Steam engines

Factual Questions
1

With the technology advances over the last 150 years or so, why hasn’t the steam engine become a viable way to move a motor vehicle?

I don’t know exactly the date used for the modern steam engine or who gets credit for it. But lets use either James Watt or Robert Fulton. Both were tinkering round and improving it in the late 1900’s.

They made cars that were steam poweredm but these had some serious safety issues, as many of engines could or did blow up.

But haven’t we been able to fix any such problems by now and should we not be looking at the steam engine as an alternative fuel source for the future?

Surely, we can keep an engine blowing up out of nowhere by now, can’t we? So what is the major drawback (aside from the obvious one of killing the oil industry?)

2

boilers are run by trained licensed people.

external combustion wastes more heat than internal combustion.

3

Watts lived in the 1700s to the early 1800s.

“steam engine as an alternative fuel source”
The steam is not the fuel, it’s a way to transfer the energy. Heat is generated which turns a liquid into steam and the steam imparts movement. A nuclear reactor is a kind of steam engine.

The steam engine just doesn’t produce enough power for its weight compared to the reciprocating engine or the gas turbine for vehicles. Probably has to do with moving all that water around. The steam engine is pretty much only useful for power stations in the form of steam turbines.

4

Steam engines burn fuel just the same as internal combustion engines do, and use the heat produced less efficiently. As they burn fuel, they use up the same sorts of resources and produce the same range of pollutants as internal combustion engines do. What advantages do you think they might have (because I am having trouble thinking of any).

5

Steam engines power cars all the time. Just plug in a Leaf or a Volt. Steam power at its most efficient.

6

The best steam cars ever made were Dobles. (Doble steam car - Wikipedia) They were incredibly expensive in their day (starting price $8800 for a rolling chassis in 1923). The engineering and materials put into them would be just as expensive in today’s dollars if someone tried to build them the same way. Advantages of a steam car would be less of certain pollutants (nitrogen oxides and unburned hydrocarbons) due to more complete combustion at atmospheric pressure and the ability to burn a wider variety of fuels.

Jay Leno did a video about his Doble. Google up “Jay Leno’s Garage” to find it.

7

I love seam, sight sound and smell. But are not efficient as diesel or gas turbines. In fact with the exception of nuc plants new stationary plants are not steam. And new ships are diesel or gas turbine. In fact most of the state maritime academies training ships are diesel.

8

[GASP!] Fossil fuel burner! I’ll stick to wood-burning vehicles.

9

IIRC, the Stanley Steamer was designed to burn kerosene as its primary fuel, so the oil industry would still have its hooks into steam vehicles.

10

The only one I can really think of is possible fuel flexibility - in theory, a steam engine designed to run on, say, wood chippings, could also run on wheat grain or pelleted corn stalks, with little or no modification.

But that’s a niche advantage at best.

11

It’s probably largely just tradition. We’ve done this topic many times on the SDMB.

Steam cars like the Doble had overcome all the early problems associated with early steam engines. There are a number of advantages and disadvantages of ICE’s vs ECE’s. ECE’s produce massive torque from stall and don’t need a gearbox. That offsets the fact that the engine would be heavier. You can split the boiler from the engine which permits better weight distribution. You can burn anything in an ECE.

Unfortunately early steamers came into the market as high end vehicles, which limited their market. Meanwhile other manufacturers bet on internal combustion and a much lower price point and that happens to be what took off.

12

The transient performance of an ICE is difficult to match: Stomp on the accelerator pedal, and you start accelerating NOW. Lift your foot, and fuel consumption immmediately falls to an idle rate (very low). Electric motors can match this behavior, but it’s difficult to do with steam engines without maintaining wasteful levels of steam production at idle. This would compromise the overall efficiency of a steam-powered vehicle, which is required to exhibit intense transient behavior (think of your commute through the city).

You sure about that? I was under the impression that large marine diesel engines had thermal efficiencies of around 50%; likewise, I have heard that large steam-turbine power plants had thermal efficiencies of around 50%. Am I wrong about that? Do these efficiencies scale differently when the size of the systems is reduced to something suitable for a road-going vehicle?

13

Plenty of modern inventors have tinkered with steam cars. The most famous being Bill Lear-his “Phoenix” steam car had performance equal to a comparable ICE car. But it was not economically viable, and he chose not to commercialize it. But I wonder…if gasoline gets more expensive, steam cars (bring powdered coal) might be viable again.

14

powdered/slurried coal would certainly provide heat, but the pollution problems from a fleet of coal-fired vehicles would be devastating. We’d have to fit cars with filters or electrostatic precipitators to collect the fly ash, and owners would have to clean them once in a while. You’d also have to collect/dispose of bottom ash. And the cars will still put out lots of mercury pollution.

15

This is the key point.

It’s also true of hydrogen as a “fuel” - H2 is NOT a fuel, it’s an energy conduit.

16

Steam plants with super critical once through boilers are in the 40%+ range.

17

No need for the quotes. When combined with O2 you have a traditional combustion reaction.

18

Wouldn’t a steam driven car also be very vulnerable to freezing?
Unless the stream train is in a closed system with antifreeze you would have to refill the water reservoir for the boiler quite often. Adding antifreeze would be a pain and clean water would be a freeze hazard.

19

Could you run one off the waste heat from a normal ICE car? Maybe use it in place of belts to run the alternator?

ETA: From california jobcase’s link: Steam Powered Tanks! Better put a lot of armor around that boiler!

20

Thanks for the correction. I tossed Watts name in because depending on what source you read, there is no shortage of who invented the Steam engine. The two most recognizable names to most of us are Watt and Fulton. But Fulton is the link to the modern steam engine as we think about one now. AFAIK, anyway. It was his invention which powered the paddle river boats, correct?

Anyway, sorry about moving Watt into the wrong century.
As for the other points to this discussion, the flexibility of the initial heat source is what I see as the major improvement, especially if it is a renewable resource, like wood. However, if diesel, natural gas, propane or some other form of fossil fuels is used to heat the water, I see everyone’s point.

I see a number of people have pointed to the lack of “bang for your buck” in terms of percentage of actual energy transfer. Can anyone tell us what those percentages are for say gasoline, diesel, wood, and any other fuel source that could be viable? Nuclear does not qualify as a viable fuel source for mass production autos, so we can skip that one.

So the current thinking here is that yes, the technology exists to create a viable steam engine to operate a car, but the price may be prohibitive (I don’t know if this is true, as building a million should certainly grant us some economies of scale over building one or two). As far as energy transfer, if we are using a cleaner fuel, and it is cheaper, would that even matter? I do t know what the percentage is for gasoline, but since I don’t have a choice right now, it could be 30% and we’d still be filling up out cars with it. I just don’t see this as a reason NOT to look at a steam powered engine.

Is anyone currently working on this (a large automaker), or is the entire industry focused on the electeic, battery powered vehicle?

Finally, is there another way to create steam without using a fossil fuel that would be feasible? For example, using a battery to heat the water to a boil, where the electricity in the battery is created by a large hydro plant, which pumps electricity to the outlet that ultimately charges the bsttery in the vehicle?

Is battery technology too far away to even be considered?