Dyna - Steam power question

Actually Norman, the adventure has already started decades ago, I think, and the Opel just proves it. Of course not ready in any sense, but having a normal sizes car, normal weight with pretty normal technology capable of doing that.....
I saw an interview with Uwe Grebe, chief of Global Advanced Engineering at General Motors Powertrain. They told him that opel made this P1 that was capable of being much more fuel efficient then cars of today. He replied that GM and Ople had done some tests in the past with ultra light cars, low drag etc, but they never proved to be suitable for daily traffic. Then the reporter told him that the car was relative standard Opel Caravan from 1959. Uwe asked what mpg figures it could get and when he heard the answer of 360, he repleid with "no comment" and actually stopped the inteview! What does that tell you??
But I do agree that the adventure begins of these (sometimes old) new technologies being actually used!

 

Although steam locomotives are not being used for a long time, I still grew up with them. My father makes model steam locomotives (1:32 scale) that function completely. He was actually one of the first to have a running model powered by mini coals! I have been to these shows many times and although I am not that old, I can remember the smell of steam engines very well.
I will read up on the links, as it sounds really good. Certainly one advantage is the capability to use a variaty of different fuels (petrol, gasoline, LPG, E85 etc).

 

You should read about Smokey Yunick and his adiabatic engine... here is a link about it.. http://schou.dk/hvce/

Cheers Dyna

PS: This is definitely above me, I'm a body girl, but hubby is pretty good engine guy ....

 

I should have said, my adventure, Senri, and that did start 6 decades ago. Age is just a bad habit. :confused:

But reading the range of approaches to deploy steam-power is really interesting. Pritchard is referenced several times as a pioneer in the automotive application of it. I would love to drive across my country of 9,000 kms and not worry about fuel costs again. Or drive with my wife to Mexico (4,000 kms) and enjoy the drive, stopping only to "fill up the water", and "check the gas". That would be fun, and funny.

 

I had one of those too, and there's a family behind me who build the scaled countrysides. I'll have to chat with them, thanks for reminding me. Did he use those white cubes to fire them up? We had these white fuel cubes to start the engine boiler, much like the BBQ pellets.

 

Good article! I was just reading about that applied to a small steam turbine motor. Super efficient.

 

Dyna, your hubby will enjoy this if he's into new engine/motive power systems. Good commonsense explanations of complex theoretical concepts. And they even sell working products! Just not for my application...

http://quasiturbine.promci.qc.ca/

 

I had a Wilson steamroller with those cubes, Esbit or something they were called. But no, he starts out with charcoal soaked in petrol and slowly shifts over to real coals. Everybody always said that the size would be to small to keep the fire going ( the grate measures something like 3 x 5 cm), but he managed anyway. Most of his locomtives has taken him a few years to build. We have a very big event here in Holland were even a lot of americans come to.

 

They have had these steam turbines in steam locomotives as well at the end of their era. They are actually no different then a modern power plant on coals!! Efficiency is pretty good.

 

Now those are Station Wagons!!! The grand daddys in miniature! Beautiful!

 

Some engineering friends developed a pulsed combustion system for clean coal burning using powdered coal. They used the technology of the WWII buzz bomb and eventually tuned the sound frequency to extract NOX, S2O, and CO2. They build them for China's coal generators now, and one major Hotwater tank company in the US. And the heat generated was used to power steam generators for the emergency electrical generators at natural gas plants too.

I kind of like this steam approach because you're not stuck for fuel options. Hopefully, the Aussie company will send me some details.

 

The pulsejet engine of the V1, hmmm, I must have an almost finished working model of that somewhere...... I never knew it could be used for that!

 

Yeah, this is their website (upgrading it, so there's no info right now):
http://www.clean-energy.com/

There's a British WIPO patent and a few USPTO patents, filed under John D Chato, in the late 1980's and later.

 

Here's one of Chato's patents:

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6325616/claims.html

and another:
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6464490/claims.html

If you google "John D Chato" you'll get a bunch of Securities Exchange filings because they are a listed NASDAQ company. That will give you other patents that he filed as well.

His hobby was horse handicapping and he asked me to write a real-time handicapping application for him a few years ago, using (are you sitting down?) Numerology to cross-handicap the Horses and Jockeys. He financed his research with it, until he was banned.

 

I wish I would finish some of my projects sometimes...
Does this ring any bell?