In article <moo6r3dfp8b4cm0b42ggsa1j3nee4qf95u@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
mike weber <fair****tfan@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:56:00 +0000 (UTC), tmcd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Tim
>McDaniel) wrote:
>
>><http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7241909.stm>
>
>Apparently what we're looking at here is, basically, a modified steam
>engine variant.
>
>Strikes me that a system with a flash boiler heated by, say, a
>kerosene burner, and a condenser to reclaim all or most of the water
>would work too.
But a steam engine has combustion, hence combustion that should be
efficient on the car, and pollutants that come out of the car.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_car>
adds
The absence of a gearbox is more than counterbalanced by the
weight of cooling and forced draft fans, fans, and boiler feed,
fuel feed, and air pumps; the battery and fan to feed even a
flash boiler will more than overcome the weight of a gearbox, and
need to run even at idle.[1]
Furthermore, the radiator must be larger, since all heat engines
depend on the temperature differences in the working fluid; in
steam cars, this heat exchange must be larger and more rapid, and
so, too, must the radiator.[2]
That page says that a flash boiler was tried in 1915 and compressed
air fast-starting in a Saab prototype car in 1973.
Steam boiler explosions were once a concern, but that's a Simple
Matter Of Engineering, apparently solved by at least the Stanley
Steamer (going by its Wikipedia page).
--
Tim McDaniel, tmcd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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