Steam vs Electric

Hello Jim,


I looked into the Hilsch Vortex tube a while back. It is basically a refrigerator or heat pump using the energy of the air pressure to convert or separate the air into two temperature zones. As a cycle though, I don't think the efficiency is high enough to be useful. Possibly the exhaust steam from an engine could be used to run the thing, in which case we would get some cool saturated steam and some hotter superheated steam in the mix. It would be better to expand the steam to do work though if possible.

However, a Unaflow engine does have to exhaust steam at higher than atmospheric pressure to move the steam through it. This steam might be used to do two things using a vortex tube. The first would be to pass the cooled steam to the condenser to condense that part and the second would be to use the hotter steam to heat the feed water for some regeneration. This then might add a point or two to the engine efficiency.

Best, ------ Bill G.

Hi Andy
Good to hear from you. As these engines go the higher the pressure and fireing rate the more power that can be achieved. We just finisned dyno-ing a small engine yesterday and the power output was higher than calculated we have to find out why as I like the numbers to match although It was outstanding. The efficency and non poluting are the over welming factors. We would like to see these engines in a car however a car engine only typicaly uses about 10% of its rated hp. We have to do it right as steam has had a black eye in the past and by rushing to ride aroung the block and not fully produce what we claim could harm ALL our efforts. The MKV is rated at 100HP with high efficency numbers increasing the cutoff will increase the hp thus the power density but the efficency will drop. This is OK for exceleration but not for constant speed but this will easily beat an IC engine. The MKV weights in at about 340 lbs all up complete heat exchangers pumps blowers condencers and all controles It is 24" high and 28" in diameter. the engine for Chuks LSR car will have a double heat exchanger and run a slightly longer cutoff to increase the hp to 180hp. . It will be only semi condencing so it will still be almost the same height.
Harry