BBC Article on Steam Car

Not a lot of details, but still an interesting read. [news.bbc.co.uk]

Here is more info on the car. It is a part of the British Steam car Challenge Project. Here is the link.

[www.steamcar.co.uk]

I have not read the entire article but I will believe it when I see it, if you know what I mean. :-)

I’m a bit confused here. How is liquified natural gas an option to petroleum? In a car, this stuff is several times more dangerous than propane. And doesn’t natural gas come from the same well head as propane? If memory serves, it has even less available energy per pound.

Another turbine? What, did they buy up some spares at Jim Crank’s garage sale?

It’s at times like this, I wish I had the ability to produce about a seven hundred cubic inch huge valved four cylinder piston engine, and one monster of a monotube. To heck with the speed record for steam. Go for the land speed record for piston driven cars.
Garry

Garry,

Propane and Natural gas have about the same btu value per unit of weight.

Liquified Natural gas requires very high pressure tanks to keep in a liquid form, and a larger input of energy to liquify it. Most natural gas vehicles have used compressed, rather than liquified gas.

Comparing Nat. gas and Propane under equal conditions, I will take natural gas if I have a choice, it is lighter than air, and dissipates without wind, propane settles in low spots...

Scott

Thanks for the info Scott. I was unaware natural gas was lighter than air. That's the one thing that also makes hydrogen a possibility.
Garry

Scott,
Agree completely, at least natural gas won't collect on the garage floor and blow the roof off, when it sees the water heater.

This car is technical ignorance, supported by arrogance.
The turbine will be lucky to even move the car. Trying to control four monotube steam generators in parallel and get the whole mess balanced is more than just difficult to do. It would be nice to see a photo of the real car, that is if it exists at all, and not computer illustrations and some photos of the publicity model. The lack of BTU's in propane is a bad thing, the size of the tanks would be interesting to know. So would knowledge of how they propose to control the steam pressure and temperature in each boiler.

I agree with Lonny, I'll believe it when I see it for real.
JC

Hi Jim,
There is a picture of the cars body being built on page 28 of issue 25 of "The Steam Car", I understand that successful test have been carried out on the boiler arrangements.
The Steam Car Club of Great Britain has been invited to hold the Annual General Meeting 2005 at Newtown Park where the car is being built, and members will be privileged to see the progress being made.
From what I have seen so far the boiler water feed and burner arrangements are very unusual, and have worked under test.
Also, with the team that are involved in the building of this car, are people who have been involved with restoring and running steam cars for many years, so unlike other attempts, where those involved have never worked with a steam car, this time they have got hands on experience on the team.
On my visit I will be armed with my camera, and will print pictures and information in the April edition of “The Steam Car” all the best to all for 2005, Jeff

Hi Jeff,
Do indeed get all the information you can and let's see just what they are really up to.
I sent them a lot of information on my car, that someone in the group asked for long ago, and got a snotty response, so I just passed on any more of their publicity stuff.
I do hope they get that car built and running, such would give the whole steam community a shot in the arm.
Happy New Year to you too.
Jim

Brian,

Another article on this car was published in the Sydney Sunday newspaper The Sun Herald on 2 January 2005 on page 42. Pictures of the car, plan and turbine from the bscc web site were used on the 3/4 page article. It was good publicity for clean burning steam car even if the project doesn't get any further.

Graeme

[www.steamcar.net]

The British Steam Car Club web site has some interesting pictures of the British Steam Land Speed Record Car and some of it's parts. I'm assuming the next club magazine will have more details. Very unusual boiler design, maybe a parallel tube monotube?
Cheers
Mark Stacey
www.cncprototyping.co.nz

Hello,

What are some of the speed records anyway? How fast for a steam powered car, or motorcycle. And how fast for IC driven ones, How much horsepower did each have?

I'm not giving up on building that steam powered motorcycle by the way, but it's going to take a lot of development work, not a slam dunk.

I am kicking around the idea of using four separate boilers in the motorcycle. Smaller boilers can use smaller diameter tubing for greater surface area. If the pressures can be matched closly, each boiler could feed half of each engine (two) and the problems of a steam flow difference in parallel tubing wouldn't be a problem.

Any thoughts on that would be welcome.

Thank you--------------Bill G.

