Name: Professor Harold Schock
Department: Mechanical Engineering
Location: MSU Automotive Research Experiment Station, 3361 Hulett Road in Okemos
Type of research: Research to improve engines, making them more fuel-efficient and economical
Date of research: The research, which is done for the U.S. Department of Energy, started about a year ago, Schock said. He said his work on thermal electric devices for the Office of Naval Research began about three years ago.
Basics of the project: Schock is working on several different projects — two of which are sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. He has received grants for these projects within the past year.
"One involves thermal electric materials and the design and construction of an energy recovery device," he said. "That is, recovering waste heat from the exhaust.
"The second (project) is the development of a new kind of combustion strategy or conventional piston cylinder configuration."
His research on the internal combustion engine could help build automobiles that have fewer emissions.
"The way we're going about that is by taking on the exhaust and the energy that would normally be rejected from the engine and converting that into useful electricity, which can be utilized in a hybrid vehicle configuration," Schock said.
Social impact of research: "There really isn't a lot of alternatives when we use 20 million barrels of oil a day in the United States.
"To replace that amount of energy with something else is an incredible task," he said.
Through the different research projects, he hopes to also make diesel engines more efficient.
"(Diesel engines) have an efficiency of nearly 40 percent in the best operating condition," he said.
"And it's likely that through further refinement, efficiencies of 50 or 60 percent are a realistic goal."
In automobiles that have diesel engines and are driven in the urban cycle, the efficiency of the engine is somewhere between 15 and 18 percent, Schock said.
If his research is successful, it could later be used in everyday automobiles.
"We work closely with the auto companies and suppliers," he said.
"The ideas that we generate are sometimes implemented in products."
Grants and funding: Within the past year, Schock received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for his thermoelectric research.
"The total amount of the thermoelectric project is about $7 million over a period of five years," he said.
Future of the program: The Automotive Research Experiment Station was built from funds donated by General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co.
Although, Schock said the facility is planning to move to a new location at MSU.
"We're moving to a new facility — a $10 million facility that's being constructed in the Engineering Research Complex on campus," he said.
It should be open in the fall of this year, but won't be fully functional for another year, Schock said.
Web site: www.egr.msu.edu/erl/current%20projects.html
