Williams ws. Rankin
Posted by Howard Langdon
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Re: Williams ws. Rankin January 11, 2006 06:08AM |
Hey Jim,
Me three. Top notch stuff; fascinating food for thought. Keep up the good work. I'm not sold on vacuum condensing yet, but that's coming from a guy who still digs aircooled Volkswagens.
Bill,
I once calculated that in a condensing Stanley with a 99% oil separator, you could drop McMaster's "Floating Oil Filter" (a mess of oleophilic hollow polyethylene fibers in a porous bag) in the water tank and go something like 100,000 miles with no oil in feedwater. Run the water return from condenser (and vacuum pump?) onto the filter, which floats at water surface and gobbles up oil the way Paris Hilton wears out platinum cards.
Coastal and Chalet now market non-detergent petro-base motor oil, including Chalet 40W, about right for a modern steam car engine. Previously, I thought that AeroShell ND (std. aero engine break-in oil) and the Mobil SHC 634 was about it. Chalet and Coastal are in good supply in lots of auto parts & grocery stores around here. Cheapity cheap. I have some of both and plan mayo separation tests when I get the shop shipshape (the ship shopshape?). I suspect the heavier stuff will separate like crazy. The other end of the scale would be Castrol, which mayos if you drive past a puddle.
Personally, except for a good oil/exhaust separator, already designed, I'm not worrying about oil contamination just yet. In the sub-Cyclone-engine temperature range, a drop of oil here and there might be good, to coat/protect the boiler & water system innards. A drop, mind you, not globs. Some gets thru to the superheater and carbons it after a few years, but eh. Stuff happens. I'm designing to unscrew the thing like a light bulb, dumpster it, and drop in a new one for a few bucks. Not an option with rare artifacts of automotive heritage, where every replacement bit must be laboriously custom handcrafted, but I'm thinking modern production automobile here. At present, despite "100,000 mile no tuneup" claims, real cars need periodic maintenance (oil, air/oil/fuel filters, coolant flush, belts, etc). Zero maintenance, or zero anything, is still merely the stuff of dreams. And as they say, if horses were dreamers, then riders would ride dreams, or something like that. Anyway, tubing's cheap. Plus, thanks to Jim's research, we now know a good carbon cleaner to spruce up those cokey tubes.
I've been thinking a lot about disposability lately. I'm going through a rough "atmospheric re-entry" into today's disposeable world, having to throw out literally tons of stuff (about 5 tons so far, according to truck scale at Miramar Landfill) which I shouldn't have saved, in my continuing nightmare workshop cleanup/reorganization. Lots worse than I ever imagined. It's like being an athlete sidelined for months of strenuous physical therapy. But the cleanup is progressing well, and should be done in a few weeks. Then, actual room to work, vehicle assembly space, clear workbenches, and well-organized tools, parts, & materials for a change. Hard to imagine.
Well, there's my two cents worth, blue-moon progress report, and random ration of infodump, malapropism and design philosophy/controversy. As The Skeleton says in the movie "The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra", "I sleep now".
Peter
Me three. Top notch stuff; fascinating food for thought. Keep up the good work. I'm not sold on vacuum condensing yet, but that's coming from a guy who still digs aircooled Volkswagens.
Bill,
I once calculated that in a condensing Stanley with a 99% oil separator, you could drop McMaster's "Floating Oil Filter" (a mess of oleophilic hollow polyethylene fibers in a porous bag) in the water tank and go something like 100,000 miles with no oil in feedwater. Run the water return from condenser (and vacuum pump?) onto the filter, which floats at water surface and gobbles up oil the way Paris Hilton wears out platinum cards.
Coastal and Chalet now market non-detergent petro-base motor oil, including Chalet 40W, about right for a modern steam car engine. Previously, I thought that AeroShell ND (std. aero engine break-in oil) and the Mobil SHC 634 was about it. Chalet and Coastal are in good supply in lots of auto parts & grocery stores around here. Cheapity cheap. I have some of both and plan mayo separation tests when I get the shop shipshape (the ship shopshape?). I suspect the heavier stuff will separate like crazy. The other end of the scale would be Castrol, which mayos if you drive past a puddle.
Personally, except for a good oil/exhaust separator, already designed, I'm not worrying about oil contamination just yet. In the sub-Cyclone-engine temperature range, a drop of oil here and there might be good, to coat/protect the boiler & water system innards. A drop, mind you, not globs. Some gets thru to the superheater and carbons it after a few years, but eh. Stuff happens. I'm designing to unscrew the thing like a light bulb, dumpster it, and drop in a new one for a few bucks. Not an option with rare artifacts of automotive heritage, where every replacement bit must be laboriously custom handcrafted, but I'm thinking modern production automobile here. At present, despite "100,000 mile no tuneup" claims, real cars need periodic maintenance (oil, air/oil/fuel filters, coolant flush, belts, etc). Zero maintenance, or zero anything, is still merely the stuff of dreams. And as they say, if horses were dreamers, then riders would ride dreams, or something like that. Anyway, tubing's cheap. Plus, thanks to Jim's research, we now know a good carbon cleaner to spruce up those cokey tubes.
