to copy this url and paste into a browser)

HLS
Re: Steam Bearings
December 20, 2008 10:30AM

HI Guys
We make our own bearings the roller type are ceramic. and just a note water is a better lube than oil as it doesnot break down. The problem is that oil is an electrical insulater where water is a conducter. What happens in metal bearings is they act as a small generator and cause a metal to metal atomic attraction hence gualing. Composits and ceramics do not have this problem and they roll so sweetly. Of course any contaminates do not work well with anything. A total closed loop system with out contaminates is by far the best. The ceramic bearings can live 7 to 10 times longer than a steal bearing.
Harry

Yes, Harry Schoell, genius, is that illiterate.

Deionized water is a conductor. Check.
Rolling element bearings are little electrical generators. Check.

Notice that more than 12 years ago Cyclone had already been through experimenting with ceramic and composite bearing materials. Five years later they hired OSU to fix problems that made the Cyclone engine self-destruct. Critical Problem #2 was water lubricated bearings.

The WHE, like the Mark 3, was supposed to be a low-pressure, low-temperature engine, not like the Mark 5 claimed to operate at 3200 psi, 1200F steam. Bearing loads are far lower at lower steam pressures. Yet still no demonstrations of working engines.

And what's happened since then?

- The Mark 3 and Mark 1 engine designs were announced that were supposed to go into production and save the company. Both returned to the 6 cylinder format with a "spider bearing" that OSU eliminated as Critical Problem #1.

- Neither of the two race cars built to set land speed records for steam cars, nor the two power boats built to set water speed records have moved one foot under the power of a Cyclone engine.

- Cyclone signed a contract in 2018 to build a 3 megawatt solar power plant and supply electricity for 10 years. It would use three 1500 hp Mark 10 engines, and be installed in Q1, 2019. And, as usual, nothing happened. Not even a non-functional mock-up of a Mark 10 engine was built.

- The system they sold to FSDS of Denmark was an engine driving a 10 kW generator, which would be about a 15 hp engine. They were never able to make that run for 10 hours. (But that never stopped them from signing a contract for 1500 hp engines that would run continuously for 10 years.)

So though Fruge and Schoell swear up and down that their engines don't have any problems, none are for sale and none are powering anything anywhere, and there is no explanation offered as to why.

A list of old Cyclone PRs can be found at https://web.archive.org/web/20150608052837if_/http://www.cyclonepower.com/press.html (Cyclone deleted all these from their website about 2016.) Start at the oldest and see all the claims they've made over the years, then follow up to see how few have ever come true.