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developerWorks: : This is a developerWorks podcast, I'm Scott Laningham. I'm here with Mike Brickley, inventor of the Brickley Engine, entrepreneur, inventor. Thanks for taking a moment with me, Mike.

Brickley: You bet.

developerWorks: Let's talk, at least initially here, about, what is the Brickley Engine?

Brickley: The easiest way to describe it would be to say that it is a way to reconfigure the bottom end of the internal combustion engine so that there's an improvement in fuel efficiency, fuel economy, CO2 emissions, probably about 15-20 percent on those.

developerWorks: It begs the question for many probably, why even spend time on a combustion engine? It's so bad. And we're this close to all these other things: hydrogen, electric, all that. Why did you decide that this was an area where you wanted to put your effort? Because I know you care about all of the issues, the larger issues surrounding things like engines and fuel and exhaust and all that.

Brickley: Right. Well, the hydrogen economy is quite a ways off and there are those who would say that it's not even a viable alternative. And we have to look at, you know, the electric car.

The thing that has driven me towards the direction that I've gone here is that while some of these are hopefuls, the reality is that these, the cost of these alternatives are not reasonable for the average person buying an automobile. You know, if you look at, for instance, the EV1, which was featured in that movie, you know, Who Killed the Electric Car.

developerWorks: Exactly, yes. The little ones they crushed, whatever they brought back in.

Brickley: Exactly, in California.

General Motors had developed this car, and it was a pretty representative piece of technology. But even the fact that it was representative, it seems like the costs involved was really quite exorbitant. I mean, if you look at how much money they had invested in those cars, they had over $80,000 per car invested and they were talking about an MSRP (Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price) of about $43,000. So, you know, for the average person, that really kind of out of the range that, you know, when you can go out and buy a car today for $10,000, a brand-new car that gets 35 miles to the gallon, you know, why would you want to spend $43,000?

developerWorks: And also until they got that what it costs and what they're charging flipped on the other direction, there weren't going to be a lot of them made, either, were there?

Brickley: No. That's correct.

So when you look at the cost of these vehicles, it's substantial. The new Chevy Volt, if you look at that as an alternative, you realize that originally, they had wanted to build it for 20,000, then it went to 30,000, now it's over 40,000. So for the average person, that's a lot when you consider that you're only consuming about 500 or 600 gallons for the average person in fuel a year. You know, at $2.00 a gallon, it's $1,000. That goes quite a few years if you're thinking about.

developerWorks: Half of that, it's going to take a long time to pay the difference off.

Brickley: Right, right.

developerWorks: So that really sets the stage for why you feel like certainly we've got a few decades maybe of still the combustion engine being the primary workhorse underneath the hood of what everybody's driving for the most part.

Brickley: That's correct.

developerWorks: So, talk about the thought process that was going on. I mean, as you sat and you maybe were thinking about this and went, well, what can I do with? Did you do it that way? I mean, were you thinking in that big picture and then went, "OK — let me focus on the combustion engine."

Brickley: No, it really didn't come that way. My feeling is that generally creative endeavors begin with a history of a variety of disciplines that aren't normally combined. And when there's a level of mastery with each one of those disciplines, then you begin to see problems in a different way. And so for me that involved when I was in high school, I built some steam-powered bicycles, and I played around with Stirling engines. And you know, my background's in mechanical design, engineering, and so there was an understanding of these various aspects of creating mechanical work. And so it was in seeing how all that stuff works together and dealing with various problems in each discipline that you begin to see differently than you would otherwise.

So, with the Stirling engines, with low temperature Stirling engines, low-pressure engines, friction is a very important factor because there's not much work available from the gas. So that's kind of where I developed a sensitivity to the friction aspect. And then when I was playing with steam engines, obviously, James Watt had a huge role in developing the steam engine. And one of the mechanisms that he came up with for guiding the piston rod of the engine was the Watt mechanism, and that's an integral part of my engine design. So it's...

developerWorks: So it dates back.

Brickley: It does.

developerWorks: The underlying technology is not brand new; it's something that you in a way rediscovered in how it would apply to the combustion engine.

Brickley: I think that's a good way of putting it. So yes, the steam engine, the requirements that he was dealing with involved keeping the piston rod straight. And so the mechanism that he came up with was a very simple linkage to define a line. And so I'm using that, incorporating that, to guide the pistons and then connecting them together, afforded me a way of minimizing the friction in the engine for four cylinders as opposed to just, you know, one cylinder.

developerWorks: Now you have a Web site, right?

