The British Steam Car Challenge 184
Van Cutter Romney sends us word of a British steam-powered car that will attempt to set a world record speed of 200 mph. The car, constructed on a tubular chassis, holds four boilers that deliver four megawatts of power, producing 300 bhp. The current record of 127.659 mph was established in 1906. More photos and specs at the Steam Car Club of Great Britain's site.
would I be wrong to say (Score:5, Funny)
4 MW Rock Lobster. (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah yes, the very important bulkhead between driver and 4MW of blue blazes and steam. Steam turbine powered craft do better on an ocean of cooling material or fixed next to a very large body of water. Launching one at 200 MPH on land is, well, crazy.
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And inefficient. With 4MW in and 300 bhp out, I make that out to be about 5.6% efficient. Considering that steam-powered gensets can hit 30-35% efficiency easily, and that fuel is getting increasingly rare, this reeks of bad idea.
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They're trying to break a speed record. I don't think they intend to start mass producing these as a solution to the world's environmental problems. The all time land speed record was set by a vehicle that got 0.04mpg using 4.8Gal/sec of fuel [wikipedia.org]. I can't find the actual efficienc
Re:Not really a steam car. (Score:5, Informative)
If you think a car needs to burn coal in order to be a "Steam Car", then you're seriously out of it. Conventional steam cars burn a variety of fuels, including gasoline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_car [wikipedia.org]
Steam engines are valued for their excellent power to weight ratios, general efficiency, and greater torque capacity. They also have fewer moving parts so maintenece schedules are quite good, as long as you don't leak your working fluid. (i.e. Water) Thankfully it's quite easy to replace lost water, and can be done as part of regular maintenece. (Think: Flushing and replacing water while changing oil.)
Or maybe you're trying to be funny. It's hard to tell.
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Or is it just that they could have built a more efficient one but wanted to go for the record above all else. But that doesn't make a great deal of sense. What's the normal efficiency you can expect from
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Ugh. That's terrible for a steam engine and suggests that they're exhausting the steam rather than recycling it in the engine. (Possibly for cooling purposes?) My only guess is that they were more worried about simplicity and torque than overall engine efficiency.
An engine that recycles its steam gets about 30-40% efficiency as a baseline. That can increase substantially (e.g. 60%+) by using combined cycles and/or the addition of waste heat recovery technologies. That's why
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Since the car is designed to just do the measured mile, it makes much more sense to let the steam escape, rather than recycle it.
The engine is simpler and lighter, and the vehicle loses mass as it goes, making it less difficult to accelerate.
Beef.
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Compared to what? Gas turbines have a much higher power to weight ratio as do internal combustion engines.
"general efficiency," again compared to what? The most efficient prime movers are turbo diesels. Take a look at some of the engines that they use in modern ships they bet the daylights out of a steam.
Diesels have replaced steam for rail roads and shipping because it is more efficient, has a higher power to weight ratio, and lower mata
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The heat source for a steam engine is pretty irrelevant, especially for the couple of minutes it takes for a speed record run. All you need is anything that burns and enough draft to make a big enough fire.
Some gas turbines have been powered by an air/coal-dust mixture. That approach is hopped up enough to run a jet engine, but is still "coal-powered". Would you disqualify that as w
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The first diesel engineered and built by Rudolf Diesel himself ran on coal as well. On an aerosol of fine suspended coal particles.
So if we follow your logic that should not be a Deseasel, sorry diesel engine, right? Somehow that does not ring right to me.
Further to this, the engine in this car is a turbine. A piston engine is not a match to a turbine of any description.
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The 1906 stanley Rocket (Score:2)
The 1906 Stanley brother's Rocket [conceptcarz.com] didn't burn coal. Very few steam cars did. The Stanley brothers used purified kerosene.
Today it would be called jet fuel, they just didn't have those kinds of jets in 1906. Heck the Wright brothers were still making bikes.
So the new vehicle is LPG, the old record holder was liquid fuel.
No coal.
Vaporware (Score:5, Funny)
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Hey, it works!
Just Wait Til The Steampunks Steampunk It! (Score:3, Funny)
Nevermind.
4MW? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:4MW? (Score:5, Funny)
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he car gets 300bhp (which equals about 220kW) out of those 4 MW.