I've been thinking a lot about disposability lately. I'm going through a rough "atmospheric re-entry" into today's disposeable world, having to throw out literally tons of stuff (about 5 tons so far, according to truck scale at Miramar Landfill) which I shouldn't have saved, in my continuing nightmare workshop cleanup/reorganization. Lots worse than I ever imagined. It's like being an athlete sidelined for months of strenuous physical therapy. But the cleanup is progressing well, and should be done in a few weeks. Then, actual room to work, vehicle assembly space, clear workbenches, and well-organized tools, parts, & materials for a change. Hard to imagine.
Well, there's my two cents worth, blue-moon progress report, and random ration of infodump, malapropism and design philosophy/controversy. As The Skeleton says in the movie "The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra", "I sleep now".
Peter
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Re: Williams ws. Rankin January 12, 2006 01:16AM |
Hi Jim,
Yep, I've been reading the oil horror stories for years. Hence the labyrinth oil separator, integral with the feedwater heater. Separator elements only add a few cubic inches (and pennies) to the FWH. Needs _road_ testing, of course. As do oils; agree on the various alternatives. Reports on SHC634 have been excellent so far. The 30-40W ND oils are the modern equivalents of what Abner ran all those miles with in the Doble-Detroit prototype. Didn't he also use IC motor oil in the E's?
The McMaster "Floating Oil Filter" is an off-the-shelf unit, about $50 if I recall correctly. Just drop it in the water tank. I'd be willing to bet somebody's already run it in a steam car w/o reporting it. Same type of hollow fibers are used by some green-minded cities to filter oil runoff from rainwater in storm drains. It really grabs the oil, and is highly hydrophobic to boot. Capillary action pulls oil inside the hollow fibers. Used filters can be processed to recover oil and recycle the fibers.
What is the current ETA for the Doble book?
Hey Bill,
Glad to hear that your engine design & component sourcing is moving ahead. Isn't valve design fun? The valve system is the toughest & most crucial part of an engine design. Valve problems killed plenty of my designs on the drawing board.
Tough one on carbon-coated heat exchange tubes. The carbon probably makes a great corrosion barrier, but if formed while running, its thickness & heat transfer characteristics will change over time.
Harry's unique & highly proprietary zero-oil engine is more than just impressive. It's an incredibly tough act to follow. Which is a good thing, for one's own development anyway ...
Kent (1936) on lube:
"The cylinder oil consumption ranges from .01 pint to 4 pints per million sq. ft. of surface swept over by the piston (perimeter of piston x distance traveled), with an average of .8 pint per million sq ft. The average consumption per million sq. ft. will be less in large poppet-valve engines than in small slide-valve engines. Even in engines of the same type and size, there is a wide variation in oil consumption, due partly to waste, to different methods of handling, and in steam and oerating conditions, but chiefly to the difference in texture of cylinder and piston castings. In some cylinders, oil adheres strongly to the walls, in others it does not cling to the surface but is wiped off by the piston and by the moisture, and requires continual replacement ...
"In engines using high-temperature steam (700° to 800°F), the cylinder oil actually is vaporized by the heat of the steam, but if the viscosity is high enough, some oil remains on the surfaces until a fresh supply is injected. If _too much_ oil is supplied, it "cracks" and forms carbon deposits which cause increased [friction] heating and wear..."
=================
With oil injection to steam, and oil-vaporizing steam temperatures, oil vapor condenses evenly on cooler steamed/swept surfaces.
Peter Barrett successfully injected all his cylinder oil through the valve stems. This kept the valve stems plenty lubed, and the excess entered with the steam to lube the pistons. I thnk he was running close to 1000°F. With point lube throughout for ultra-hot steam & minimum exhaust oil, you might try metering the different points in proportion to the local swept surface area. Maybe keep increasing the amount until some carbon appears in a given lube zone during periodic post-test disassembly/inspections, then back off a bit. Not sure if synthetics "crack" like petroleum oils. Any wear while miking parts on inspection, more oil there, of course. R&D means spare parts, sometimes lots of them, depending on degree of departure from proven design. Steam longtimers tell me an engine will "groan" at low rpm with too little oil.
