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Steam Powered Underwater Jet Engine
Bob Vila's Hammer writes "An Australian engineer, Alan Burns invented a very efficient underwater steam powered jet engine. "Steam that is produced from a petrol or gasoline fueled boiler emerges at high speed from a rearward-facing ring-shaped nozzle into a cone-shaped chamber. Shock waves created as the steam condenses are focused by the chamber to blast water out of the back. Besides powering watercraft pretty efficiently, it can also be used as an extremely robust pump. Pretty Cool."
The engine
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This makes me want to play AquaNox all the more! How else to make a high-powered combat submarine? A little supercavitating external hull with this propulsion and we're ready to rock and roll.
This is sure to stir the pot in the Australian defence sector. Let's take a stab at those Colin's class submarines (named in dedication to Colin Powell) again see if installing one of these will make them quieter.
One thing I'm curious about is why they can only be scaled to 300 horsepower... Seems like if a 20 cm one can put out 30 HP, a big one could put out a lot more. It also might be fun to install a 20 cm one into a ketchup dispenser at McDonald's or something. And also, will it shoot potatos?
It is also robust, and can easily cope if seaweed or rope are drawn into the inlet. What about a whale?
Good old oz!
We have some of the best scientists in the world but they all bugger off overseas because of the lack of funding and support for science over here. Science is cool dammit!
Todman shoved large quantities of lard and cardboard into the inlet without the pump suffering any ill effects.
COWBOYNEAL NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
The water-jet engine was invented by a New Zealander some years ago. The difference with this thing is it uses compressed steam rather than the usual propellar
Forget submarines, I'm attaching this to my SCUBA equipment!!!
This is something that would really be great in areas where there are lots of scuba divers or manatees. I have seen the results of flesh being chewed up by prop blades. Not pretty.
I remember reading in a super-cavtation article about underwater engines like that - basically "underwater jet-engines" - I mean, of course it's not quite true, it operates on different principles, but the functionality is pretty similar.
;-)
btw, super cavtation is where you make the nose of your _insert_vessel_here_ blunt but it goes so fast that the vapor pressure drops until the vessel (usually a torpedo / bullet / whatever) would be in an airbubble (technically steam bubble! - though there are dissolved air that boils into the bubble too) that it creates itself (and maintains) and hence has no liquid drag for the rest of the vessel (as in, besides the blunt nose).
The engine I read about was actually reacting seawater directly with aluminum shavings and expelling hot steam (or something like that). I am pretty sure there were something else but I can't remember what it was (I don't think it was iron-rust, though, for all of you thinking of thermite). Anyway - neat stuff; should change underwater combat a whole lot.
should get myself one of those to go war(ship) driving
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Sounds to me like it's full of hot air.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
Now we have explanation why the King was by the toilet. The craps, humidity, the right shape of his...
How do you power the boiler underwater? Carrying oxygen tanks around will not work.
Sure, me too...I prefer steamed flesh any day, over chopped-by-prop mammals, who doesnt't?
I think I might try to build one for my 12' aluminum boat :)
I wonder how easily I can make this in my school's machine shop. Probably with a few days of free time and a $30 of stock, I can make myself a motor that won't hurt the mutant fish in the Hudson River.
Thanks for giving me something to do in my free time!
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
What's being served on this underwater flight, freshly-steamed halibut?
WhatEVA
I could read it before it got Slashdotted.
Pump it up!!
(Note, it can also be used as a pump)
From the article: With no moving internal parts, and no propeller, the engine should be cheap to manufacture.
I especially like the part about no moving parts... Moving parts are good to avoid in all cases, when possible... They wear and need replacement. Nice one!
.: Max Romantschuk
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I highly doubt this would become mainstream in any smaller craft. The design would require revamping most current hull designs to accomodate an intake for better waterflow to the motor. This would take up valuable space. I dont know how many /.ers are serious about fishing, but I like having as much space in my boat as possible. Also, how big is the motor? It might be far too cumbersome to fit in anything less than a 20 foot boat. How much does it weigh? For all I know it could sink a jetski, an area where this could apply.
It is estimated that a gazillion fish die every day from cold. This new jet engine provides a wonderful means of transportation and enriches the lives of nearby sea food.
After the success of this steam engine, rumour has it Australian scientists will soon release specs of their next Big Thing.
Bruce Crikey, an Australian researcher was quoted as saying "Our new Internal Combustion Engine will soon be in beta, and in trials is getting up to six miles per gallon of gasoline"
and in only 15 years we'll be seeing one power some sort of vehicle on Junkyard Wars / Scrapheap Challenge...
