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.

Comments

Re:Damned inefficient

[frdmfghtr]

Should be well over 4000 bhp, since one bhp is 746 watts. Looks like an amazing amount of conversion loss there.

I think it's more a case where not all the energy contained in the steam is used for forward motion. The last thing you want to do is extract all that energy from the steam in the turbine, since in doing so would change the steam back into water. Water and high-speed steam turbines are not a good mix, unless you want to have shards of turbine flying about.

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.