The boiler design is ready to build, but building is on hold for shop reorganization. Tubing, components, and materials are calling to me as I shift them around during the cleanup. New circulator pump design; looks good, and high stock-parts content & "buildability", but man is that gonna be controversial. Top secret for now. Remember the Berrien Springs "McDonald's conference" and the successful circulator discussed there? Seeing is believing. Show me a good demo run, on the road, and I'm off to build it ... or something similar ...
Finished the concrete repair and carpentry on the shop building today. Whew. It's getting there; another quarter-ton or so of junk removal, and I can go nutso with powerplant/vehicle fabrication. Never thought a steam car project would involve this much concrete and lumber.
Peter
Yep, I've been reading the oil horror stories for years. Hence the labyrinth oil separator, integral with the feedwater heater. Separator elements only add a few cubic inches (and pennies) to the FWH. Needs _road_ testing, of course. As do oils; agree on the various alternatives. Reports on SHC634 have been excellent so far. The 30-40W ND oils are the modern equivalents of what Abner ran all those miles with in the Doble-Detroit prototype. Didn't he also use IC motor oil in the E's?
The McMaster "Floating Oil Filter" is an off-the-shelf unit, about $50 if I recall correctly. Just drop it in the water tank. I'd be willing to bet somebody's already run it in a steam car w/o reporting it. Same type of hollow fibers are used by some green-minded cities to filter oil runoff from rainwater in storm drains. It really grabs the oil, and is highly hydrophobic to boot. Capillary action pulls oil inside the hollow fibers. Used filters can be processed to recover oil and recycle the fibers.
What is the current ETA for the Doble book?
Hey Bill,
Glad to hear that your engine design & component sourcing is moving ahead. Isn't valve design fun?
The valve system is the toughest & most crucial part of an engine design. Valve problems killed plenty of my designs on the drawing board.
Tough one on carbon-coated heat exchange tubes. The carbon probably makes a great corrosion barrier, but if formed while running, its thickness & heat transfer characteristics will change over time.
Harry's unique & highly proprietary zero-oil engine is more than just impressive. It's an incredibly tough act to follow. Which is a good thing, for one's own development anyway ...
Kent (1936) on lube:
"The cylinder oil consumption ranges from .01 pint to 4 pints per million sq. ft. of surface swept over by the piston (perimeter of piston x distance traveled), with an average of .8 pint per million sq ft. The average consumption per million sq. ft. will be less in large poppet-valve engines than in small slide-valve engines. Even in engines of the same type and size, there is a wide variation in oil consumption, due partly to waste, to different methods of handling, and in steam and oerating conditions, but chiefly to the difference in texture of cylinder and piston castings. In some cylinders, oil adheres strongly to the walls, in others it does not cling to the surface but is wiped off by the piston and by the moisture, and requires continual replacement ...
"In engines using high-temperature steam (700° to 800°F), the cylinder oil actually is vaporized by the heat of the steam, but if the viscosity is high enough, some oil remains on the surfaces until a fresh supply is injected. If _too much_ oil is supplied, it "cracks" and forms carbon deposits which cause increased [friction] heating and wear..."
=================
With oil injection to steam, and oil-vaporizing steam temperatures, oil vapor condenses evenly on cooler steamed/swept surfaces.
Peter Barrett successfully injected all his cylinder oil through the valve stems. This kept the valve stems plenty lubed, and the excess entered with the steam to lube the pistons. I thnk he was running close to 1000°F. With point lube throughout for ultra-hot steam & minimum exhaust oil, you might try metering the different points in proportion to the local swept surface area. Maybe keep increasing the amount until some carbon appears in a given lube zone during periodic post-test disassembly/inspections, then back off a bit. Not sure if synthetics "crack" like petroleum oils. Any wear while miking parts on inspection, more oil there, of course. R&D means spare parts, sometimes lots of them, depending on degree of departure from proven design. Steam longtimers tell me an engine will "groan" at low rpm with too little oil.
The boiler design is ready to build, but building is on hold for shop reorganization. Tubing, components, and materials are calling to me as I shift them around during the cleanup. New circulator pump design; looks good, and high stock-parts content & "buildability", but man is that gonna be controversial. Top secret for now. Remember the Berrien Springs "McDonald's conference" and the successful circulator discussed there? Seeing is believing. Show me a good demo run, on the road, and I'm off to build it ... or something similar ...
Finished the concrete repair and carpentry on the shop building today. Whew. It's getting there; another quarter-ton or so of junk removal, and I can go nutso with powerplant/vehicle fabrication. Never thought a steam car project would involve this much concrete and lumber.
Peter
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Re: Williams ws. Rankin February 06, 2006 06:29PM |
Howard,
Very difficult to understand your post, thought Jerry had provided you with software and a viewing screen so that your very unfortunate poor eyesight would enable you to post clearer messages--we are all supportive of your efforts on this.
