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."
240 km in THAT thing? (Score:4, Funny)
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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.
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Even so, just adding another foot or two on each side would make a *lot* of difference in stability. As it is, the width/height ratio is vanishingly small, and at the speeds involved, this just looks like a thrilling way to die!
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Anyone? (Score:1)
Making Steam uses up Water (Score:4, Funny)
Steam is burned water, a limited naturil resorse that should not be frittered away by greedy car owners. Water beloongs to all of us to share so don't waste it, ride a bike you stupid dickface!
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PS - ever heard of the WATER cycle? How about conservation of matter? You think all the water just disappears off the face of the Earth?
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Oh boy! Here comes that speech about fluoride, vodka and precious bodily fluids again!
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You want to conserve the stuff? It's dangerous!!
Take a look here [dhmo.org].
We should be calling for the banning of it all together.
But if this type of engine can produce useful energy while safely incinerating what you claim as a "limited naturil resorse" , then I'm all for it.
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And what if there's a collision, or an accident, and the steam reservoir breaks open? Dangerous dihydrogen monoxide could make its way into the water table!
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I don't know what's funnier, this post or the people trying to correct him.
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Waste Heat Engine (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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But who knows, steam itself might partly return [wikipedia.org]...
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Well, the main reasons why otto and diesel engines don't reach the theoretical maximum efficiency of the otto or diesel cycle is that they lose energy to the cooling medium. If you could use some of that heat, you might close the gap between the theoretical maximum efficiency and the practical efficiency. The added weight will of course reduce the gain, but it still might be greater than zero.
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Re:Waste Heat Engine (Score:5, Interesting)
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:
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.
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The physics is undoubtedly good for a one-off run, but it is the chemistry that will determine whether steam engines can be brought to market.
The physics are limited by Carnot equations, but current automobiles perform well below the theoretical limits. Steam engines have effective torques at very low RPMs and have much higher limits on RPMs than ICEs: they can come a lot closer to the theoretical limits. They also reduce the need for a complicated, and heavy, transmission. The power band is, IIRC, very s
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To some extent it already has, with the arrival of A1 Pacific N0. 60163 [a1steam.com] I saw this start off from Edinburgh Waverley a few months ago; the experience left me blubbing like a girl and temporarily rather deaf.
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(seriously, completely regular (of "lowest", regional class even) services few times a day; I had a ride on one of those trains not thanks to planning it - but because I wanted to commute a short distance on some random time and day)
*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.
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A practical steam engine fuel has at least the requirements:
- high energy density (you don't want a tender full of grass clippings behind your car)
- maintenance free fuelling the burning chamber (you don't want to shovel coal)
- clean, low emission burn
So basically, you have to process most of your example fuels anyways to be useful. Processing them to anything a conventional diesel engine (or, if you really like ethanol, otto engine) can burn is not a significant loss of efficiency.
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Zero energy use while standing still?
Zero energy use while standing still from the engine. Sure energy is lost by the boiler and from the pipes, but not in needlessly moving the piston(s).
Zero pollution? Coal burning electricity plants have filter stacks on their chimneys that cost many millions, because burning coal is bloody dirty. Biomass can be even worse (if it's wet).
That's why steam cars burned oils, like kerosene. My steam system would work like this:
1. Grow algae using waste water
2. Crush it
3. Put algae oil in car
4. Gasify the non-oil parts of the algae to heat and power house (with steam)
5. Put ashes back into algae tanks
However, steam is 40% despite the lower temperatures. You can basically burn stuff a
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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.
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That's not bad, but nothing compared to the 50% efficiency of an 80 year old V8 from a 1940's Ford.
I suggest you recheck your facts. Thermodynamic efficiencies above 50% are in the realm of modern combined-cycle gas+steam turbine power plants, or gargantuan low-speed diesel engines (with cylinder bores that can exceed 36 inches) in big ships. I doubt that a flat head V8 from the 1940s even approaches 20%.