Just about 5 percent efficiency (compared to well over 25 for gasoline/Diesel/LPG internal combustion cars) show quite well why steam engines are obsolete.
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Read wikipedia. Steam cars died primarily because they were high maintenance and required several minutes' time to build steam before they could move. Internal combustion engines had a lower risk of rust or damage from freezing and could be started and driven immediately. Inconvenience killed the steam car, not inefficiency.
In the UK.. (Score:2)
But these days in the UK you can drive a steam car without paying road tax, which for enthusiasts is a good thing.
The price of steam rollers and machinery is very high now due to popularity of the hobby, there's quite a few steam rallys around.
Re:4MW? (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you get electricity out of your nuclear power plant?
Re:4MW? (Score:4, Funny)
Photovoltaic cells
(The fusion reactor is a a safe distance of 93 million miles)
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Fission/i> (no fusion in power plants yet) only heats the water, which then goes to a massive steam engine that produces the electricity.
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This just might win the award for least efficient energy conversion. Of course, using LPG to fire boilers to run a steam engine is only considerably less efficient running an internal combustion engine on LPG and using *that* to drive the wheels
But - I guess the objective here isn't efficiency, it's setting a world record with a steam powered car.
Damned inefficient (Score:4, Informative)
Should be well over 4000 bhp, since one bhp is 746 watts. Looks like an amazing amount of conversion loss there.
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Re:Damned inefficient (Score:5, Informative)
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You know, Rankine cyle vs Brayton cycle....
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Maybe because steam engines arent turbines?
That's interesting since what we are discussing here is a specific entry in the British Steam Car Challenge who's "Motive power is from a two-stage steam turbine [which] drives a gear train with a 5:1 ratio for a wheel speed of 3000 RPM at 200 MPH". Now since you were responding another post which was a comment on the output of the aforementioned turbine powered car, and there was no reference to "steam engine" made until you last post, would you like to go an RFTA and then get back to us?
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Maybe because steam engines arent turbines?
Not true.
The Pennsylvania Railroad built a hugely powerful steam turbine locomotive [wikipedia.org], and there were others as well. 6900 HP is HUGE for a single steamer, but that much HP is usually only needed for freight trains, and PRR's monster was terribly inefficent below 40 MPH, and most freight trains spend a large portion of their time running slower than that. Also diesel-electrics were starting to come online, which are much more efficient at slower speeds (about 25 MPH is the most efficient speed for a diesel
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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The IC engine was developed as a replacement for steam powered piston locomotion and paddle wheel boating (think river boats on the Mississippi)...But if you think running a steam turbine in an automobile is far more efficient than an IC, you're mistaken
That's a much better comment that the previous one I was responding too. The car under discussion is powered by a two stage turbine engine, not a steam piston and there for pointing out the history or efficiency of the steam piston engine is moot. Regardless to any of that, my original statement still stands, that stating IC is more efficient that steam is a gross generalization, since you even back that up by stating you were comparing a subset of steam power converters to general Internal Combustion.
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Steam Cars Are a Tough Choice (Score:2, Informative)
A steam plant on the ground actually spins, in the US, at a constant 60rpms when all is said done, that's how we get power at 60hz. In fact, one of the little known things about the power grid is that demand on the grid can actually "pull" on the generators, turning them into motors or slowing them down. In extreme cases, it is possible to physically damage the generator. Tales of bent shafts due to fluctuations in demand are common.
It sh
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An old friend, an ex-Navy sparky (aircraft carrier radio engineer) told me that 60Hz made calculations a bit easier due to something about a 360 degree phase baseline. That may have something to do with the original choice of 60Hz. No clue as to why Australia/England chose 50Hz, possibly they preferred different calcs.
So, when I moved from the US to Australia (50Hz) I ended up with two notches in my hearing du
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That depends on how many poles the actual generator has.
Re:Damned inefficient (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in Ye Olden Tymes (TM), it wasn't at all clear how those newfangled horseless carriages were going to be powered. There were electric ones, steam ones, and gasoline powered ones. Steam was a mature technology and well-understood, electric was silent but had range issues, and gasoline was just plain dangerous. Steam was the initial leader. Henry Ford selected gasoline for his Model T, and the rest was history.
