Slashdot Mirror
The British Steam Car Challenge
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.
that this car is "hot"? would I be ensured a "steamy ride" on this? :)
I bet this turns out to be nothing but a bunch of hot air!
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
Oh...wait.
Nevermind.
These stories are free but worth money.
So what're they heating the water with? Electricity? In which case it's an electrically powered car.
Deleted
4 mega watts? You could power a small town with that.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Should be well over 4000 bhp, since one bhp is 746 watts. Looks like an amazing amount of conversion loss there.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The problem with steam engines is the condenser system, which tends to be bulky and weigh a lot. If you are going to go open cycle, an appropriate choice for a short distance racer, a high pressure system can have very high power. In such a situation you have your high power boilers fed by a high pressure pump and exiting a turbine, which is geared down to the wheels. ZOOM!
Then release the pressure, like a water rocket.
Well, the goal was 200 MPH. Didn't say a thing about the exhaust ( supeheated steam ).
I don't know if the driver would survive. Or anyone behind the vehicle.
Inefficient as hell but I betcha it would easily go 200MPH for a few seconds.
In this world where we are rapidly depleting our fossil fuels, I would be far more impressed with a more efficient car, or even a more efficient air conditioning system.
Whatever happened to Thermoacoustics?
What's the point of this? Steam reached the peak of its development for transportation in the 1920s. Thermodynamically you can't do much better than 25% efficiency and that's with all the technology you can muster. More typically you only get 10%. The focus for engineers should be transportation that doubles car efficiency to 60 - 70%. Not halves it.
One of the stated aims is to generate excitement around alternative fuels, and yet it runs on LPG.
Very curious.
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Like, totally tubular, man!
As others have stated this thing is really inefficient. My question is, they are using these boilers to drive a turbine. Isn't this how coal fired power plants operate as well? coal heats boiler, steam drives turbine? Nuclear plants as well, just a different fuel. What about natural gas plants? I don't know, do they drive the turbine directly with a natural gas ICE? or do they heat a boiler as well?
My point is, are all steam driven turbines this inefficient? And if so, wouldn't increasing the efficiency or recouping some of that waste heat go a long way to decreasing greenhouse gas emissions from coal? IE, if we lose that much power in the conversion from boiler to turbine, if we could reuse that waste heat, even if the waste heat recoup was only 10-15% efficient, that would double the power output for the same coal burned (since this appears to be about 15% efficient)? I'm probably wrong, but it seems to me coal and nuclear power both drive turbines with steam, and if its really that inefficient, we could double our output without increasing waste at all (nuclear waste or CO2).
What happens when it hits 88mph?
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
The article doesn't mention megawatts at all, so that seems to be typical 'Slashdot Editorial Liberty'. However, in order to bring the water to a boil in a reasonable time, it can probably burn at a megawatt rate at startup.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
"PUSH THE BUTTON, MAX!"
shhhhhh...BOOM!!!
"MAXXX!!!!!"
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
This article is pointless. This is not a steam car in the conventional sense, as it does not burn coal. It would be a poor match to put a LPG vehicle against a coal-powered one for a record that has stood for a hundred years. Then again, it is an easy target for a world record, so there you go.
How about building a steam powered Lunar Lander? Oh wait...Can I?
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"The current record of 127.659 mph was established in 1906"
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.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Welcome our steam powered overlords!
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
It's interesting all the people they list at the end with their credentials. However, someone with experience at designing high capacity high pressure boilers is noteable by his absence from the list. (The heat exchangers listed in one fellow's brief biography are almost, but not quite the same thing.)
One of the pictures on another page 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.
should be easy after the jet car
4 megawatts is 5.2 THOUSAND horsepower. If the turbine were 28% efficient, should be over a 1,400 bhp car.
Comparing a ground based turbine set up to a mobile IC is a bit off.
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 should be obvious from that anecdote alone, that the physical requirements for land based power stations are vastly different. I rule out natural gas as a solution right away simply because its widely known with the industry that the country screwed up in the 1990s and built too many gas peakers and quite literally burned all the natural gas in Texas. Coal is coming back into vogue because the administration is friendlier and it is so cheap. So what does a coal plant do? Coal based plants today have onsite apparatus to powderize and dry the mile long trains of coal that they burn every month. Because the coal is powderized so finely, dust is everywhere. Coal plants are not clean. Even with today's high efficiency, combustion is not perfect and neither is the water used to make the steam with. Crews must periodically bring down the boiler, get inside there, and clean it out. It is truly a dirty job that requires special, well paid people to do. I should add, as an aside, that many coal plants are so old that utilities often have machine shops of their own to make their own parts with for maintenance.
All of this stuff weighs a lot. Automakers do a remarkable job fitting an engine and a motor / generator into a hybrid car, but I think adding a boiler would throw off the whole scheme. In order for a boiler to be really good, you need a lot of pressure, and in order to have pressure, you need a strong boiler and that means weight. Then, in addition to your fuel, you need to have a ready supply of water everywhere. If you read about the history of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, you'll see that they tried to bring steam engines into a competitive league with the diesels emerging in the 1930s, but the water was the deal breaker.