Hi Mark,
There will be some more pictures in the next edition of the magazine "The Steamcar".
I have been invited down to the next open day on the 20th March, and I intend to be there, I will see what other information I can get, and will take as many pictures as possible, I will enlarge on the page on the web site as soon as I have the information, all the best, Jeff.

Thanks Jeff you are spoiling us avid readers of "The Steam Car". As a general note as well as the "SACA Bulletin" "The Steam Car" is essential reading for the steam enthusiast.

Bill
The steam LSR record is 145mph set under SCTA rules by the car Jim Crank built and then sold. The car is at the National Automobile museum in Reno.
Previous Steam car records were Serpollet at 75mph and of course the famous Stanley record in 1906 of 126mph
The FIA is in a state of disorganization re record breaking record keeping and there is a current move to set up an alternative list.
That being said the wheel driven record for a supercharged car is about 409 mph held by Al Tegue. Non supercharged is held by the Summers brothers in Goldenrod also about 409mph. The absolute wheel driven record is held by Don Vesco in Turbinator at 425mph.
Note numbers may be a bit off as I'm to lazy to hit the books this morning.
Cheers
Mark Stacey
www.cncprototyping.co.nz






Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2005 09:09AM by Mark Stacey.

Liquid Propane Gas (LPG) can be liquified at overpressure 1atm (cca 15PSI - considering 20degC). That is the purpose why it is used as fuel for conventional IC cars instead of Natural gas. For safety reasons all fuel system must be revised for leaks every year.

It is the easiest way of heating in my opinion. The vaporizer is simple, regulation is easy.

Using turbine is good idea if you know what you are doing. It needs very precise job to be done and a VERY pure steam.


Viktor Placek


ScottF Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Garry,
>
> Propane and Natural gas have about the same btu
> value per unit of weight.
>
> Liquified Natural gas requires very high pressure
> tanks to keep in a liquid form, and a larger input
> of energy to liquify it. Most natural gas vehicles
> have used compressed, rather than liquified gas.
>
> Comparing Nat. gas and Propane under equal
> conditions, I will take natural gas if I have a
> choice, it is lighter than air, and dissipates
> without wind, propane settles in low spots...
>
> Scott

Jim Crank wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> This car is technical ignorance, supported by arrogance.
> The turbine will be lucky to even move the car.




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2005 04:08PM by das.

There is an update on the LSR steam car site. They are making the turbine disks etc so it is progressing. Still mystified by the quoted 40lb steam rate.
Cheers
Mark Stacey
www.cncprototyping.co.nz

There is an update with photos and video on the The Steam Car Club of Great Britain's website.
[www.steamcar.net]
[www.steamcar.net]

It looks like there is a problem with the steam generating system based on the comments on the British Steam Car Challenge web site. The boiler are producing stable temperature and pressure controlled steam...........but not enough.

Looking through the [www.steamcar.co.uk] and the report on the Steam Car Club of Great Britain [www.steamcar.net] that the generator is a monotube consisting of straight finned tubes connected by insulated sections (outside the generator casing) fired by a radient panel burner. Interesting design, and my guess the problem also, as it is really hard to raise the output of a radient panel / surface combustion burner past a maximum. The big industrial radient/surface burners I've had the misfortune to try to keep going get to a certain point and then start to burn behind the face.
So if the output needs to be increased a major rework of the burner will probably be required.
Cheers
Mark Stacey
www.cncprototyping.co.nz

take a look at the specifications of this car,a turbine is clamed to have a better water rate than a piston at 625lbs for 300 hp.2lbs per hp?
a large frontal area body shaped like a wing. Lift on the front a low preasure is in the bottom back, will fly quite nicely. do they have any steam people in that group ,a lot of credentials. There must be other opinions on this as I feel they have a tough road to hoe. good luck to them.
Harry

Hi Guys,

Taking a break cause a friend is in my living room watching a movie and my drafting table is in there.

I believe, if I read it correctly, that the car has four boilers each putting out 625 lbs for 2500 lbs so at 300 Hp it is at 8.3 lbs/hp-hr.

I wonder at the reason for such low pressure and temperature 500 psi and 725 degrees. When steam expands through a nozzle the temperature drops as energy is converted from heat to kinetic so little reason not to go to at least 1200 degrees. That should get them to the 400 Hp range.

Best ----------- Bill G.

