Yeah, that’s the beauty of a steam powered car, there’s no torque curve, you get 100% of the engine’s torque at all times.
Having power on every stroke also means you can get away with having only one or two cylinders in addition to the hefty torque. That does a lot to lessen the complexity and weight.
Fuel economy calculations for a steamer are being attempted in this thread.
Kinda cool to see this thread is still alive.
I was at a swap meet this weekend and saw home made a steam engine like those I mentioned
earlier in this thread for sale.
I got busy and never priced the engine.
It was a upright version and looked to be a made of about 3 inch pipe ,2 pieces both about 2 feet long.
I’m in one of the steam capitols of the nation,Mt Pleasant Iowa.
Our Old Threshers reunion is a real celebration of steam.
Maybe the engine will show up here again.
Leno’s piece about his Doble is now on-line and it makes for some rather interesting reading.
It would be interesting to hear more from Leno about what the car will do once the engine is repaired.
Perhaps fuel consumption and amount of water needed to drive a certain distance.
It also appears that steam-powered boats might be making a comeback.
A steam boat has a distinct advantage over a steam car in that it has a ready supply of water and needs no condenser.
Actually, you don’t want to use river/sea water in your boiler. All kinds of crap will get sucked in there and either clog up your boiler or leave deposits (mineral deposits), which impact the efficiency of your boiler.
Read something last night which says that JPL’s been following up on it, but the only info I can find on their site, relates to spacecraft uses of the stirling.
Did Ford come up with a solution to the slow responsiveness of the stirling engine?
Here’s a cite which gives an idea of how crappy the performance of an ICE is. A Monkey With a Gun was kind enough to provide this cite, along with a couple of others. The others, however, are from companies with a strong interest in producing fuel cells, whereas the one I’ve posted above is one from Ford, so could probably be considered to be less biased than the others. (It does agree with them, however.)
And Sock Munkey, I’ve no idea if Ford managed to come up with a solution or not, but I doubt it. There are, apparently, some rather big names researching them, including Boeing (warning PDF!)
>> Here’s a cite which gives an idea of how crappy the performance of an ICE is
Except the link says nothing of the sort and nowhere does it support your assertion that “40% of power is lost in the transmission” which, I insist, is preposterous. I have figures for my boat’s gearbox transmission and the losses are under 2% and I can guarantee that any manual transmission in a car would not be much higher, specially in direct drive where it is probably a fraction of a percent as there are no gears involved. The notion that a car’s transmission loses 40% of the power is just ludicrous. If that was the case the transmission would need a very efficient refrigeration system or it would get red hot. are you telling me that a car with a motor putting out 150 HP at the clutch is losing 60 HP in the transmission and only delivering 90 HP to the wheels? Saying things like that just shows you have not the slightest idea of what you are talking about. It is pure nonsense. You keep talking generics and you are incapable of supplying any numbers which makes this a waste of time. These things are measured in numbers.
Quote sailor
I have figures for my boat’s gearbox transmission and the losses are under 2% and I can guarantee that any manual transmission in a car would not be much higher, specially in direct drive
Sailor please read the topic.
Your boat has no ground friction to overcome.
that propellor cannot be compared to the rest of an automobile drivetrain.
I’m sure there are numbers that will help you understand if you will just look for them.
Ps an automatic transmission has a cooling system.
Your boat wouldn’t use water as a transmission coolant would it?
Let me clarify something. Internal combustion engines typically reach a thermal efficiency of 25%. This is the engine itself. It is not the drivetrain, transmission, or wheel friction, but just the engine. It does not matter what that engine is hooked up to - boat, plane, car, whatever. The figure represents the potential chemical energy converted to kinetic energy. “the efiiciency of the burn” so to speak. It is a property of the engine alone and whatever the thing is mounted in is irrelevant. What ya’ll seem to be talking about with the discussion of transmissions etc would be mechanical efficiency, ie. the amount of kinetic energy lost due to friction.
I’ve tried to find information regarding the thermal efficiency of steam engines, but all I’ve found is statements like “the thermal efficiency of steam power is notoriously hard to measure”. Various claims range all the way from 8% to 60%. I’ll let you know if I find something definitave.