One step closer to magneto-hydrodynamic propulsion...
Another 10 years off...
That could be scary. Imagine that thing in your hot tub.
Tim: Ahhhhh... This is great, all we need now is a bit more power. [Grunt] I'll just set it to 500 knots.
*click*
*foom*
Jill: Gargle gargle gargle
Tim: Jill? What are you doing? You know, going underwater in the hot tub isn't good for your ears. Are you listening?
I guess that's a bit off topic... Meh...
"...shockwaves..." This will be damn noisy for those living under water... Noise pollution will increase to the level that those mammals will be no more able use there sonar capabilities
From more to less likely:
(1) Efficiency could peak at 300HP designs - it may be that any larger becomes horribly inefficient. Since it relies on squeezing compressed air and steam into an open tube, there might be a point at which there simply is to much room for the reaction to take place in given an incoming water velocity.
(2) The design may not be completed - possible design flaws may limit this versions' abilities to scale up.
(3) They may simply not know how big it can scale if their simulator isn't powerful enough to run a detailed simulation of a larger engine.
I doubt that the Navy will use these for their submarines. Sending shock waves out the back of submarines is hardly QUIET!
Shouldn't Roy Scheider be building this ship about now?
It's puppy love New robotic dog growing in popularity.
An eye on bioterror CDC monitoring system will serve as early warning.
Film at 11
What???? Still no repeats??? No bad grammar or poor spelling? No tossed assumptions? How can that be?
...aren't they the same thing?
I am wondering how you get this engine started? It seems to need water flowing through it to get the bubbles into the "combustion" chamber. If the the ship it is attached to is not moving, how will these bubbles get back to start the process.
I guess the bubbles improve efficiency, but by how much? Does it produce enough power without the bubbles to get going?
Eagles soar, but wease^H^H^H^H^Hwhales don't get sucked into jet engines?
live(free) || die;
Not intake widths.
I would also speculate that the intake is larger then the outtake.
Some one is going to complain about thermal pollution and its effects. Something about injecting steam (or water that is almost as hot as steam) into a body of water just might piss them off......then again, practically anything that is useful does.
to completely pulverize organic matter! You have the Tornado in a can and now a super powered steam engine! From the article...
;-)
"It doesn't simply mix -- it macerates," says Todman.
One question... What if they run into a school of tuna?
Your actions in life will determine your children's future.
Come on, that has to be a joke.
Well, I'm sure somone else has noted this : a nuclear energy source like on a warship would be perfect for supplying the steam. By venting the secondary steam from the boilers directly into the water like this you could easily get ten times the power with the same size engine (though you'd need more higher output reactors) I am sure an engine like this would be EXTREMELY noisy, so the warship would have a set of these steam jets it could fire up when it needs to move somewhere fast, and some quieter source when submarines are a worry. Imagine an aircraft carrier and a few destroyer escorts with flank speeds in excess of 70 knots (it would have to have hydrofoils as well, because otherwise the hull speed would be to limiting. Yes I'm aware it might be decades before a carrier this sexy is built, if ever). Sure it would be vulnerable to torpedoes, but the idea is it could be a MUCH more threatening weapon with this kind of speed. It could patrol a larger area, escape from danger, and have a certain intimidation factor when its located somewhere since it could arrive suddenly, launch a strike force, and depart before the enemy was aware.
As long as were speculating, imagine an even more effective weapon, a ship loaded full of missiles and rocket launched drone strike aircraft (so no human pilots risked. Yes I'm aware that such aircraft might be say, half as effective as human piloted planes but if they cost 1/4 as much to build its a MUCH more effective weapon. It could very well be cheaper to turn out somewhat dumb long range missiles and semi-reusable drones by the thousands, with no additional pilot training needed. The "pilots" would be a group of technicians behind consoles far from the battle, with embedded computing in the planes doing most of the flying, the human being just to pull the trigger. Without all the risks of training pilots and maintaining aircraft (the planes would be stored in sealed containers until needed, with a small set used for training) and the fact that these planes don't need nearly the quality control in manufacturing (if you lose 10% of them in a mission due to shoddy construction but they cost half as much or less to build its definitely worth the trade off) you'd have a better solution than at the present.
Why isn't this done already? Well, in the 1970s and earlier where most of the present airplanes were designed, communications technology and computers were not good enough or reliable enough. Today, most of the money is spent on operations and on a couple of new aircraft. Also, the current leadership is made up of pilots, who don't want to be replaced by scrawny pasty faced techs sitting at control stations. Finally, there's a current bandwidth problem : military communication satalleits don't have the capacity for the hundreds or thousands of video links needed.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2003-01-28-cdc -bioterror_x.htm CDC mointoring system will serve early waning.
