Why not steam-electric hybrid autos?
October 25, 2009 in Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Did you know that you can save fuel and run your car on water
Taganan questioned:
Using a small steam engine, which is more efficient, cleaner and simpler than an IC engine, to run an alternator to keep the batteries exciting to potential the gripping motors, solves the problem of fleeting ranges for EV’s. It also solves the drawbacks of honest steam potential. Fill up tube boilers do not explode. Thermoelectrics may maybe also generate electricity from the waste heat making it more efficient. It may maybe also use any liquid or gaseous fuel made, sinking dependence on oil.
The steam engine public feel steam is exact as is, it’s not, and turn down to deliberate a hybrid. The gripping vehicle public feel EV’s are exact, they are not, and turn down to deliberate a hybrid. The Domestic Combustion public are married to Huge Oil and their hybdrids are so complicated to hold down the habitual IC pollution that they break down evenly. Can’t meet the expense of to build one for For myself. Anyone attracted out here?
A forced-draft open flame is cleaner than domestic combustion. A fill up tube tank cannot explode. The tube can blow out surrounded by the tank bombard and all the steam goes out the exhaust. In view of the fact that the engine is turning an alternator and not powering the car it does not demand high pressure. By using an open flame you can use much cheaper, less refined liquid or gaseous fuels. If you want to be less disadvantaged on oil and use uncommon fuels the use of outdoor combustion is ideal.
Some of you answered with thought and appeal, be grateful you. Some just showed their ignorance of steam potential. Friend -beesidemeusa@yahoo.co.uk – for a more in-depth and serious disscussion.
Did you know that you can save fuel and run your car on water
And how would you heat the fill up for the steam? Domestic combustion engine! or a fire which is more polutant than an engine so its kinda flawed
You know what i was really thought about that for For myself recently. if a teach may maybe have a steam engine why couldnt we make a small bespoke hybrid steam engine in a car. i guess the folks crafty cars are inundated with a generous amount of uncommon uncommon fuels, technologies and engines to deal with and they havent thought about the benefits of such an engine. eventually hydrogen will be the fuel of america, california now is chief the way developing a hydrogen highway and signing up hundreds of stations to offer the new revolutionary fuel, now here are only few inefficient ways to extract hydrogen but shorty we will develop more efficient methods of acquiring hydrogen. and hybrids will most indeed play a role inane forwards even with using hydrogen as a fuel. hydrogen is overflowing and able to give our on the rise fuel wants, while biofuels will not be able to. biofuels take away from land looked-for to grow our food give. current regime subsidies for the fuel encourage the massive apparent cutting of plants to make way for farms, this is an unsustainable path, i absolutely do not judge ethanol or biofuels will play a generous role in the possibility of the autmobile.
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I was a bit full aback by your question, as steam engines are not celebrated for their efficiency (as low as 1% efficient, according to Wikipedia), but an internet search twisted up some appealing investigate in this area. So sure, it is an thought value exploring.
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Fleeting EV ranges are not a problem any longer, but, with the development of quick give a new lease of life batteries (Altairnanos.) The batteries in these gripping cars can be exciting in just 10 summary, and the ZAP-X has a driving array of 350 miles:
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steam cannot yield ample potential efficently for use as an automobile, primarily in view of the fact that of the size tanks that would be looked-for, this is why the ’steam car’ didnt work out in the 1800’s
Excellent question.
Here’s a mountain of run of the mill implication in your suggestions, and I’ve never really worked out why here hasn’t been more finance for development work in this field.
The problem ongoing headed for the end of the 19th Century and the Movement to grant the right engine for the ‘horseless carriage’. The domestic combustion engine won and the steam engine came second. The ’steamer’ looked-for time to warm up, it looked-for to reside in its fuel and fill up aboard, and it took time to get up to speed – in fleeting it wasn’t very glamorous. So the small steam engine was relegated to the ranks of the ‘cranks’ and the ‘eccentrics’, at the same time as the domestic combustion engine became the transporter of the planet.