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Jay Leno describes driving his Doble steam car as like "being pushed by the hand of God." *
* No atheist trolls, please. I'm sure your mom is proud of you already.
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Mostly, this post is good input, but I would argue a couple things.
First, that steam turbines are actually pretty decent in terms of real efficiency (you may have been referring to the piston-type engines). It's something something similar to high-efficiency diesel engines.
Second, that a 1940s V8 is far from 50% efficiency. From what I could dig up, these engines have a compression ratio of somewhere between 4:1 and 7:1, which is truly dismal in terms of thermodynamic efficiency (which is related to compr
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Crower six stroke [wikipedia.org]
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You can't burn ANY fuel in a Diesel engine. If the certane rating of the fuel is too far off you will destroy the engine (try putting gasoline in a diesel and STAND BACK!). In theory you could make a piston engine that would burn any fuel, but you'd need to dynamicly adjust valve, injection, and ignition (for some fuel modes) timing and have a fuel sensor to figure it all out.
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It isn't efficiency that killed the steam engine, but power/weight. A heat engine such as a sterling can achieve near ideal efficiencies. (It's simply impossible to get any more efficient) It's really quite easy to build a reasonable 30-40 horsepower steam engine that can beat the same power Otto cycle engine any day, It's much easier to maintain, uses less fuel, without too much extra weight or size.
Some people have designed a 6-stroke engine that combines the Otto cycle, with a 2-stroke steam cycle to u
external combustion? (Score:3)
external combustion engine
This can only end well.
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Yes you will destroy a gas engine if you put diesel in it. I know someone who did just that. She must have had a fair bit of petrol in the tank when she refilled the car as it ran for some time before breaking. Very expensive to get the tank drained and the engine fixed. And her face when trying to explain it.
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Actually that is the wrong way around. She put gas into a diesel. The same effect though. Little fuel injected tubo diesels are quite highly tuned and though they may run bio diesel they do not like petrol. Must of been that way around as in the UK you cannot put diesel into a gas car.
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Her face was very expensive to get fixed after trying to explain it?
What, was it her abusive husband's car?
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but you would destroy a typical gasoline ICE if you accidentally gave it diesel.
No, you wouldn't.
If there were a fair amount of petrol/gasoline mixed with the diesel fuel, the engine would run poorly and would produce a lot of smoke, but it would not be destroyed. Catalytic converters and oxygen sensors could be destroyed if the engine is run that way for more than a few minutes. If the engine ran smoothly, there would be a higher propensity for combustion knock due to the diesel fuel lowering the octane value of the mixture, but mechanical damage is unlikely.
An engine designed for p
OK (Score:3)
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Radiators (Score:3)
The fatal flaw in portable/mobile steam applications to date has been the need for large radiators (really really large radiators) to cool the steam, converting it back to water to complete the cycle. I see no magic fairy dust in this device that solves that problem.
The alternative is to carry enough water to run the engine without recycling and eliminate the condensers. And that's a lot of water.
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And not a very good old hat. For the few that were in service, "The system was intended to reduce the problems of getting enough water to steam locomotives running through desert and very arid areas."
(from your link)
Carrying lots of water was a better solution for most railroad applications.
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Condensing Steam locos were often used in Underground Railways where the exhaust from the locos was a problem.
Since the majority of what comes out of the chimney is Water Vapour (aka Steam) capturing it is a good idea.
One issue that you face is that putting a pipe over the top of the chimney completely changes the drafting of the fire.
The Smokebox in a steam loco is at a lower pressure than the outside. This is caused by the steam exhating from the cylinders is jetted out up the chimney using a device call
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]
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Re:Radiators (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Except that most steam engines didn't refill by "scoop". They refilled from the TOP via a water tower.
Although you are correct that most did not use a "scoop", replenishing water by this method was well known and not uncommon on main lines where there was a competitive desire to reduce transit times. Look up "track pans" for US references.
For an absolutely smashing discussion of scoops see http://jimquest.com/writ/trains/pans/scoop2.htm [jimquest.com].