This guy needs this. Some cool shit is on the way...
A new zelander invented the concept of pumping water at very high speeds in a narrow jet using an impellar. Also the directional control tends to be fairly unique.
This isn't the same as this system. This engine functions much more like a jet engine as used on aircraft. (liquid goes in intake, thermal reaction takes place, liquid comes out of exhaust at high speed.)
So don't try to claim it's already been invented, by capitilising and the multiple uses of "jet".
The drive was invented by Australian engineer Alan Burns and developed in Britain by engineers at Pursuit Dynamics in Royston, Hertfordshire. Last week, New Scientist witnessed a version just 20 centimetres long develop around 30 horsepower (22 kilowatts) in a test tank, enough to power a speedboat. But the company says it can be scaled up to about 300 horsepower.
Wouldnt that kind of be painful?
The exit exhaust is colored blue??
Am I missing something here, I mean last thing i wanna do is piss off some sea creatures and leave a heat trail that they could track me with, maybe i'm just paranoid but there are some big fish out there.
"It doesn't simply mix -- it macerates," says Todman."
good way to get rid of those dead bodies you have lying around
It's a pity that the stall speed of most modern fighter aircraft is around 150 knots. Imagine how easy carrier landings would be if you and the carrier could head into the wind and the carrier would match speed with the fighter!
Underwater Jet wreaking underwater havoc?
TechnologyPosted by michael on Wednesday
from the please-thinkof-the-dolphins dept.
Bob Vila's Hammer writes "An evil Australian engineer, Alan Burns invented a very cruel underwater steam powered fish-killer/ocean polluter. "Steam that is produced from a petrol or gasoline fueled boiler emerges at high speed from a rearward-facing ring-shaped nozzle into a cone-shaped chamber. Shock waves created as the steam condenses are focused by the chamber to blast water out of the back, instantly killing hoards of hapless sea-life". Looks like another win for big oil and corporate America. Thanks George W.
I love the way technological evolution works:
Diesel Powered -> Nuclear Powered -> Wood-fired subs!
I could use this...always wanted a PWC (personal water craft for you non-educated types) that could do 150+ mph.
be sure the oceans are gonna warm up even further..why cant we just train those humongous whales to take us across the oceans? High time we tried that first!
That's it, I'm outta here...
... jet engines vs. propellors did for 'planes, we got a winner. But if i remember rightly (no expert here, don't hurt me), the advantages to aircraft are higher power to weight ratio and lower maintanance costs. Only one of these (the latter) seems to be really relevant in the water :( Any thoughts?
BTW when checking this with google, look at the first link i got: http://www.dkgroup.dk/hydro2.html - the "Hydro Air Drive", yet another related idea.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
Or so they'll tell you. :o)
It can be hard sometime to say petrol and petrol are the same thing. Gasoline is an American thing, others generally call it petrol, however the American standard of gasoline is different to other countries' petrol. Since petrol/gasoline/diesel are all distilled from oil. It is possible to argue either way.
EG: some countries idea of petrol, would be called light oil (a type of diesel) in other, etc.
If the dolphins complain, then we can just give them complimentary underwater-jet-packs. Then, on romantic moonlit nights, passengers on cruise ships can watch the playful dolphins jump over the boat.
heheheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ROFL
/. Seems to me it takes more cycles to track and report back on a speedy submittal than it does to just simply take it in...what a load of admin bs.
"...a fair chance at posting a comment"
Heaven forbid I and I alone should task the capacity of the great and powerful
Don't you think details are secret because this is just a hoax? All that "focused shock waves"?
I wonder how small an effective boiler can be made. Gives new meaning to the idea of letting the engine warm up. People have been working with steam power for a very long time, but new materials for the steam generation part could perhaps give this invention an incredible array of applications.wow.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
This sounds amazing:
* Cheap to produce
* Incredibly robust (no moving parts)
* Efficient (although they don't give any numbers)
* Safe(r) for the environment
* Multiple uses (pumps)
* Scales well in a small package
Without seeing any numbers, it sounds like it beats the pants off of outboard engines. My 70HP Evinrude has been rebuilt twice because of sand-suckage, and standard jet impellers are too inneficient.
So what's the catch? I want to see some real numbers. If there's no catch, then I hope and think this thing will revolutionize the small-craft market.