With fossil fuels, greenhouse gases and all that, it doesn't matter how efficient gasoline engines are, if what they run on is too expensive to be practical. Sure, steam engines have thermodynamic limits. But they also have very nice emissions qualities, and excellent torque characteristics. I'd be very interested in seeing what a modern steam car could do.
The gasoline engine car makers actually ran FUD ads about how dangerous electric cars were. They were so quiet that you couldn't hear them coming, and risked getting run over!
...laura
Re:Damned inefficient (Score:4, Insightful)
Sarcasm naturally (it is my specialty!).
If I had a sniper rifle, every last son of a bitch with a Harley modded for sound would have it shot out from under them as they rounded the corner to my house. I don't accept the "It's so other cars can hear me coming" excuse either. I have been riding motorcycles for decades, and the best way to do that is to drive like everyone around you is out to get you.
We have allowed our world to become polluted with more than just chemicals - we let the noise in too. I am willing to bet it has as much an impact on our long term health.
[RANT OFF]
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Sure noise has a strong negative influence on health, this is very well established and not controversial in the least.
Prolonged exposure to noise causes increase in aggression, elevated blood-pressure, increased risk of tinnitus (which again often leads to depression and/or anxiety), and increased risk of heart and circulatory problems, besides the obvious one of hearing-loss if the noise-levels are very high.
Noise in your rest-periods is the most damaging, and sudden unexpected noises are worse than c
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I know a woman named Mercedes who, last I checked, rode a Honda or something. Her response to "loud pipes save lives" is "why don't you just tape down the horn button then?"
Harleys are the biggest festering piece of shit bikes on the road. They have no torque and get super shit mileage compared to even the most powerful imports. It's too bad they d
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Re:Damned inefficient (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup. That advantage came with the development of kettering ignition. Prior to that most internal combustion engines used glow ignition, where you had to heat the external part of the ignition system with a blowtorch until it was hot enough. The same sort of system is still used in model airplane engines, but their electric glow plugs make them a lot easier to start.
The local electric car club [veva.bc.ca] have a 1912 Detroit [veva.bc.ca], albeit with modern lead-acid batteries replacing the original Edison cells. I've ridden in it; it feels like a telephone booth on wheels. But except for a slight whirr from the driveline, it's silent. These were the cars that made people like Henry Ford nervous.
...laura
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Mr. Daimler and Mr. Benz are probably spinning in their graves at higher rpms than the engines in their cars ever did.
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Re:Damned inefficient (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead, you extract as much energy as you can, while keeping the steam hot enough at the final turbine outlet pressure to prevent the phase change. In fact, most of the energy put into the steam (in some cases 75%) is removed AFTER the steam goes through the turbine, by way of the condensers.
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First, on a mile long track (with maybe ten more miles to "spool up") even such a big 4MW won't use so much fuel, and so much water. As such, the cost (in mass penalties and aerodynamics of the car due to radiators) of a condensing component was ruled too great (the Doble car had such systems in the 1920s, and got 14 miles per gallon of fuel oil, for a car weighing 5500lbs).
Second, a two stage steam tur
steam car dragster (Score:3, Informative)
Pointless (Score:3, Insightful)
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We are now reaching the end of the development cycle and are ready to release this new, high-speed steam racer to the public.
This will surely replace all of our current, more efficient automobiles.
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It's my understanding that steam cars died because they were inconvenient. Parts rusted, water froze and ruptured areas, and worst of all each time you wanted to use it, it had to spend a few minutes building steam.
Is it possible that technological advances in the past 80 years would let us overcome some or all of those problems, and also improve the efficiency?
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The designers of naval powerplants would be surprised to learn this - as they were making performance and efficiency gains right up until (fossil fuel combustion) steam went out of fashion for new builds... Within the last twenty years. Word on the street is that guys over on the nuclear side of the house are still making a few improvements to the steam side of the cycle even today.
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Strange Definition of Alternative Fuels (Score:5, Funny)
Very curious.
