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High Speed Steam Powered Car
CodeWanker wrote in to tell us about a story about new steam powered vehicles that are aiming to set speed records. The car is kind of goofy looking, but more eco friendly (which works for the Prius ;) Don't expect to see anything like this at your local dealer any time soon tho.
The gas mileage you can get with a hybrid is far less than what you can get with a good diesel engine. Hybrids are a bad idea, twice the weight (batteries, two motors), half the interior room. Diesel-engined cars have been getting 50+ MPG for years and years. Unfortunately the stigma in the US over "diesel" prevents them from being brought over here.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
My father-in-law actually remembers some people who had Stanleys from back in the 30s. I imagine that they were the same kind of people I remember from my youth who kept their 2-stroke Saabs on the road: engineering afficiandos.
According to pops, the Stanley was a terrific car in most respects, and fast as all get-out, but it had one fatal flaw. You had to heat the boiler up for a long time before you could get going. No running out the convenience store for a gallon of milk in that car.
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So it's not any more eco-friendly than anything else that runs on gas. The article is full of a bunch of speculation about hydrogen or hithane or whatever, but it's the type of "in the future...." bullshit /. posts every day.
To further burst your steam-turbine bubbles, quoth the TFA:
"But the problem of turbines is that to be efficient, they have to run at a predetermined speed.
"The very nature of road cars is that their speed changes all the time, so this design would be no good for road vehicles."
They just built a fast car to break a record. This wont wind up in your garage.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Also, check out this wood powered Yugo. It gets 145km per 35kg of wood. :(
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Was that a joke? We don't have huge untapped reservoirs of hydrogen. the hydrogen will be created from water. Hydrogen fuel will hopefully be used to store all the energy we get from clean sources(wave, wind etc). The hydrogen itself is just a clean, non polluting battery. We don't create extra water.
My appreciation of Douglas Adams is far deeper than yours.
Steam and Electric are obviously nothing new, the first Car to break 100 mph was I belive electric.
Steam , like electric has several DISADVANTAGES as well, The was a time, when steam engines didnt reclain their steam that steam polution caused great enviromental issues with their condensate.
In addition high pressuer steam is DANGEROUS, and any vehicle designed would need to take that into account, think of the danger to the occupants of a vehicle whose boiler explodes.
For a take on this take a Hot Water heater, it is actually (gas or electric) the MOST Dangerous item in you hous a blocked T&P (Temperature and Pressure relief valve) with a tank in ovverun condition can catapult a Hot water tank through a 3 story house to a height of 100 ft, yup thats right, just like those little red plastic water rockets you had as a kid.
I was a union plumber and pipefitter, my specialty was in steam, I can tell you while the average goober might see great potential they seldom see the very real dangers of steam, steam to most seem innocent enough, just look at some of the deaths associate with steam engines recently, This even happened about 10 miles from my home an hourt after I left. Here and Here , and the fellow who owned and operated this was FAMILIAR with these risks, from burns to boiler failures, its not something to screw with unless you know what youre doing, and even then it will leave you suspicious
OK, I've RTFA. Hype! The bottom line is that steam is not a source of energy. Something has got to make that steam. And that gets us right back to the problem of supplying the energy in a form that burns clean and is clean to produce in the first place (Hydrogen for hydrogen based cars, by the way, burns clean, but is made from natural gas in a very polluting and wasteful process; overall a "clean burning" hydrogen car is a much more wasteful car and a source of more total polution tyhan one that would just use natural gas directly. Of course, if we were to produce hydrogen cleanly that would change, but there seems to be no move to do so.)
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
One of the tricky things people don't always understand is that you can't create something from nothing. We can't flood the world by running fuel cells because we have to create the H2 before we can burn it in a fuel cell. One way to create H2 is to electrolize water! Other methods (usually using Hydrocarbons) may increase the amount of water not locked-up in the Earth's crust over the short run (much the same way we are currently releasing enormous amount of Carbon that was previously locked up in Old/Coal/Natural Gas/etc... deposits.
That said the amount of water we are talking about is unlikely to have any significant impact on the environment, although the effects are hard to predict.
I read the internet for the articles.
"was it Ford?"
It was Chrysler, but the car looked quite a bit like a Ford Thunderbird. IIRC, Chrysler builds the M1 Abrams tanks which are also turbine powered.
You can refill at a modified gas station in 3 or 4 minutes, for a couple of bucks, and the vehicle is equipped with a compressor that you plug in and can refill itself in 3 or 4 hours.
It's also capable of running on gas, like a hybrid, so you can use it normally while you wait for the filling stations to propogate.
The air compression uses electricity. Whether that electricity was generated *cleanly* or not is irrelevant to the car itself.
The whole point is that 80% of vehicle emissions are released in densely populated city centers, and the quality of air in big cities is declining. When the local news is issuing "smog warnings" during the summer, somethings wrong.
This is about fighting the pollution problems in cities, it doesnt pretend to be a magical source of free energy.
This is an interesting idea, and I wish it success, but after reading that website (and the ridiculous amount of typos in their FAQ), it sounds like a lot of PR hype, they really seem to be running on hot air. Time will tell.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
i only see one problem with your plan...
a screwdriver has vodka, not whiskey...everything else sounds great though...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
First it takes less energy and material to produce a gallon of diesel. I belive the cost to make gasoline is 55 gallons of diesel.
Second the restrictions in the US are mostly because of California. The idea of what is pollution in California is nearly the opposite of what is considered in Europe. So Europe gets more diesels and there is much more money spent to make them efficient and clean.
There is more real air pollution in the NorthEast during winter months than in California regardless of time of year there. Why? More engines are running enriched mixtures to get up to operating temperatures.
Diesels do weigh more but only in the engine area. They make up for this "weight" issue by being more efficient in fuel usuage.
So I have to ask, why not diesel? It really is a magnitude cheaper to produce, the cars perform better as for mileage, and the engines are built strong enough to survive many more miles than any gasoline engine.
Also a nice side effect is that they DO NOT EXPLODE.
The Prius will never return on its investment cost to regular drivers. The surcharge for the tricks needed to make a gasoline engine viable versus diesel are too high still. Better yet, a diesel electric combo would be more efficient.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.