(without the widely abused ./ effect)
Halla: The future is analog
By Michael Kanellos Special to ZDNet January 29, 2003, 8:04 AM PT
When National Semiconductor decided to challenge Intel and Advanced Micro Devices in the market for low-end microprocessors in 1997, CEO Brian Halla teased a group of skeptical analysts, saying they probably thought he had been sprinkling testosterone on his corn flakes.
And even though National's acquisition of Cyrix turned out to be a bad bet, Halla recovered from the blunder and returned the company to its roots in the analog chip business.
Analog chips capture sound, light, temperature and other real-world data and convert it for electronic equipment. Even though the analog business has been hurt during a prolonged industry slowdown, Halla expects a turnaround by the late spring. Wishful thinking? Perhaps, but he believes the revival will be triggered by a technological transformation in which analog chips become the workhorse component in the downloading of images and graphics from the Internet as well as for wireless transmissions of data signals.
In the process, Halla expects analog chips will displace the zeros and ones that have formed the heart of the binary language used in personal computing for most of the last couple of decades.
"The only things on the face of the planet that use zeros and ones are microprocessors and digital signal processors," he says. It's fine to do zeros and ones for spreadsheets and that's why the PC uses the least amount of analog. But we're not doing spreadsheets anymore.
Halla talked about the future of analog technology and the upcoming changes in computer chip manufacturing.
Q: National spends the bulk of its efforts on analog chips. You constantly hear that analog design is a black art. Why? There aren't a ton of analog companies. A: Most universities switched from an analog discipline to digital, because digital was (considered) magic. At the same time, you had Mentor Graphics, Synopysis and Cadence (which all make semiconductor design tools) focus completely on digital design. Now what happened is that analog has become the emerging industry and a few universities, like Georgia Tech, Washington, Stanford and Berkeley, recognize the value of analog...and we get most of their Ph.D.s.
Will the black art aspect change as analog grows in importance? The analog tool industry has to catch up. Even when they do, however, analog is still a real tough science. One of our guys, Larry Lewicki, says 'Brian, I could design an (analog to digital converter) at 30MHz. If you asked me to take it to 60MHz, it would take me one week. If you asked anyone else and gave them the documentation it would take them at least a year.' That's the difference. You just know how to do it.
What's driving consumption? The only things on the face of the planet that use zeros and ones are microprocessors and digital signal processors (which manage digital signals in cell phones). Even a digital satellite signal rides on an analog carrier. You can't send a zero or a one. It doesn't have any meaning out there. It's fine to do zeros and ones for spreadsheets, and that's why the PC uses the least amount of analog. But we're not doing spreadsheets anymore. We're doing digital photography. We're downloading images and graphics from the Internet, and we're doing more and more stuff wirelessly. All of that is analog.
What are some of the coming analog ideas for wireless? At Berkeley they are looking at a 10 gigabit-per-second radio with an onboard variable length inductor that can change its personality. You walk into the red carpet room at the airport and your PDA or your personal computer starts sniffing the air to see if there is a 2G, or a 2.5G, or 802.11b network. It covers the spectrum and it picks the cheapest path to the IP backbone and configures itself to be that radio. Let's say you're doing something that's voice intensive. It will still keep sniffing to see if another protocol gets introduced that is even cheaper.
What other projects is National working on? We have this vision that your smart card will have biometric information. It will have your bank account and your passport and your medical data--but only your thumbprint can activate it. So you shove it into a slot and it says, 'Yeah, this guy's passport is real. Or 'yeah, this guy's got the bank account to back this up.' Or maybe you just load it up with $50,000 and burn it off over time. But if you ever lose it, (the card) doesn't have your thumbprint so it's useless. We're working with a particular technology where you don't leave your thumbprint; you rub it. We've been working on that for around six months.
Chip prices aren't extremely high for most analog products, though. The (average selling prices) are low, but the margins are high. We're talking about chips where you can get 9,000 die per wafer. If you get 9,000 good die, 50 cents looks like a pretty good ASP. We have one chip were you can get 39,000 die per wafer. We had to invent our own saw to scribe it.
Once you've got that kind of technology and get pretty good yields, every fab can produce perfect wafers. We created this technology called chip scale packaging, where you epoxy the whole wafer, then saw it and throw away any chips that don't yield after packaging because you are so confident in your (quality).
Like nearly every other manufacturer in the world, National is rapidly moving into China. Why now? One of the reasons we decided to build a test and assembly plant in China is that we ran out of capacity in our test and assembly plant in Malacca, Malaysia. Forty-eight percent of our business came out of Asia this past quarter. It used to be 10 percent. Over half of Taiwanese manufacturing has moved to China.
