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US Team Seeks To Top Steam-Car Speed Record
Zothecula writes "Steam-engined vehicles are quaint, retro and obsolete ... right? Well, maybe not. The current land speed record for a steam-powered vehicle currently sits at 148 mph (238 km/h), set by the British car Inspiration team in 2009. Now, Chuk Williams' US Land Steam Record (USLSR) Team is hoping to steal that title in its LSR Streamliner, powered by a heat-regenerative external combustion Cyclone engine – an engine that could someday find common use in production automobiles."
You couldn't pay me to take that... thing up to 240 km an hour. It looks like a metal coffin on wheels.
US(L)SR
Steam is burned water, a limited naturil resorse that should not be frittered away by greedy car owners. Water beloongs to all of us to share so don't waste it, ride a bike you stupid dickface!
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The Cyclone engine may be grat as a waste heat engine, i.e. to convert process heat back to some more useful type of energy. I doubt it's really usefull as primary engine, because converting fuel to heat and then heat to motion does not really sound more efficient than your usual internal combustion engine. And the main advantage "can burn all kind of alternative fuels"? Come on, I can do that with my diesel engine already. Increasing the efficiency of a car with a internal combustion/steam engine hybrid by using the waste heat of a combustion engine to gain some additional power could be a much better idea.
external combustion engine
This can only end well.
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Cue car analogies in 3... 2... 1...
The fatal flaw in portable/mobile steam applications to date has been the need for large radiators (really really large radiators) to cool the steam, converting it back to water to complete the cycle. I see no magic fairy dust in this device that solves that problem.
The alternative is to carry enough water to run the engine without recycling and eliminate the condensers. And that's a lot of water.
Take a look at the corporate info page for www.cyclonepower.com 300,000,000 shares available!
Technically there is a mix of valid and imaginary claims--a common sign of a scam...along with the diversion of a Bonneville car. There are good reasons (ie, very poor power:weight ratio) that the steam powered speed record is still below 150 mph, a speed that many normal luxury cars can achieve. The only thing surprising is that it's from Florida, normally these are set up to fleece Southern California investors.
And the main advantage "can burn all kind of alternative fuels"? Come on, I can do that with my diesel engine already
I'd like to see what sawdust, wood chips, grass clippings or charcoal would do to your diesel engine. Even liquid fuels will not work if they are high-octane, like ethanol. Diesel engines require liquid fuel at a certain cetane number range.
A steam engine, OTOH, has basically a single requirement for fuel: it must burn without damaging the boiler.
For one simple reason. Most people live in climates where the temperature dips below freezing for much of the year. Water freezes.
The reason that the internal combustion engine won out over external combustion engines in the last 50 years is its ability to instantly deliver the power on demand. But now with fuel prices going north we are going to need to start looking at efficiency of the engines we use and that's where external combustion engines win out. We are going to probably going to see a internal combustion engine that runs until the other engine gets up to speed. It will most likely be a Stirling engine with its flywheel as a rotating stator for a generator.
The 2009 records by Inspiration were the first beat the 1906 record of 127 mph (204 km/hr) set by Fred Marriott driving a modified Stanley Steamer.
From the links at the bottom of TFA, the British team already has a body on their 200mph steam car. Looks a lot cooler too.
A simple nuclear reactor system similar to what is used in submarine could easily beat the record.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The 2009 effort was embarrassing. They built a low-slung vehicle powered by a steam turbine, designed to travel only in a straight line, and took it to the Bonneville Salt Flats. And they went 148mph.
That's pathetic. A sizable number of street-legal cars and motorcycles can do that. All Indy, F1, and NASCAR cars can do far better. The current land speed record for a wheel-driven vehicle is 416mph. (Jet cars running on wheels have exceeded Mach 1, but those are really aircraft flying at a very low altitude.)
My ancestor Dr JW Carhart is often credited with building and using the first automobile in Wisconsin in 1871. He actually used his 1,100 pound horseless buggy as a circuit-riding Methodist minister (he was also a medical doctor and physics professor). Some claim he won a $10,000 priize in the first organized steam powered race in 1878. His two cylindered coal fired "Car" covered 201 miles in a loop, starting and returning to Green Bay in 33 hours 27 minutes: exactly 6 smoking miles per hour.
"Knowing everything doesn't help..."
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