For a hundred being, tens if not hundreds of thousands of thermodynamic engineers have researched and developed improvements to the motor car engine, financed by the oil, automobile, and aero industries. A mere handful of engineers have done the same for the small steam engine with effectively no financing no matter what.
Had struggle been maintained, with the steam engine and domestic combustion engine being paid copy funding, here is not skepticism that steam engines and steam/gripping hybrids would now be powering the worlds road transport. But alas you can’t chat description and that’s the way it was, and now we are blocked with inefficient, polluting, but greatly sophisticated gas and diesel engines.
I’m like you and can’t meet the expense of to build an electro/steamer for For myself, but maybe here is a corporate body, or fiscal society, or regime somewhere out here, keen to waste billions over the next twenty or so being with the potential for a hundredfold return, and a Nobel Prize or two for reduction the planet.
Steam-gripping would work well; and is infact the basis of most “pure” gripping vehicles.
the key is the steam generator, which has to be very heavy, “tank plated”, even with tube boilers and place it flat at recharging points (or collectively to an gripping grid), where it can basically be fed by a diversity of heavy fuels, even wood chip, from a bunker; and have apt scrubbers and filters en suite to reduce sparks, Nox and Co2 etc.
Some central heating boilers generate gripping in the ways you describe.
the batteries would only need a 10 small payment each 250 miles or so. (if chevron/texaco don’t buy the Li battery patents like they did for NiMH used in current hybrids so they can only do 3 miles in ev only mode)
excellent thought BUT in order to make steam you need a presser vessel that would have to have very high psi if you were ever in a accident you force carry on the impression but when the presser vessel blew you would not only have live steam you would have astute metal pieces flying all over the place. and where on a car are you inane to place a vessel that would be capable of making ample steam to go somewhere the business would be to heavy defeating the function reflect gripping no gas no oil no emissions no doubts
Your question is excellent and demonstrates “thought outside the box.” The equipment to dredge up are your source of energy (you suggested ’some liquid or gaseous fuel’) and your end goal (to go an automobile). In between those two equipment is your projected key. The commonly required with solutions now are ones that any use fuels more efficiently, or use cheaper fuels. This one seems to fall into the first rank but has the splendid potential of life multi-fuel.
The problem with many designs is unnecessary problem. Even the gas-gripping hybrid handbook teach in the Toyota Prius is excessively complicated. If it wasn’t bent by masters of reliability, it would fail to be matter-of-fact.
So the challenges to overcome in developing your top would seem to be:
1. Maximizing the efficiency of the fuel-to-steam pressure conversion, followed closely by the efficiency of the steam-to-mechanical budge conversion that drives the generator. The remainder of the electrical handbook teach is already reasonably efficient and would not offer a lot of return for redesigning its gears.
2. Production with the be unstable between firing up the tank and making the head of steam need for the first steam-bent electricity. Force this be a battery of some sort that may maybe start tender the vehicle while you wait on the steam to build up?
3. Capturing the left-over steam when you go to shut down the vehicle at the end of a handbook. Again a battery force store some of it. Retaining the pressure as steam would take some well yet to be thermodynamic top to keep it hot in view of the fact that once cooled, the steam will have lost all its energy.
4. ‘Thermoelectrics’ cleverness such as thermocouples or Peltier-junction cleverness can do what you are adage but are subdue very inefficient and pricey. This is a kind of “holy grail” for domestic combustion engineers in view of the fact that about 75% of energy that goes into a gasoline engine is lost as waste heat. It would be an incredible leap forwards to reclaim some of it.
5. Administration the high top problem in the projected top.
Why not austerely use a sterling engine
excellent thought. some sagacious observations to. Some public really have no thought about steam do they? In the 1950’s here were small set alight steam engines with small set alight boilers, tube boilers!
So tube boilers are a matter-of-fact desing, they have improved a lot in view of the fact that the 50’s. By the way steam engineering has not been left to back yarders at all, dredge up steam engines and additional related heat engines are usually used in industry, both the turbine and reciprocating type.