I have a prediction that reunification will happen sooner than anyone expects it to and it will be driven by Taiwan. There are a million Taiwanese expatriates in China. Look at Foxconn (a Taiwanese-based contract manufacturer). They have 70,000 employees. They are headquartered in Taipei. They have only 150 employees in Taipei.
National has tried to promote Internet appliances for years, without much success. Why don't these sell well? The problem is the marketing. For 24 years, we've been told by Intel that the only thing that matters is megahertz. And so you have salesmen working at Fry's and Good Guys who can only talk about how many gigahertz a box has. So everybody said, 'Why should I pay more for something that is the subset of the PC?'
But is there really a market for something like that? We have seven PCs per 10 houses in the U.S. That doesn't mean 70 percent of homes have a PC. We're probably still at the point where 45 percent of the families in the U.S. don't have a PC.
I've given my parents at least four ThinkPads and one Dell. I'm trying to get them up and running so I can send them e-mails and pictures and stuff. My mother's last feedback was that she was depressed and despondent because she feels like she's stupid. She cannot look at attachments I sent her. She can't get stuff on the Internet.
With the bill for semiconductor fabrication facilities to process chips from wafers with 300 millimeter diameters running close to $3 billion, how does a company like National stay competitive? It's becoming almost impossible for the smaller semiconductor manufacturers, with smaller being anything less than an Intel, or a Texas Instruments or an NEC to afford these 300-millimeter fabs on your own nickel. The good news is that not all of us compete. For example, National and LSI don't compete in anything, so what you are going to see are more and more partnerships on these 300-millimeter fabs.
We have a partnership with TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.) They do the advanced process technology and we use their fabs for the prototyping and the early volume.
When did National begin to outsource manufacturing to foundries? On 0.5 micron (in the mid-1990s), I had an epiphany. My process technology guy at the time told me, 'You know, from this point on, semiconductor guys aren't going to really add that much value to the process (manufacturing) technology roadmap. It's the equipment suppliers that determine the process technology roadmap.' If you think about it, we all buy commercially available off the shelf sputterers, steppers, etchers and it is really the equipment suppliers that determine what that process looks like. In reality, the drivers of process technology roadmaps are the Applied Materialses, the Nikons and Canons. When it came to copper, only IBM had to invent their copper-sputtering machine. The rest of us could buy it off the shelf. The interesting thing is that we all have to recognize that the equipment suppliers play a more and more important role in the process technology roadmap.
Foundries, though, often suffer from a reputation for not being on the cutting edge. Is that the case? Since TSMC is now one of the largest consumers of capital equipment in the semiconductor industry, the equipment suppliers are going to listen to them more and more. It is a myth that TSMC is behind the rest of the industry. They are as state of the art as anyone.
I doubt this engine will be loud as those military sonar tests - 100+dBs and more.
I'm pretty sure those sonar tests are the reason for those beached whales. If the only way to avoid your ears and brains being blasted to pulp is to get out of the water, you do it, whether you weigh 20 tons or not.
I read it as 'steak-powered' :D
Do the bubbles make it more efficient because they seed the sockwaves or is there something more elegant at work?
The submitter, Bob Vila's Hammer, claims "Pretty Cool".
Huh? Hehe, you don't fool me. I know for sure steam engines are hot.
From the article:
:-)
"The steam drive can also function as an extremely robust pump. It can shift water, sewage or oil, and in a demonstration for New Scientist, Todman shoved large quantities of lard and cardboard into the inlet without the pump suffering any ill effects."
So the real question is when will someone make one big enough to become the first under water roller coaster?
Furthermore:
"It doesn't simply mix -- it macerates," says Todman".
Hmmm... macerates... "to soften and cause to disintegrate as a result"... oh well... just don't turn it up all the way
Water emerging from the engine is no more than 3 or 4 C warmer than the water it draws in, so there is no danger of scalding.
:
It always amazes me to see how technoscientists can draw conclusion so fast as far as it goes in their direction. A difference of 3 or 4 degrees is ENORMOUS ! It can totaly change an ecosystem or current and exchange mode localy.
The boats usualy cruise in the same places
- Big commercial boats have to cruise in well defined corridors when they comme along the coast
- Personnal jetspeed motorcycles (and such) usualy cruise from 0 to 300 meters on the coast
- What about small closed gulfs seeing their nautic population multiplied by 3 or more during the summer.