"Scoop" accidents could be deadly; imagine a steamer running full tilt and the scoop drops out or catches on something it shouldn't. Nasty.
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Your link explains why condensing steam locomotives weren't popular. ... The Class 25 was a complex locomotive that required high maintenance ... The equally complex tender also required frequent maintenance."
"Spent steam is fed through the thick pipe on the locomotive's left side to the condensing tender, where five steam turbine driven fans in the roof blows air down through the radiators on each side of the tender
Re: Bill Lear -- don't forget the eight track tape.
His other secret was Learium, a magic flu
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I read TFA and noted that they are not using the regenerator. I also went to the company's website where they say, "From garden equipment and generators to cars, trucks, trains and ships, we see a day when our planet will be powered in a sustainable manner by just One Engine -- the Cyclone Engine."
Ships are the only application where condensing will not be a problem due to the quantity of cooling water available.
They also state that one of the things their engine will not require in automotive applications
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The 1920s Doble steam car at least approached practicality:
http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/at-the-garage/steam-cars/1925-doble-series-e-steam-car/ [jaylenosgarage.com]
(but maybe that 1500 mile range comes with a 30 mph average speed...)
Steam cars will never be practical mainstream (Score:1)
For one simple reason. Most people live in climates where the temperature dips below freezing for much of the year. Water freezes.
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It wouldn't freeze (at least at normal Canadian winter temperatures) but the different boiling point may cause some (probably not insurmountable) effects.
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I'd be concerned about "gumming up the works" with the glycol. Try taking a few drops of coolant from your car sometime and rub it between your fingers for a while. They'll eventually be coated with the glycol residue and will be pretty sticky. Water steam under pressure is VERY hot and I'd be concerned that the glycol would gum everything up that same residue.
Bringing a steam turbine online would be a pretty slow process and not well suited for quick trips to the store.
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All you have illustrated an engineering problem. An easily solvable one at that. Not that I think steam engines will ever be mainstream, but your reasoning is simple minded.
Next 50 years is about efficiency (Score:1)
The reason that the internal combustion engine won out over external combustion engines in the last 50 years is its ability to instantly deliver the power on demand. But now with fuel prices going north we are going to need to start looking at efficiency of the engines we use and that's where external combustion engines win out. We are going to probably going to see a internal combustion engine that runs until the other engine gets up to speed. It will most likely be a Stirling engine with its flywheel as a
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Century of progress (Score:3, Interesting)
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].
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The 2009 records by Inspiration [gizmag.com] were the first beat the 1906 record of 127 mph (204 km/hr)
I called what I called a 'Sputnik moment' for US! We must defeat the brits and take back the honor of being the greatest nation! We will fix our edukation!!!
They'd better hurry (Score:3)
From the links at the bottom of TFA, the British team already has a body on their 200mph steam car. Looks a lot cooler too. [gizmag.com]
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And that's how you know that the one in the article is fake. I can spot half a dozen problems from the picture alone, from the heavy gauge steel frame to the geometry and (well, the list is very long). It looks like something cobbled together in a garage by people who don't know how to do proper design.(at least use aluminum tubing to keep the weight down, fools) The British team, though, it looks like a proper purpose-built vehicle.
http://www.steamcar.co.uk/ [steamcar.co.uk]
Interesting reading.
Note - I do wish someone h
I can biold a faster one. (Score:2)
A simple nuclear reactor system similar to what is used in submarine could easily beat the record.
Embarrassing 2009 effort. (Score:2)
The 2009 effort was embarrassing. They built a low-slung vehicle powered by a steam turbine, designed to travel only in a straight line, and took it to the Bonneville Salt Flats. And they went 148mph.
That's pathetic. A sizable number of street-legal cars and motorcycles can do that. All Indy, F1, and NASCAR cars can do far better. The current land speed record for a wheel-driven vehicle is 416mph. (Jet cars running on wheels have exceeded Mach 1, but those are really aircraft flying at a very low altitud
Origin of the term "Cars" and steam revealed! (Score:2)
good post (Score:1)