The Equalization Engine

In 1988, shortly before a friend introduced me to someone who told me about Bob Neal’s “equalizer”, I was already trying to build a device which I was calling an “equalizer”. I now call this device the Equalization Engine. I just like the way it sounds; it’s really a compression unit including an air engine, an air compressor, and an equalizer in the tank.

I don’t know how Bob Neal’s equalizer worked. This is my idea and I haven’t seen anything like it anywhere. By putting it online I am aware that it goes into the public domain. Some people use the public domain status of an idea as an excuse to not credit the idea’s originator, and those people have their conscience as a companion. I don’t have time to pursue them, so I have to take it as a compliment that large sections of my website have been lifted wholesale and pasted into the websites of others. Some of these websites are prettier than mine, but my website is about compressed air, not about display.

The equalization engine process was at first supposed to be situated in the compressor, but as it turned out, there would have to be two intake strokes, so that makes it a 4-cycle engine. That’s been done by Leroy Rogers and maybe others, and there are problems with it; it works best at certain favored speeds and at other speeds it disappoints. The same will be true of my self-filling air tank but by not trying to kill too many birds with one stone, by keeping separate systems separate rather than dependent on each other for proper functioning, and by not trying to design the cleverest possible configuration as a first working model, I hope that a machine can be built cheaply that is easy to test and modify.

It’s so simple that for many years I didn’t bother to draw it. After a normal intake stroke, the compressor cylinder is full of atmosphere. Freeze action—that’s the problem; it really requires a separate intake stroke—while the cylinder is equalized with full tank pressure. The atmosphere jumps up in pressure and temperature while the tank barely loses a few psi, if that much, and drops maybe a few degrees in temperature. The compression stroke now proceeds, but after maybe 5% of the stroke, the air has already reached full tank pressure and the rest of the compression stroke is just constant pressure delivery, not PV change work. The compression is mostly done by tank air, while the compressor only moves atmosphere into the system.

To avoid the complication of a compressor with two intake strokes, the current design keeps the compressor and equalizing chamber separate. The equalizer is in the tank where it belongs, so that the compression taking place in it can’t dissipate heat anywhere but back into the tank. The intake check valve to the equalizer is really a piston with holes in it plugged with check valve members so air can go in through the piston when the piston is moving backward on the atmosphere intake stroke. But during the equalization with tank air, nothing can leave the equalizer. After equalization, the lateral supply valve that communicates tank air to equalizer closes and the intake check valve/piston is pushed toward the discharge check valve which is fixed in the pipe. Just before the two check valve members touch, the linear air motor that reciprocates the moving check valve/piston member stops and a spring returns the piston. With the piston moving backward its check valve opens and atmosphere fills the equalizer as its volume grows back to maximum.

These events have to be controlled by the usual means such as cam-operated valves. That part isn’t designed yet, and I encourage designers to prove the concept first before trying anything fancy. Mechanical operators are foolproof once you get them working right, till they wear out. Proving the concept, for anyone that works on this, is a high priority prerequisite compared to proving how clever a designer you are. There isn’t much to operating valves mechanically, it’s just common sense, but if you start trying to design logic circuits either pneumatical or electronic, then you are building bugs into the device that will distract you from getting to the finish line quick. The quicker you get something built that you can show to potential resource people, the less is the likelihood that you will end up with a “promising but unfinished” bucket of excuses begging for financial assistance. On the other hand, a simple machine can be built with your own money and can be gotten to work correctly. Any smart capitalist will be much more impressed with a simple equalization engine that works, than with a fancy one that “should” work. Unless you have a glib and charming personality, forget about getting someone else to pay for your working model. Only sharks normally take that bait, and they end up owning you.

I’ll be happy to work with anyone who wants to do this, as I can find the time. I don’t do exclusive partnerships, just keep it fun and make it work. I don’t sign on to anyone else’s agenda and I don’t expect anyone to sign on to mine. I can only hope that successful exploitation of my ideas will result in the proceeds being shared with me. I have put it in the public domain in hopes that more people will attempt it. It’s a numbers game: the more trying there is, the greater the likelihood of success. Inventors don’t expect success on the first or second try; quitters do, they set it up that way. Inventors make it work.