When you think that coral is dying in some places in the world because the global temperature raised by about 0.5 C or because such or such current has changed is way, I can let you immagine what a disaster on a local level could cause a 3 to 4 C increase !!!
Now, I am not saying that 3 C différence out of the engine will make such a difference on the global level. But saying that such a difference will not be a problem seems a little to fast conclusion to me without any further study...
---
If something can go wrong, it will ! (murphy's law)
...and the Brits and still screwing around with Steam(tm).
Let's see:
underwater jetboat...check
lard and cardboard...check
CowboyNeal mulched...check
sharks with lasers on their heads...?
Where are my sharks? I asked for sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads!
If the steam was produced from a Hyrdogen Peroxide/Silver reaction (like Armadillo's Rockets) then a very fast compact underwater rocket might be possible. The volume and thrust of the steam from the Peroxide reaction would be amplified by the Jet effect to generate a large amount of thrust from a small amount of Peroxide fuel.
Ah, but can you cool beer with it?
http://www.asciimation.co.nz/beer
buckminster fuller, who coined many terms, among them synergy, came up with two words to describe application of technology - killingry and livingry
ok, they're not as hip sounding as synergy, but i'm sure you get what they mean - and buck fuller devoted his life to creating livingy such as the geodesic dome and his many other inventions
so why, i wonder, when the article in new scientist has nothing to say about 'defense' applications are there so many posts like yours inthis thread about using this invention in military applications? to quote george w bush out of context, you're either with us or against us - on the side of livingry or on the side of killingry
I don't know, but...
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
From the article: "We know the answer," says Mike Todman, the company's chief technical officer, [..] But he says it will not be revealed until patents are granted.
Now, this is the sort of thing for which patents were made. I can respect these guys for wanting to patent their engine - it's innovative, non-obvious (well, to me anyway..) and they appear to have put a lot of work into it.
One of these patents is worth a thousand "Amazon / 1-click", "SBC / Web Frames" or "British Telecom / Hyperlinks" patents, yes?
I was thinking more of the possibility for torpedo engines - if it's small, cheap, powerful, and fast (and sufficiently fuel-efficient, which the article didn't mention was good or bad about this) it may be more effective for making anti-ship weapons than faster ships.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
That would make it a Self Contained Underwater Boogie Aparatus.
cat
You also couldn't reverse the thing the same way you reverse a normal vessel, but, hey, just run a small set of pipes to the front and a miniature one of these jet gadgets and you've got instant bow thrusters :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
. . . Todman shoved large quantities of lard and cardboard into the inlet without the pump suffering any ill effects. It could even mix materials used by the food industry. "It doesn't simply mix -- it macerates," says Todman.
Interesting, this sounds very much like the Windhexe story which was posted a couple months ago.
Java: the COBOL of the new millenium.
If we are boiling seawater for steam, the toughest thing would be keeping the boiler clear of fouling, scaling or similar failure. Anything that attacks the heat exchange characteristics of the boiler could make your pile overheat.
Either a high throughput filtration plant inline, or a large reservoir of filtered water for short dashes might be in order.
God, that was fucking beautiful. Sorry for the OT, but I just had to congradulate publicly.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I think it's funny that scientists testing long range sonar transmission (for temperature measurements) need all sorts of permits, while whaling boats don't. When the whaling boats drive by (the source or the receiver), they completely drown out the test sounds.
Also (just FYI) there is a difference between decibels in and out of water. Levels of tolerability don't overlap. See google for more.
I can't conceive how it will function as a primary power source because of the mechanics that would be necessary to start the process.
In the same manner, you won't have a "neutral" since it probably can't be turned off and on rapidly for docking maneuvers, et al. Perhaps it could use buckets like a jetski (or any jet aircraft using clamshell reversers), but I wonder how well it reacts to a high backpressure created by such a device....
Maybe we'll get to see some of that great KABOOM action when these things explode or when two boats collide!
"But Terry's plan about requires about eight kilos the more fissile Uranium-235 to give her submarine extra staying power."
Team maddog member: Hey expert, is this ok? It's making my hair fall out just like you said.
Terry: Nah. That's full of U-238. It doesn't even get warm when I mash it into the other block U-235 that we found under the coke machine. See?
Team maddog member #2: Ok, how about this thing I found - I think it's some kind of centrifuge... and here's a couple of toothbrushes.
"With only eight hours to go, will team maddog or team smoke hammer be the first to retrieve the lost case of original kenner Star Wars merchandise from the bottom of this six inch deep lake?"