Brickley: Yes.

developerWorks: Where people can go look at kind of a actual working model on the site.

Brickley: That's correct.

developerWorks: Is it an address that easy to remember?

Brickley: It is. It's Brickleyengine.com. It's like a brick in the wall, L-E-Y, engine, all one word, dot com.

developerWorks: Which we'll link to off of the podcast page and this blog as well, so that people can find it and look at it while we're talking about it.

Brickley: Right.

developerWorks: Now, as you describe it, I would think that some of the challenge that you have with getting the word out on a massive scale about an idea like this is that it's just not very sexy, right? [LAUGHTER]

Brickley: Right, it's the old engine or combustion engine.

developerWorks: Right. But it sounds like that what you were attacking for a solution was, to engineers wouldn't that be an obvious place to be looking? And if so, why weren't they looking at this before?

Brickley: Well, they have been looking at it for quite some time. There are different ways of addressing engine friction. The largest contributing factor in the engine friction are the piston rings. And they've done over the last few decades an enormous amount of work and making the friction as a result of the piston rings be much smaller. And they've sort of been directing their energy in that way and it's been, you know, real effective.

developerWorks: But not on this redesign level as much so.

Brickley: No, no. My way of reducing the friction really doesn't have anything to do with the piston rings; it has to do with eliminating the piston skirts. If you look on the Web site, you'll see that there are no skirts on the pistons. And I might just mention briefly that the animation on the Web site is something that is kinematically correct — the motion is correct — but the actual shape of the parts, you know, is really quite different than what, how it appears there. For structure and inertia reasons, it's quite a bit different, but the actual movement of the parts is correct. But yes, the skirts are eliminated and the number of crankshaft bearings and the number of connecting-rod bearings have been reduced. And I have one connecting rod per four cylinders, so that makes it quite a bit simpler. The pin joints use a different type of lubrication than what would normally be occurring in like a crankshaft bearing, uses squeeze-film lubrication, and squeeze film is something that requires an oscillating movement.

And so it's employed and it's an effective way of reducing the distance that the areas of oil being sheared inside the engine have to travel. And that's really in a nutshell, you know, from an engineering perspective of what is going on.

developerWorks: Where are you with this, with the engine and your pursuit of those who would be interested in building it and testing it and all this kind of stuff? What's the story there?

Brickley: Well, that is quite a story. At this point, because I have a couple U.S. patents and more patents pending, my energy, because I have limited resources, has been directed towards the patents. And I have U.S. patents, but obviously, I don't have patents that cover the world so the rest of the world has access to the idea. And certainly I would want them to use it.

developerWorks: You want to open source it for the world?

Brickley: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, that's the whole point here, is that the world uses it, that we consume less fuel and reduce those CO2 emissions, so.

developerWorks: Is anyone looking into it outside the U.S.?

Brickley: Yes. I've had a number of inquiries. There is an engine that I know of that's being built in India, and I don't really know all the places. I've been contacted by some folks in Korea as well, but there's no obligation on their part to contact me to let me know what they're doing. I would like to know, obviously.

developerWorks: Sure.

Brickley: Just because I'm curious.

developerWorks: What about in the U.S.?

Brickley: In the U.S., there have been some people that I've talked to. You know, things look hopeful at this point. It's difficult to decide or determine which way to go exactly, but I'm trying to run several different paths myself in terms of simultaneously to get something built, something on the road so that we can have it in a spark ignition engine or a gasoline engine or, you know, a diesel because it will work with both engines.

developerWorks: What is the bottom line of what the engine accomplishes? You know, for a single driver or then I know maybe the bigger issue is how does it scale in terms of savings and what's regained for maybe, you know, fleets of vehicles and companies that have a lot of vehicles pounding a lot of miles.

Brickley: Right. That's an important thing to really get a hold of. One company that I talked to burn nearly 20 million gallons of fuel month, so you can say that ...

developerWorks: Wow, 20 million a month.