The condensor is the chief part. Fill up is no come forth at all as it is reused not atrophied as in wild wst cowboy movies. Coming up time is not much of one any as it takes less than 5 summary to bring to somebody's attention steam in a well designed tank apposite for a car. So a modest battery is the go. But the proposition for an efficient stirling engine is an even better thought.
suggestions that outdoor combustionengines are inherently more perilous than domestic ones is austerely flawed.
A well designed steam engine /logic will give evenhanded efficiency as will a stirling engine. But a deisol engine also has excellent efficiency and must not be ruled out. They are also simple to adjust to use a diversity of fuels.
But the best key may be to accept any limitations inthe unfilled Evs re array and chat the ways we use them/own them. If we dropped our foolish problem of owning cars and as a substitution for hired on demand, from a well set up hire gift, we may maybe use the most apt vehicle for each journey, a small set alight EV to do the shopping ,pick up the kids, go to work, as EV sports coupe to impress, a SUV for that bush trip, a bus to go the gang, and as by hireing we impart the cost of ownership, we can meet the expense of to have all the vehicles we ever sought after. And we wouldnt have to buy the largest just in case we need it one day and be forced to handbook it in view of the fact that we now dont have an selection.
Infer on foot down your road maybe 20 yrds to the nearest vehicle waving your leasing card at it and driving off, if it wasnt what you sought after you may maybe order a specific one at the terminal, one each 20 yrds, or ring even, or you may maybe handbook to a near by yard to make a better selection, handbook to your destination and place it in a designated deposit area. You only pay for the real use you make of the vehicle, you nwever pay for parking interval, you never pay while it is meeting around, in view of the fact that some one else will probably be using it. Some one is inane to make a chance setting this logic up. The equipment exists, the software exists and is used with bicycles in several cities, so why not cars?
This is a splendid thought. Steam is one of the most efficient way to yield electricity. I reflect you would want to model it with the coal plants that grant potential for most the planet. They are clogged circuit mercury mist steam engines.
You don’t have to use mercury you just want something with a lower boiling top than fill up. Then you want to make sure the steam to liquid circuit is clogged to recycle the liquid and as much of the pressure as possible. It wouldn’t need to be very generous and you may maybe place in the rear a blast plate for protection.
As another poster said you may maybe use a Stirling engine to capture the outdoor combustion. In that case the domestic gas you would use would be hydrogen. The cool business about the Stirling is here is no wast heat to recall
Here are some guys at Penn state who have developed a levelheaded state generator using peltier junctions. They intend for it to grant potential in diffident places using the heat from your oven. This seems like the exact tech for hybrids. Its safe cool down and has no tender parts!
All three of these generator types are very similar in opinion. Capture the movement bent by heat use it to yield electricity. The Stirling and Peltier junction have an benefit in that their efficiency must go up the in cold ride out in view of the fact that the like difference wold be stuck-up.
I reflect the peltier junction will prove to be the best in view of the fact that of it lack of tender parts. That earnings less wait, less matanice and lower manufacturing expenditure.
Stanley steam cars, very flourishing
They even built and flew a steam plane !!!
Look at the Gripping cars around the planet, that is the way to go. In the UK we are subdue building nonsense, but we are not backed up by regime
We used to have lots of gripping vehiles in this public.
Including Trolley busses and trams
How about using compressed air
A very excellent question. But I dredge up steam trains, and even if they may maybe go nearly as quick as the newest British trains they took longer in being paid up speed. This fated they were much slower than gripping trains on traveler runs.
Back in the 1960’s one of the American police forces (Chicago I reflect) experimented with oil fired steam cars, but it worked out costly & unreliable plus took time to gain speed.
But I dredge up conception an condition where a number of scientists agreed that the most terrible invention was the domestic combustion engine. The scientists felt that much more would and may maybe have been done to boost steam potential, but was now thorough to be a waste of time and cash investigating. So perhaps we must start sincerely compelling into account using steam again.