US Team Seeks To Top Steam-Car Speed Record

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."

Waste Heat Engine

[PseudonymousBraveguy]

The Cyclone engine may be grat as a waste heat engine, i.e. to convert process heat back to some more useful type of energy. I doubt it's really usefull as primary engine, because converting fuel to heat and then heat to motion does not really sound more efficient than your usual internal combustion engine. And the main advantage "can burn all kind of alternative fuels"? Come on, I can do that with my diesel engine already. Increasing the efficiency of a car with a internal combustion/steam engine hybrid by using the waste heat of a combustion engine to gain some additional power could be a much better idea.

Re:Waste Heat Engine

[7-Vodka]

Well, if you look at what they are claiming to have already achieved, it's pretty good.

Sure, the Carnot equations do predict that they have a lower theoretical maximum efficiency 1- dT/Th, however, they seem to make up for that in the following ways:

1. more efficient combustion process
2. recycling waste heat, not work heat, to get more heat to do work. (ie the heat that gets exhausted without going through the system)
3. making use of the lower Th to use lighter materials and better design. The videos shows the kind of materials they use are much cheaper looking and lighter for example
4. more useable tq and tq/vol ratio
5. they might be able to drop transmissions, oil, other added weight
6. They could probably harness heat off the brakes
7. much cleaner and more flexible engine with a closed loop Rankine design
8. They could end up with less maintenace and cost per maintenance too by the looks of it
9. Their exhaust temps seem just about right to think about heating the cabin as a final efficiency boost in the winter too

So, they give up some theoretical max efficiency to get a whole bunch of nice trade offs, and from the numbers they allege, those trade offs come back in terms of real world efficiency as well.

It seems worth more investigation before writing it off.. Plus, it looks like a Mr. Fusion.

Century of progress

[boustrophedon]

The 2009 records by Inspiration [gizmag.com] were the first beat the 1906 record of 127 mph (204 km/hr) set by Fred Marriott driving a modified Stanley Steamer [stanleysteamers.com].

Re:Radiators

[d3ac0n]

Except that most steam engines didn't refill by "scoop". They refilled from the TOP via a water tower. They would come to a stop under the tower, the engineer would open the input cap on the hot-well or make-up tank, and a large pipe on a swing-arm would be positioned over the opening. A lever was pulled and gravity would drain the water down into the tank.

The reason that more steam engines weren't condensing is because air-condensers are notoriously inefficient. You simply couldn't make them large enough to condense the water fast enough to supply a large engine. Eventually you would start getting steam back into the hot-well, and it would cause all sorts of problems. It was simply easier and more efficient to set up water-refilling stations all along the track that were refilled from local sources or via "water trains" that were sent along to the drier outposts.