Brickley: Twenty million a month. So, you know, you can say that if you could just save 10 percent, you know, at a couple bucks a gallon, or it's more than that, so say $2 a gallon which, it's somewhere between two and three, for the sake of numbers here. If you save 10 percent that'd be 2,000,000 gallons times 2, that's $4 million a month in savings in a fuel bill not to mention that, you know, the CO2 emissions. You know, I think that the potential for fuel savings is huge with my engine configuration. And I'm really curious as to see how it's going to be embraced, you know, throughout the world.

developerWorks: Can I ask you about the process of invention and discovery like this because you, obviously this is not the first time? This is something that's kind of a lifelong pursuit of yours. You just love to solve problems, you've got that kind of a mind. I mean, you mentioned building a steam-powered bicycle when you were in high school.

Brickley: Right. That's correct.

developerWorks: How do you describe that impulse and getting into that space where you're listening for a new ideas and looking at things to solve. There's not some process that you go through to get into that groove, is there? It just kind of happens? Or, what goes on there?

Brickley: Well, my feeling is that an important ingredient is curiosity. And for me as a child — and this is typical of what I understand of many people who go down the road that I'm going down — is that for me as a child, I, every gift that I had, wasn't together for, you know, maybe more than three or four days before I had it all apart. I mean, there was just no way that I was going to leave something together and not know what was going on inside it. So, you know, if it was a watch, or if it was a truck or, you know, an airplane or whatever it was, it had to end up being apart. And so I found a lot of interest in taking things apart and discovering what made them work and then recombining them in, you know, in my own way. And so once you have that sort of way of doing life, there isn't much that you don't want to find out about.

And so, curiosity is I think one of the critical factors involved with developing what I'd mentioned before was that combination of disciplines. If you're a curious person, you approach life very different. You're looking at how things work and you're observing a lot. So that necessarily drives your interest in a lot of different directions, so you end up finding out about a lot of things and combining a lot of things that normally are not combined. And so that's, it's kind of, the mind is an amazing correlational matrix. You know, it has a way of bringing things together and seeing associations.

And so the important thing there is that it has that information to draw on. And that's what curiosity allows for us, is creating that place in your head where things can be combined in ways that you wouldn't normally do.

developerWorks: Do you think people are more curious or less curious nowadays? On the one hand, you might think more because there's so much more access to information now with the Internet and all that. But there are also a lot of distractions that pull people away from creative thought as opposed to just, kind of, you know, idle-time filling stuff.

Brickley: I don't know. My feeling is that for whatever reason, people's curiosity ends up manifesting itself in the direction that it does. You know, if you're interested in law or the English language, you know, you'll go into linguistics. And so whatever your propensity is initially, you know, that's what you'll be attracted to.

For me I think the thing that really determines whether or not a person really follows what they're curious about is dealing with fear. There are all kinds of ramifications from, you know, the culture and family and all sorts of things that have a way of interrupting people following what they're really capable of doing. And if that something that gets in the way, then a person's potential is never really brought fully into the presence of all of us.

developerWorks: You might say that now is a great time to be inventing and trying to bring ideas to the forefront, like your idea because there are much fewer barriers to communicating ideas than there used to be, but at the same time it's hard to be heard amongst the noise at times isn't it? But people do it. They figure out how to get their word out there but there's like an art to that, too, isn't there?

Brickley: Certainly, certainly. I think it's interesting to see all of the various ways in which social networking is manifesting itself. We want to be connected. We want to be connected to each other, and in ways that in the past, I mean, just certainly weren't possible. There's no way it would have been possible to, for me 25 years ago to contact the whole world via the Web. And that's an amazing movement. And when there's some sort of interaction — me with the world and the world with me — that develops a perspective of self that is new and is certainly transformational. The tool isn't transformational, but what occurs inside the human is where the transformation occurs. And so it's going to have a powerful impact on how we relate to each other.

developerWorks: What are your hopes for the Brickley Engine? I mean, obviously you'd like it to be built and put into cars, but what's the bigger picture: How would you like to see it viewed in the, you know, in the future, down the road people look back at it? What was its point, what did it achieve?

Brickley: Well, I think it's a bridge. My feeling is that it's a bridge to whatever it is to come, whatever is to be created as a way of dealing with our mechanical energy needs. Certainly down the line fossil fuels are going to be ... play less of a role, but for now they need to be there. Something to keep in mind, too, is that — a little bit of a diversion here — but the internal combustion engine does not necessarily have to burn hydrocarbons. It does not have to create CO2. You know, there is no carbon in the hydrogen oxygen-equilibrium equation. You know, so you can burn hydrogen in an internal combustion engine and have zero CO2. And so as an alternative, certainly it's possible there are other problems with hydrogen in general but, you know, who knows what will be discovered down the line. But certainly the way I see it, why waste fuel if we don't have to? And that's basically what's occurring, is all of that fuel, that 15 or 20 percent, is being put out into the world, into the atmosphere, as heat and CO2 when it could be, you know, mechanical work and then heat. But it just seems to me to be kind of a no-brainer.

