Bradley Atkins Page 1 10/10/2008

Nickel Titanium Heat Engine

Design proposal

Proposed design for a fuel efficient heat engine suitable for

replacing high pressure steam turbines in power stations.

Author Bradley Atkins

Date 05/10/2008
Status Release
Version 1.1

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Table of contents
Nickel Titanium Heat Engine.......................................................................................1
Design proposal.............................................................................................................1
Author............................................................................................................................1
Table of contents...........................................................................................................2
Introduction..................................................................................................................3
The Design....................................................................................................................5
Fig. 1 The pump contracted...................................................................... ........................5
Fig. 2 The pump expanded................................................................................ ................5
Figure 3 The basic pump or heart.................................................................................... .6
Cycle of operation.........................................................................................................7
Implementation within a power station........................................................................7
Figure 4 A multi cellular arrangement.......................................................... ...................7
Overall benefits of adopting the design........................................................................8
Safety.......................................................................................................... ........................8
Fuel Efficiency................................................................................................................ ....8
Political implications....................................................................................................... ...8
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................9

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Introduction

This document details the design of a prototype heat engine that is

intended to replace the high pressure steam turbines found in
power stations, either Nuclear or Conventional.

I have considered prototyping this engine for over 20 years and

now acknowledge that I do not have the resources and time
available to do so. With this in mind I first documented the design
in July 2006 and sent it electronically to every body I thought had
in interest in the subject. This included every Atomic Energy
Authority I could find online, heat engine research groups and also
universities.

The more or less blanket inertia I met with surprised me

considering our current energy crisis and the fact that I was
offering a dramatic increase in fuel efficiency and safety for power
stations for free. Although the heat engine research groups were
complimentary the Atomic Energy Authorities were astonishingly
inert. If they replied at all it was usually to say I had sent the design
to the wrong department and then provided no link to the correct
one. The only truly enthusiastic response was from a professor at
MIT who described this as “An exciting proposal”, and said he was
going to try and raise funds for a prototype. Since then I have
heard nothing.

With this in mind I have decided to rewrite the proposal and add a
another diagram for clarity and instead send this to pressure
groups for energy conservation and organizations tackling global
warming etc in the hope that they will pick it up and try to drive it
on themselves.

This design is offered gratis globally to any nation, organization or

private company that seeks to enhance the safety and efficiency of
their power production plants.

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Nickel Titanium Alloy (Shape Memory Alloy)

Nickel Titanium Alloy often referred to as NITI or SMA has some

remarkable properties that have led to a lot of novel innovative
designs for products; it is part of the range of Super Elastic Alloys.

There are many sites on the Internet that go into detail on the
properties of these remarkable alloys so I will simply provide links
to a few of the more interesting and leave the reader to educate
themselves further should they choose to do so.

Stamford University: -

http://www.stanford.edu/~richlin1/sma/sma.html

A company supplying SMA and prototyping services; (Requires

Flash Player).

http://www.memory-metalle.de/

For the purposes of this document there are three properties of

SMA that are pertinent: -

1. SMA “Remembers” the shape it was originally cast in when

distorted and will spring back to that shape with remarkable
force when supplied with heat. So little heat in fact that it is
the most efficient material known for transferring heat into
mechanical movement.
2. The point that SMA is triggered to spring back into shape can
be “Tuned” to operate at specific temperatures in the original
annealing process.
3. SMA does not seem to fatigue when continuously distorted
out of shape within its operating limits.

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The Design

The design is based on the concept of a squeezebox such as is

used in a Barometer or the musical instrument the accordion. The
drawing below, (Fig 1) shows a cross section of the SMA
squeezebox, hereafter referred to as the heart.

Fig. 1 The pump contracted.

When cool the heart can be inflated at low pressure by a pump so

that it fills and expands with either Hydraulic oil or air in the case of
a pneumatic system, as shown below in figure 2. When heated the
heart would then contract at high pressure as shown in figure 1
above.

Fig. 2 The pump expanded.

Figure 3 on the next page shows a simple control system to make

this heart compress hydraulic oil or air rhythmically. All heat
recovery components have been omitted from the drawing for
clarity.

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Figure 3 The basic pump or heart

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Cycle of operation

1. With the heart at rest the water jacket is filled with cold water.
2. A low pressure pump inflates the heart with hydraulic oil.
3. The water jacket is then flooded with hot water, shown in
Red in Fig. 3.
4. The heart then compresses to its original shape. Thus forcing
the hydraulic oil out through the none-return valve to the
High Pressure Storage Vessel.
5. The high pressure out line shown at right then feeds a
conventional hydraulic motor.

Implementation within a power station

I envisage a generator hall fitted with hundreds of these SMA

hearts pumping hydraulic oil feeding hydraulic motors driving
electricity generators. By arranging these in a cellular grid it would
be a simple matter to shut down individual cells and remove them
for maintenance or recasting: -

Figure 4 A multi cellular arrangement.

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With such an arrangement it would be possible to carry out routine

maintenance of individual cells with out the need to shut down the
whole power plant.

Overall benefits of adopting the design

Safety
1. The heat engine can be tuned to run at a lower temperature
than a conventional power station requires. Thus avoiding
the necessity of generating super heated steam at high
pressure to run a turbine.
2. Steam is corrosive to steel and lighter than air, therefore
escapes of steam are highly likely in conventional power
station design and difficult to contain once escaped.
Hydraulic oil does not corrode and is not lighter than air so
escapes are less likely and can be simply mopped up and
contained.

Fuel Efficiency
As no prototype has been built it is not possible to give any figures
for the efficiency of the proposed heat engine. However there are a
number of comments it is reasonable to make regarding the
eventual efficiency rating of the design.
1. SMA is the most efficient material found to date for
converting heat into mechanical movement.
2. As this design could run on hot water rather than super
heated steam; reactors can operate at much lower
temperatures and therefore need supply less energy. That
being the case they can run for longer on the same amount
of fuel.

Political implications
As far less energy would be required to produce the same amount
of electrical power output it would seem likely that far less
enrichment of uranium would be required to produce viable fuel
rods. So it may be possible to allow the proliferation of nuclear
power technology far wider than is presently considered
acceptable. As there is no requirement to enrich uranium to a
weapons grade to create viable fuel rods.

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Conclusion
It is my hope that in the current energy crisis someone will now
pick up this design and seize the opportunity to generate electrical
power at a significant fraction of its present cost.

This design is offered without reservation as a free gift to

everyone, be they an Atomic Energy Authority or existing electricity
provider, in the hope that it will help towards our current problems
with global warming and energy poverty.

While asking for no financial stake in any design produced, I do

ask that anyone adopting this design acknowledge that it is based
on my original concept.

With kind regards

Bradley Atkins

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