As for patrolling a larger area, the bubble around the carrier is a 1.000 nautical miles radius (http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/airc raft/air-fa18.html), so what's the point of making 35 more miles in an hour?
;-)
/. is lame and adds a space to URLs for no reason, so your link actually confused me until I noticed the unnessesary %20 in the URL.
Actually I believe you meant to use the comma, not the period.
"CAPITAIN! Incomming enemy planes! They've got missles locked and ready to fire!"
"How far away are they?!?!"
"1.700 nautical miles!!"
"Damn! WE'RE FINISHED!"
Also, please be kind and link to your references. I'm more likely to read if I don't have to copy and paste. Besides,
Some interesting facts from that page:
Range:
Combat: 1,089 nautical miles (1252.4 miles/2,003 km), clean plus two AIM-9s
Ferry: 1,546 nautical miles (1777.9 miles/2,844 km), two AIM-9s plus three 330 gallon tanks
Ceiling: 50,000+ feet
Speed: Mach 1.7+
So any carrier which carries the FA-18 Hornet is pretty well protected. IANANM (I am not a Navy Man), but how many of the carriers have the FA-18s on them?
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
mmmmm... Flipper...
I get so hungry when I go to SeaWorld.
(mahi mahi is for hippies)
Cool, I can finnaly build my own personal Phoenix and cruise down Center Neptune to join the rest of G-force.
Steam torpedoes have been around since the 1940's. All this stuff does is eliminate the rotational force used to drive a propellor. Big fucking deal. Invention my ass, next you will claim that Gothic Chess is a new and patentable game.
...boat.
or perhaps a sub.
Next, you'll be referring to your car as your PRIC (Personal Ride-In Carriage)...
Either that or you'll be talking about 'monetizing' the damn things. Makes me feel dirty just mentioning the word.
Probably not.
Looking at the design, it looks rather like a pulse jet, and appears to operate on similar lines.
Now pulse jets (as used on the V-1 'buzz bomb' in WWII) are inherently loud.
Fucking loud.
Loud enough that noone uses them commercially, even though they're cheap, simple and relatively efficient.
I wonder what sort of noise the shock wave of the rapidly decompressing steam makes?
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
gasoline heats up the water and the steam is used to assist in propulsion.
If you think this means the sub is "steam powered", do you think jet engines are air powered?
Compare this image of an injector to this image of this steam propulsion system, I don't think they're that far apart.
I'm definitely not belittling these folks' creation, I think it's interesting that an old (mid-nineteenth century) invention is related to this new propulsion system, using the condensation of steam in cone-shaped orifices to draw in water and shoot it out the end.
Engineers should be forced to study railroads, they were the high-tech of 150 years ago, and they actually invented many things, most especially modern telecommunication networking!!!!
Looks like an application of the Coanda Effect... High volume low pressure fluid pulls working fluid through a nozzle. There was a huge article about it in Analog a number of years back. As I recall, the author used it as a pump as well as a jet engine (both water and air). For air, he used propane instead of steam and just lit it up. The burning propane pulled air in through the front end quite handily.
The moral of the story is: "Always remember to mount a scratch monkey."
I read that as steam powered underware, I was really disapointed when it turned out to be more boreing...
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
A sliding ring acting as a thrust reverser will provide enough reverse (remember, you do not want full horsepower going in reverse on a boat).
Imagine an aircraft carrier and a few destroyer escorts with flank speeds in excess of 70 knots...
Yah, and at that speed you could just untie the jet fighters and they could take off without even turning on their engines...
I can practically taste the Manatee burgers now!
It should also make chum pretty well, allowing people in dingies to catch sharks better. Good thing sharks arent almost extinct or anything...
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
... fuel, efficiency, fragility. Consider this:
... as in the Navy's big ships. And how does the efficiency of transferring steam's energy into liquid motion compare to that of a propellor?; and
1) Maintenacnce of Boiler - boilers are not trivial creatures. They run hot and need regular maintenance. And I want to see the boiler that runs on _salt_ water and doesn't have a _big_ maintenance budget (look up salt water evaporators);
2) Efficiency - boilers aren't great at converting the heat energy to steam unless they get quite fancy
3) No moving parts - is a red herring. The question is how fragile are your parts? Little holes get clogged up pretty quickly, not necessarily when running, but when the thing is stopped. And cardboard doesn't compare to what is really out there. What happens when a piece of plywood jams into the throat of the nozzle and blocks, or just restricts, water flow?
It's a neat idea but I think it's a solution looking for a problem.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
This sounds like horrible source of thermal pollution. Hot water kills coral, shocks sea life, and helps algae bloom. With Au's Great Barrier Reef, I hope this idea doesn't go too far.