This is nuts-and-bolts engineering; this is not rocket science here. This is something that, you know, we can do very easily and seems to me to be a real viable way of at least putting a dent in our appetite for fossil fuels.

developerWorks: Is there, is the challenge with auto manufacturers, you know, retooling factories to build a different kind of engine and the upfront investment they think is too much for the result at the other end, or ... ?

Brickley: I don't believe that that's a problem at all.

developerWorks: Really?

Brickley: No. I don't believe the tooling is a problem or — I mean, there's a small amount of research involved with building it that has to occur any time you build any engine, a new model.

developerWorks: And they're changing engines, you know, from maybe not every year, but often, though.

Brickley: Oh absolutely, absolutely. So much that can be modeled and tested and run through several iterations before, you know, it even is put in a car. That really isn't the issue. My feeling is that the thing that is a gift to us and is at the same time, a huge hindrance is knowledge because as a general rule the way that we function in life is out of the past.

And the way we're going to do things is the way we've done things. And that's a very limiting factor. It's a gift in that we have to have knowledge to move forward, but at the same time, though, if we don't have the ability to see anew. I mean, the example that has often struck me is when you look at a ketchup bottle, how long did it take.

developerWorks: I know where you're going with that. [LAUGHTER]

Brickley: How long did it take to make the top of the ketchup bottle wider and turn the label upside down so that it's always accessible? I mean, we're talking about decades, you know, maybe what, a hundred years maybe.

developerWorks: I know, I know. And now that's the way you see it...

Brickley: And so that's the way. But the reason why that went on was because that's the way it had been done. And so, so often it's the case with technology that the people that have the investment in all of the tools involved want to do things like they've been doing things because that creates a kind of security for human beings, and so ...

developerWorks: Kind of a mental friction there, too, they're dealing with, right?

Brickley: No question.

developerWorks: The engine, the perpetuated engine reflects the perpetuated thinking.

Brickley: Right. And as time goes on, though, it's becoming the case that the world cannot sustain that type of reality. We have to be more flexible. We have to be more open. We have to be more willing to observe what's really going on and with that observation making action as opposed to accepting the way we've done things in the past. And, you know, believe me, I mean, each has its role, but when one is dominating then the other is cut out. And both need to work together: The observation in conjunction with the knowledge. And when they work together, you know, there's this harmony and there's this movement that is full, that goes forward.

But when our tendency is to stay with just the knowledge, then we lose out. And you know, we can't afford to lose out at the rate that we have in the past. You know, in 1830 we had a billion people on the face of the earth. And it only took a hundred years — that's the first time we had 1 billion people on the face of the earth and it only took a hundred years to get a second billion. And now we're at nearly seven. So, the time ...

developerWorks: Is now.

Brickley: Is now. And we don't have the ability to waste a bunch of energy doing things like we've done them in the past when we have the opportunity to see what's going on through observation and say, "This is an idea that we need to do."

developerWorks: Mike Brickley, inventor of the Brickley Engine. You can check it out at brickleyengine.com, right?

Brickley: That's correct.

developerWorks: You'll see animation of the engine and other stuff there to read and check out as well. And they can find you if they want to communicate with you, the audience members?

Brickley: Yes, absolutely, absolutely. There's an e-mail address there, so feel free to send me some comments or questions.

developerWorks: And we'll check back to see how this story is progressing. Meet you right here at this parking garage. [LAUGHTER]

developerWorks: Thanks, Mike.

Brickley: Thank you.

developerWorks: This has been a developerWorks podcast. Check us out at ibm.com/developerworks. I'm Scott Laningham.

Resources

• Brickleyengine.com
  
  
• Podcast blog
  
  

About the author

Scott Laningham, host of developerWorks podcasts, was previously editor of developerWorks newsletters. Prior to IBM, he was an award-winning reporter and director for news programming featured on Public Radio International, a freelance writer for the American Communications Foundation and CBS Radio, and a songwriter/musician.

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