US Team Seeks To Top Steam-Car Speed Record 108
Zothecula writes "Steam-engined vehicles are quaint, retro and obsolete ... right? Well, maybe not. The current land speed record for a steam-powered vehicle currently sits at 148 mph (238 km/h), set by the British car Inspiration team in 2009. Now, Chuk Williams' US Land Steam Record (USLSR) Team is hoping to steal that title in its LSR Streamliner, powered by a heat-regenerative external combustion Cyclone engine – an engine that could someday find common use in production automobiles."
Re:240 km in THAT thing? (Score:5, Informative)
Speed Record Cars like this are usually build to run in a straight line on a salt flat. If you don't have wind from the side, there is no need for much stability. Building the car as narrow as possible reduces the area exposed to the wind and thus reduces drag.
Now if you try do drive that thing on a regular road, you'd probably not survive the first turn.
*ALL* kind of alternative fuels? (Score:4, Informative)
And the main advantage "can burn all kind of alternative fuels"? Come on, I can do that with my diesel engine already
I'd like to see what sawdust, wood chips, grass clippings or charcoal would do to your diesel engine. Even liquid fuels will not work if they are high-octane, like ethanol. Diesel engines require liquid fuel at a certain cetane number [wikipedia.org] range.
A steam engine, OTOH, has basically a single requirement for fuel: it must burn without damaging the boiler.
Re:Radiators (Score:5, Informative)
There were a few condensing steam locomotives [wikipedia.org] built. I don't know why they weren't more common, surely a train has space enough to fit a condenser there and stopping to get water must have been a PITA.
In the 1960s Bill Lear [wikipedia.org] a very prolific inventor started working on steam cars. By then Lear had already a number of important inventions to his name, among them the car radio (he created the name "Motorola") and the business jet plane (Lear Jet).
He claimed to have the condenser problem solved by 1969, using an advanced accordion-shaped radiator, but nothing came of his steam car plans. I remember seeing an article on Popular Science mentioning he had a steam turbine bus prototype.
He also had plans for a steam powered race car to run the Indy 500. This car would use a delta-shaped engine, inspired by the Napier Deltic [wikipedia.org]
Re:Waste Heat Engine (Score:5, Informative)
As a Steam enthusiast I can add that while your statements are technically correct, in a more practical sense they are not. What do I mean? Allow me to explain;
While Steam engines, being external combustion engines, can technically burn just about anything, in order to make burning low grade fuels such as soft and green woods, dung bricks and garbage useful, you need a very large and well aerated grate in a boiler designed to handle those kinds of fuels. More specifically, you need a very large boiler with a gigantic grate and an easily cleaned and serviced heating surface. You can see an examples of low grade fuel burning boilers over here: www.tinytechindia.com [tinytechindia.com] The boiler pictured is the smallest they make with 54sq feet of grate area. That's about as large as the back of your average small pickup truck.
Most steam boilers, particularly the more modern designs (such as the one in TFA) have very tightly packed and not easily serviced tube arrangements. This means that one must avoid "sooting" the tubes with low grade fuels that don't burn cleanly as soot and creosote buildup on the tubes causes loss of efficiency and can cause tube failure. Thus one must use cleaner burning fuels such as high-density hardwoods, low sulfur coal, steam atomized oil, propane or Nat Gas. In an automobile application one is pretty much restricted to the liquid fuels, so you are back to using hydrocarbon fuels for heating.
Sadly, even the most efficient steam engine cannot compare in efficiency to even the LEAST efficient gas or diesel engine. The absolute best one could expect to get from a conventional steam engine plant is about 15% efficiency, with most ones in existence (primarily small Hobby sized ones in boats) running at around 7% efficiency. A specialized high-tech plant like this one probably runs at a real-world efficiency of about 25%. That's not bad, but nothing compared to the 50% efficiency of an 80 year old V8 from a 1940's Ford. I'm sorry, but Steam power won't make a true comeback until hydrocarbon options are simply too expensive to use anymore, or we have a global socio-economic collapse requiring a "rebuilding" period.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE steam. But I'm also realistic about it's capabilities and applicability. Maybe this engine design is good enough to get over that hump. I guess we'll see.