The only Lamont of modern times is the one I designed for Rod for his high speed steamboat and as a boat requires full output steam for most of the time and lots of room is available. Thus it was designed larger than a car boiler would be as a prototype. It will out produce any other boiler as far as heat transfer per square foot of boiler surface and with less feet of non-finned tubing than any other save boiler, it is also totally protected under virtually any load variations with the advantage that oils and water salts have no effect or buildup in the Lamont section or superheater. It doesn't require tons of electronic gadetry or 3-5 second responses in terms of control circuits or feedwater response like the SES or other wonder boilers. I disagree with your words that a water tube boiler can equal its circulation or performance, especially when one is limited to a 24"+ boiler heigth. Water tube B&W boilers are great with high vertical heights that provice enough downcomer pressure to guarantee adequate circulation ratio. In a 24" high distance between the centerline steam drom and mud droums on a natural curculation boiler only at best .7psi pressure differential can be achieved and this severely limits the safe heat transfer rates in the firebox, not the case with a 10 foot or 100 foot high B&W type boiler.It disturbs me that people will guess at and try making a boiler without doing a complete thermal analysis but that is just my engineering opinion. Also a natural circulation boiler starts off with a zero circulation rate and that is why most large boilers of this type fail most often during startup. They will also fail with large firing overload as they lose circulation---that does not happen with the Lamont.
The Lamont nails tube temperatures to within 100 degrees of the saturated water tempurature under all conditions and reduces all the stresses and strains during startup of a conventional boiler. Rod's boiler is working magnificiently and hopefully this year will be out steaming on Lake Winni at 20mph. I have also designed a 12GPH firing rate boiler for a private cutomer that would fit in a 20HP Stanley but it has not been worked upon. A 20-30GPH firing rate Lamont would be most feasible but would require at least 500 hours of engineering, possibly 100,000 engineering calculations and like Jim Crank am a little bit weary of such projects.
The easiest way to beat the land steam record is to use a Bryan engine that may produce 200HP(more than the Doble "F"
and fit a car with two commercially available 26" Stanley boilers, this gives huge overload capacity for a one mile run and 170-180 MPH possible with the right body design. All that stuff is available and 80-100 year old technology but it would get the job done without the expense of a huge requirement of new engineering development.
Be well up in the cold north, George
Very difficult to understand your post, thought Jerry had provided you with software and a viewing screen so that your very unfortunate poor eyesight would enable you to post clearer messages--we are all supportive of your efforts on this.
The only Lamont of modern times is the one I designed for Rod for his high speed steamboat and as a boat requires full output steam for most of the time and lots of room is available. Thus it was designed larger than a car boiler would be as a prototype. It will out produce any other boiler as far as heat transfer per square foot of boiler surface and with less feet of non-finned tubing than any other save boiler, it is also totally protected under virtually any load variations with the advantage that oils and water salts have no effect or buildup in the Lamont section or superheater. It doesn't require tons of electronic gadetry or 3-5 second responses in terms of control circuits or feedwater response like the SES or other wonder boilers. I disagree with your words that a water tube boiler can equal its circulation or performance, especially when one is limited to a 24"+ boiler heigth. Water tube B&W boilers are great with high vertical heights that provice enough downcomer pressure to guarantee adequate circulation ratio. In a 24" high distance between the centerline steam drom and mud droums on a natural curculation boiler only at best .7psi pressure differential can be achieved and this severely limits the safe heat transfer rates in the firebox, not the case with a 10 foot or 100 foot high B&W type boiler.It disturbs me that people will guess at and try making a boiler without doing a complete thermal analysis but that is just my engineering opinion. Also a natural circulation boiler starts off with a zero circulation rate and that is why most large boilers of this type fail most often during startup. They will also fail with large firing overload as they lose circulation---that does not happen with the Lamont.
The Lamont nails tube temperatures to within 100 degrees of the saturated water tempurature under all conditions and reduces all the stresses and strains during startup of a conventional boiler. Rod's boiler is working magnificiently and hopefully this year will be out steaming on Lake Winni at 20mph. I have also designed a 12GPH firing rate boiler for a private cutomer that would fit in a 20HP Stanley but it has not been worked upon. A 20-30GPH firing rate Lamont would be most feasible but would require at least 500 hours of engineering, possibly 100,000 engineering calculations and like Jim Crank am a little bit weary of such projects.
The easiest way to beat the land steam record is to use a Bryan engine that may produce 200HP(more than the Doble "F"
and fit a car with two commercially available 26" Stanley boilers, this gives huge overload capacity for a one mile run and 170-180 MPH possible with the right body design. All that stuff is available and 80-100 year old technology but it would get the job done without the expense of a huge requirement of new engineering development.
Be well up in the cold north, George
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