Bottom line is, if you wanted to have a mode of transportation that has you running for fuel and water both, asks you to bring a shovel along so you can shovel your ton of fuel a week into it, and requires you to do a periodic job of scrubbing out dirty tubing, and, in an accident, may literally blow up and kill you and everyone else in your car, then steam transporation is for you.
But I think steam power is best left to the professionals at your local energy company, and your best way to use it is with an electric car.
This is my sig.
So, screw you Brits! Let me know when you theoretically run your car, and then I will put up a web site to theoretically build mine.
This is my sig.
This car reminds me of this. (WARNING. This link may be offensive!)
As one who adores steampunk, I'm extremely disappointed to find that this car looks positively modern and computer designed.
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.
Max torque ... 0 RPM. The Stanley Steamers used to be able to put one wheel on a phone pole and drive up it a few feet.
Bah. I want - no, I need - 1.21 gigawatts.
Next week an exciting steam powered computer competition takes place...
Is this just for fun or what?
I fear that steam technology is now a tittle bit out of the industry focus.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Since only pure, demineralized water can be used to produce steam, one question remains: how do I start my brand new ecological car when temperature is, let's say, -20C ? All water in the steam system must simply freeze.
Maybe ethanol/water solution could be used as system fluid. Now that would be an automotive distillery, however the efficiency of steam cycle would surely decrease.
I'm not insane. My mother had me tested.
In my country the dot is the thousands separator, so I first read it as "The current record of 127 thousand mph was established in 1906.", and for a couple of seconds I was like, WTF?!
Why would you do this? In an age during which we are trying to figure out how to get OUT of the business of burning fossil fuels to generate power why would someone create a competition to see who can make a car that not only burns LPG, but then takes that and converts it to steam energy, which is then converted mechanical energy. Wow! I don't think it could be any less efficient if they tried.
Well, perhaps they could have stuck a generator on the end of the steam engine and used the resulting electricity to power a spotlight to shine onto a solar cell that runs a motor connected to pump that lifts water from a tank to the top of a water-wheel, that is then connected to the car's transmission. Although, at that point they may run into copyright issues with Goldberg, et al.
Error:
We need to reach 188 miles per hour! But Doc, the bridge isn't finished... You're not thinking 4 dimensionally, Marty!
Well obviously this is a bunch of guys who have a ton of experience behind them who want to do something cool with their knowledge. Wouldn't it be great to say to yourself 'what have I achieved in my life?' and be able to answer 'well I helped build a world-record winning steam powered car'.
Forget about alternative energy this, power conversion efficiency that, the cool factor is reason enough for me.
In the UK what killed off steam vehicles was axle weight restrictions, obviously a steam car is going to be much heavier than a petrol machine.
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.
subject says it all. Dr. Hathaway wants it now!
The 1906 Stanley brother's Rocket 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.
No, the implied sexual overtones would fit directly inline with the British sexism displayed by references to "Lady Driver" as opposed to men simply being labeled "Driver." I didn't realize the UK had anachronistic views of gender within sciency-geek realms.
Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. Engage.
TFWiredA states that "Britain has no official record, so just by turning up they win."
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 broke the British diesel speed record while testing at RAF Wittering, but it wasn't an official attempt and so the run was not recognised.
Bump that up to 1.21 jigawatts and time travel is possible.
Am I just dreaming of electric sheep, or was there some Steam-powered car set to run at Indianapolis several years ago?
It was designed by Bill Lear of Learjet fame, I think.
Whatever became of that? If it ran, it certainly must have broken that 1906 record...
.
- aqk
F U
BTW an electrician would be the last person you'd want to ask this question, you'd get a dumb stare.
60Hz is designed into the rotating generator (really alternator), if has to do with the number of lobes on the stator and the RPM of the machine.
IIRC (my BSEE is 20 years old) Generally
RPS * number of lobes / 3 (for 3 phase generation) = Hz
They maintain fine control on the biggest generators, the little ones just synch up automagically thanks the Maxwell.
It's when you get large imaginary components in the power factor (current is out of phase with voltage) that things get really ugly/interesting. Even more interesting is when the three phases of power are doing different ugly things at the same time. My eye is starting to twitch as I'm remember more of my power course then I intended.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
50%? you got a cite for that? Warships were lucky to hit 18% in the same time-frame, and they had a lot more space to fit condensers and feedwater heaters and so on. Even today few stationary coal fired plants exceed 42%. Materials technology at the time prevented use of steam at much above 400 psi, from memory.
We took the Land Speed record from you back in 1983. And waited for your turn to up it......
When you didn't, we upped it again - this time to supersonic. And you still didn't reply.......
So now we took the Electric speed record. And then we took the Diesel speed record. And still you didn't reply........
Now we're going to take the Steam speed record. What is it with you guys? We're running out of records to take from you. Please put up some more so we can knock them down!!