Allright, I found something which might work as a cite for thermal efficiency in steam engines. The following is a test question form a mechanical engineering course at the University of Louiseville.
So this hypothetical steam engine would have a thermal efficiency of 35.3 %, which would be better than the 25% most internal combustion engines exhibit.
Of course, this does not address how much of the kinetic energy is lost when translating the kinetic energy into work.
To me, the biggest drawback of a steam powered vehicle has little to do with the thermal efficiency of different types of engines, but rather something that was addressed on the first page of this thread. Even though a steam engine is inherently more efficient, the water required for the boiler is going to be the biggest problem when using it in a moving vehicle. The weight was addressed but the bulk may be an even bigger problem because that boiler is going to need to be bigger than the fuel tank. Steam engines use a lot of water and steam vehicles have to carry and store all that extra liquid.
A Monkey With a Gun, as I posted earlier in this thread, diesels have thermal efficiencies quite higher than 25 % and approaching 38 - 40%
justwannano, I am not going to waste more time on this. You maintain that a car transmission has losses of 40% which is ridiculous and you don’t offer any support.
You just dismiss all cites presented to you and you do not provide any of your own. You keep up your handwaving and refuse to deal with verifiable numbers. Not to mention that the transmission of a steam car might have lower losses but they are not going to be zero. The losses at the tires are going to be the same. As I said earlier: engineers deal with numbers, these things are measured with numbers and if you cannot quantify them you are wasting your time. You are dreaming with snake oil.
You fail to understand the most basic concepts:
Just that is enough to disqualify you. A boat has to overcome water friction which is hundreds of times higher plus, the efficiency of a propeller is only a fraction of the efficiency of a wheel. And all that is absolutely irrelevant because you can compare the efficiency of one motor to another motor regardless of where they are installed. Motors are tested in the lab and their efficiencies measured. Transmissions are tested in the lab and their efficiencies measured. But you are immune from these things. As you proved earlier in this thread you do not even understand the units of measurement. It’s pathetic. I don’t even know why I returned to this thread. We have gone over all this in the preceding pages and this is just a rehash. You did not convince Anthracite and you have not convince me either. My bet is that you are whistling in the dark and not that you are a misunderstood genius. Just my opinion. As I said before, I have made my case and the readers can make up their own minds.
Allrighty then. (Coincidentally, I saw a figure pegging some diesels at 50%, but that’s irrelevant to what I was saying.) I only posted here because I feared that my numbers cited by tuckerfan were being used incorrectly as they were based on thermal efficiency rather than mechanical.
Tuckerfan, I hope you can get the steam car you want up and running, but I have to back up sailor on this. There is no way in hell a modern transmission is going to lose 40% of the kinetic energy going into it. That represents a lot of heat and any ME student would fail if they designed something like that. Chemical potential energy to kinetic energy is one thing, but a 40% loss from kinetic to kinetic would be ridiculous. Or at least indicative of one serious need for a lube job.
I suppose I should add that diesels are technically internal combustion engines, but when I speak of internal combustion I’m talking about your standard four stroke rather than a diesel.
I haven’t read this entire thread, but it occurs to me that the impopularity of diesels in cars may hold parrallels to why we don’t use steam power in cars. Diesels and steam engines typically produce higher torque, but less horsepower than your typical four stroke. That’s why we use the things in trains and large boats and four strokes in cars and motorcycles. (it’s an rpm thing - steam and diesels turn slower than four strokes)
Incidentally, the reason why steam locomotives don’t have gears is that that big ass steam engine produces so much torque it doesn’t need 'em - it’s got torque to spare.
Quote sailor
justwannano, I am not going to waste more time on this. You maintain that a car transmission has losses of 40% which is ridiculous and you don’t offer any support.
Site
Nuff said.
Sailor if you would just listen to what you have said you wouldn’t be nearly so critical of others. You’ve brought up the subject of transmissions or decided to argue about it and promptly dismissed the subject as inconsiquential(sp).This is an old sailor trick to confuse the issue. Or maybe just likes to read his own words.