Hi Bill
thanks for the better observation, however never heard of a small turbine with an 8# water rate.
Harry

Hello Harry

Well, anyway when they are done goofing around with the car it would be nice to put a real steam engine system in it and set the LSR.

Don't get me wrong, I do wish them and anyone working with steam a lot of success, that helps us all. I will just be surprised if it works as well as projected.

First I'd get rid of the propane and run it on hemp oil just to make a point. Then redo the boilers probably to Peters new design once that is proven out. Or for a flat out run go to a combo of Peters burner with a fast recirculating super-critical boiler. That would put your six cylinder expander in front then reheat and into my engine with a lower second stage displacement exhausting to the atmosphere. I think we could get around 800 Hp.

If 300 HP would push it to 200 mph then 800HP will go 277mph.

I believe the engines could put out that kind of Hp efficiently. I purposely designed mine to run at 1000 psia so that it could later have a high pressure reheat cycle added, your expander would work very well here. I find that spider bearing totally enchanting.

A bit of further development between here and there though so off to the drafting board.

A nice Sunny afternoon --------- Bill G.

Harry,
Their pressure and temperatures are very low for what they hope to accomplish.

There is NO small turbine that can even come close to that water rate. It would be wonderful if one could, and I for one, would certainly like to see it.
Remembering the 1/2-V ratio that applies to any impulse turbine, then if the spouting velocity is 2,000 ft/sec, the turbine has to spin at 17,647 rpm. If the velocity is 4,000 ft/sec, then it has to run at 35,294 rpm to achieve the efficiency they need. At their stated 12,000 rpm, the water rate, I suspect, will be around 80 lbs/hp/hr or higher, considering the losses they are facing.

We ran the Lear turbine at 1200 psi@1100°F and at 85,000 rpm. 8.5 MBTU burner and an evaporation rate of 5500 lbs/hr. Even then I wanted more steam. At that speed our water rate was close to optimum which was 87,591 rpm.
I don't recall that the turbine got to 85,000 rpm during speed runs, I think it was more like 65K rpm.

At startup, parallel circuit extended surface tubing steam generators (or any monotube) will not be able to keep up with the huge steam demand that the turbine will want. Try well over 100 lbs/hp/hr. One big whoosh and the coils are dry.
I know, I had the same type in my racer and we went to extremes to provide sufficient water to the generator to keep it from instantly going off by overheat. I see no mention of how they plan to overcome this problem, if they even realize it exists.

They claim stability with each boiler, wait until they hook all four in parallel, then the fun starts.

They are saying that their car uses four nozzles, mine had 14.
A small number of nozzles only helps to increase the windage losses, and they can get very high.

Surface combustion burners, while very clean, do not have a high enough heat release to be useful without massive forced draft. Mark is right, then they want to blow out because of the high velocity through the ceramic burner plates, or start burning behind the plates.

The aerodynamics of the body shape also lead me to think that it is going to want to lift. Someone else can drive it, not this kid!!

I wish them the best of luck; but I see the exact same set of circumstances that went on in the Clean Air Car business here. All theory and academic people and no one with one bit of practical experience with any steam car,let alone a new one.

This land speed record for steamers is most interesting; but one would be well off making a large displacement reciprocating engine and gearing it with a very high overdrive ratio. You have plenty of room at Bonneville to get up to speed.
JC



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2006 10:30AM by James D. Crank.

[www.steamcar.co.uk]

Latest update states the British Steam Car Challenge tested the turbine at a power station in October, but the link to the news release is broken. Anyone see it and if so were there any results we could ponder.
Cheers
Mark Stacey

Hi All,

I understand that the turbine was set up with a dynamometer at Slough Heat & Power in Berkshire A large privately run operational, Power Station. They provided steam at the pressure and temperature expected from the on board generators, and the Turbine put out just over 300 BHP. Enough power they estimate, too take them beyond 200 MPH.

I have put a link from our site to the latest news letter, and you will find loads more info on our site. [www.steamcar.net]

I hope to go and see the car again in the coming months, and will post more info as and when I get it, all the best, Jeff




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/2006 03:10AM by Jeff Theobald.

I guess the critical question isn't if the onboard generators can produce the temperature and pressure the powerstation supplied, but rather can they produce the same volume at those temperatures and pressures?