Andy
A friend built a 1/10 scale model of the Tornado In A Can, but this seems more interesting. Pics of his TIAC can be found here:
1/10 scale Tornado In A Can
What do you mean by robust? High pressure? High volume?
This idea seems like it wouldn't be good in applications that would require alot of negative head pressure - meaning applications where it has to work to draw its water in...like sucking water from the bottom of a well.
It also - at first glance - appears that it wouldn't be well suited for applications that required alot of exhaust pressure - like pushing water from the bottom of a hill to the top.
Too much pressure on the exhaust nozzle of the thing, if it is similar to a jet engine, would disrupt what's going on inside the pump (when the weight of the water it has to push becomes greater than the force it can exert, water flows backwards through the engine, and it stops working - same happens in a jet motor if it gets turned around and tries to fly backwards), and it would suddenly turn into a boiler instead of a pump.
If it had to work too hard to intake water, steam would flow the wrong way, and *POOF* your pump turns into a boiler again.
In applications like a boat motor or some sort of sump pump where volume is the key, not pressure it would be fine. So - in this armchair physicist's opinion - this thing would be great for sucking water out of your basement, but not too good for pumping water in a fire truck.
However, the problem of cavatation is completely nullified - so that's cool. It will probably be an order of magnitude more efficient than conventional pumps once perfected, though it may not scale well.
The temperature of the exhaust water is still hotter than the ambient temperature of the ocean, right? That's going to make the EPA mad, cause algae blooms, and potentially mess with the ecosystems in areas where this would be used. Interesting. I doubt it gets adopted anywhere for that fact alone, nevermind the problems of scaling this up to a real-sized engine.
It can't scale up because as the size is increased the frequency goes down. Don't get it? Imagine the time it takes to create and collapse each bubble.
But, it doesn't really matter as one can just add 'heads' as more power is needed. i'e' 2 x 50 horse outboards.
Scaling down is limited by volume to surface area ratio and the stickyness and viscosity of the fluid which don't change with scale as far as the fluid goes. Decreasing volume to surface area makes it difficult to maintain steam as well.
It is really neat though and with a small flash boiler would make a hell of a self powered surfboard.
Water is incompressible so if the inlet and nozzle cross sections at the company site are optimized, the water comes out with a velocity equal to the ratio of the cross sections. Looks like somewhere in the 2:1 - 3:1 range. Pretty slick!
Rather than speculate, read the patent application. Thrust is generated by having steam cooled in the jet, creating an implosion that lowers presure in the chamber pulling water into the inlet. Very cool, http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.h tml&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1='burns,+alan'.I N.&OS=IN/"burns,+alan"&RS=IN/"burns,+alan"
In a regular water-jet engine, the internal propeller is powerful enough to suck water in from an intake mounted in the hull of the boat (as seen in your regular jet-ski). This, of course, is a huge advantage as the craft don't go as deep, and the intake is less likely to be damaged by underwater rocks (skerries?) and such.
Would this new solution require that the intake is vertical, forcing water into it at high speed? Or is the suck powerful enough to use a regular intake?
Couldn't find information about that...
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
While I totally agree with your conclusions, I would like to argue a little bit about your methodology.
All water propulsion systems convert energy to water heat by friction (if there were no friction, it would require no energy to travel through the water). This means that the water heating properties of any water engine is corresponding to the energy it consumes. Thus all you have to do is take the energy of the fuel you consumed and divide it with the heat capacity of water. In other words, how much water gets heated is just a function of the efficiency of the engine. This disregards heating of the air around the engine, but this is probably an OK approximation, considering how much better water conducts heat than air.
Tor
The folks worried about heating the water can relax. Note that a conventionaly powered motor boat will dump basically all the heat of combustion of the fuel into the water anyway: as waste heat via the engine cooling system, waste heat via the water cooled exhaust gases or as mechanical energy in the water, which quickly ends up as heat once the prop wash dies down... as long as this drive is not much less efficient than an existing drive, the net heat dumped into the water will be about the same: 100000 btu/gallon of fuel burned.
Try reading over how a Steam Injector works. The workings of this engine should click for you fairly quickly.t .html
http://ukhrail.uel.ac.uk/glossary/injec
I like Sushi. So it looks like I'll be sticking with the propellers.
:)
Besides, everyone knows, you want your fish broiled, not steamed!
thanks for the correction
did a quick search on synergy+heylin+fuller which turned up this extract of the oed online which supports your advice