As soon as I got in bed last night, I realized how stupid my suggestion in the above post is- obviously the crankshaft can't be moving, if you want to couple anything to it directly. What would work though and would be neat would be a eccentric bushing insert inside a relatively standard...
Thats the one... Its a pretty long ways from being effective, as far as what they have there. Its running under its own power, so that's a start, but every one of those automotive style setup's I've seen can just barely get up to real operating speed for the turbocharger, let alone handle any...
Yikes, on the expanding / contracting connecting rod! Its tough enough to build a really good, tough connecting rod without any fatigue issues, let alone implementing that...
I did see an interesting idea put forth by bruce crower in this latest issue of "automotive engineering". He mentions...
I run a fuel / air heat exchanger on my volkswagen because of the heat that two large electric fuel pumps (~120GPH @ 45psig) add to the ~closed system. It heats the fuel up to the extent over a long drive where you end up burning up fuel pumps. Odviously, injecting a huge amount of warm or hot...
magnets could work, depending what the track is made out of... Pack a lot of force punch for the weight, compared to just loading the car up with ballast.
I like the flywheel idea, that is a very simple way to store up a huge amount of energy which you can then unleash on your enemies...
The problem with this, and with the STS kits, - and their general reasoning at least in their sales pitch- is that YES, the gas because denser... This does not mean it has more energy or capability to drive a turbine.
I don't want to go too crazy, but both pressure and temperature contribute...
I'm not sure how far along you are, and the fact this topic is 2 weeks old, you probably already figured this out, or moved on... Regardless I thought I would shed some light on the situation just for future reference.
For a stater, I modified your jpeg, to show the relationship between Fad...