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A conspicuous absence from the specs is a weight figure. It makes extensive use of aluminum and carbon composites, but it also carries 4 boilers, a turbine, and nitrogen-charged water tanks. I'm really curious how that balances out. If it goes 200+MPH but weighs 5000lbs then I'm not particularl
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Yeah! (Score:2, Insightful)
inefficient... (Score:2)
My point is, are all steam driven turbines this inefficient? And if so, wouldn't increasing the efficienc
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Both. Some plants drive turbines directly. This is the case with plants that supplement base power generation during peaks. They start very rapidly to match demand and range in size from small emergency units to turbines the size of a small house. Others are indirect. In some cases gas is used in the same plant with coal. There are a wide variety of configurations for turning fossil fuels into electricity and gas (LPG, NG, etc.) is very flexible.
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If you put 9 or 10 stages in series, boost the diameter, and lower the ideal blade speed, they get much more efficient. Also, there are special low-pressure turbine designs that you can put on after the high-pressure turbines. Then you can add reheat stages, where you take out the no longer superheated, but still pretty high pressure steam, resuperheat it, then put back into the same or another turbine.
The turbine(s) now fill a building, or th
No megawatts in TFA (Score:2)
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"This is the Inspiration, the British steam powered car that is attempting to take the British and World land speed records (for steam vehicles). The car is constructed on a tubular steel chassis and holds four boilers which output a massive four megawatts."
Now, perhaps there was a edit adding that link,
but there it is.
1906 speed more impressive. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, from TFA, the accepted speed was 121.57mph over one kilometer.
Regardless, I am very, very impressed by the above.
With the advent of better machining, lighter materials, and vastly better bearing and bushing technology etc of today, this makes the 1906 record all the more incredible.
I am going to make a fairly spectacular statement. This small team, in 1906, was as clever as the 14 person combined team that is doing the current days project.
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There's nothing like an infusion of brain power and capital for getting a problem solved, I guess. Hopefully, we'll see similar advances in electric vehicle technology over the next several years, now that we're near global peak oil production.
Team credentials / engineering. (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the pictures [steamcar.net] on another page [steamcar.net] shows the water becoming superheated steam inside one of the boilers - seemingly in the last of the four boilers. Though much depends on the exact layout of the tubes in their boiler, normally superheaters are behind a wall of other tubes. It is very easy to overheat a superheater - leading to tube failure.
But most interestingly - there is no steam seperator between the water tubes and the superheater. This will make it easier (trivial in fact) for a slug of water to reach the turbine if things go pear shaped.
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Seriously, boiler regs in the UK are very strict, even for vehicles that will get nowhere near a public road. I'm sure that the health-and -safety police will have been all over it.
where'd the 4 megawatts go? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like to register a complaint.... (Score:4, Funny)
Of course I understand they are trying to break records and aerodynamics is a factor, but surely a few pipes, wrought iron and wood paneling wouldn't hurt too much? Fast it may be, but desirable? Nay sir, I fear this contraption is not for gentlemen.
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Why is this a web page? Why not some French-made turn of the century poster?
Coolest thing about steam cars (Score:3, Interesting)
What'd that for? (Score:2)
I fear that steam technology is now a tittle bit out of the industry focus.
British? Steam? (Score:2)
Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. Engage.
Any record is a respectable effort. (Score:2)
It's not exactly that easy. In order to claim a British record, they'll have to undergo all sorts of safety checks, do the runs under recorded conditions in the presence of an official timer, probably turn the car round and do another run the other way. It's not as simple as just claiming a record.
Unfortunately, it's so much of a faff that I doubt they'll bother. Similarly, the JCB Dieselmax [wikipedia.org] broke the British diesel spe
Re:Steam isn't an energy source (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA's Seventh Sentence:
Thank you, come again.
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TYVM.
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Just teasing. You are correct, of course.
MP Power. (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Steam isn't an energy source (Score:5, Funny)
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Copyright extension laws will look after them, of course.
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Thus the universe is fated to turn into a vast pile of iron (ignoring black holes, photons, proton decay, etc etc).
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The Great Race [1965] [imdb.com] I know, I know. It dates you a little to remember quotes from old movies. But what a cast: Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Peter Falk...
The 1908 New York To Paris race was grand adventure in its own right:
SOMETHING HAD changed during the running: Timid people had come to realize that a car itself was a road, in dreams, and that it might lead anywhere at all. The Longest Race [americanheritage.com]
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