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Steam related discussions.
Re: Perrymobile, rationless WWII steam vehicle - 2 days ago
As I recall, the Perrymobile magic working fluid was simply alcohol with some green dye added to make people think it was some mysterious, special substance. The problem with these low temperature working fluids is that they are less efficient. The efficiency of any thermodymamic cycle is related to the temperature differential between the hottest and coldest working fluid temperatures inside thby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Perrymobile, rationless WWII steam vehicle - 2 days ago
Hi Rolly, In our case, it really was air. The navy uses pressurized water reactors, so the water circulating through the reactor never really leaves the reactor -- instead it passes through coils in steam generator drums and water passing over these coils generates the secondary loop steam used throughout the ship. The DFTs are installed in this secondary loop -- since it isn't exposed toby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Perrymobile, rationless WWII steam vehicle - 2 days ago
Wow......just wow...... We had a guy at a Berrien Springs meet years ago who patented a combination steam/pnuematic system. That kind of took me back considering that we had a DFT connected to each reactor onboard ship (DFT = Deaerating Feed Tank). Yup, "deaerating" means we had a really big piece of hardware designed with a primary function of getting the air OUT of the steam....by frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: need some advice on gears - 5 weeks ago
I can't talk about gears, but as a general rule, when machining anything, I always like to leave a little stock on both the faces and the OD for final cleanup. For example, I just built a fixture to install helical gears onto a crankshaft -- and the thing warped on me while milling in some of the features. It was easily corrected because I left stock for a cleanup surface grind.by frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Dynamic Viscosity of Saturated Steam Fractions - 6 weeks ago
Hi Rolly, I'm currently writing a book on the Baker cars for Tom Kimmel and had to research their patents. They had a number of boiler designs. Actually, the one that was used on the cars takes the basic boiler from one patent and the blow-down valve from another. Some of their boilers didn't have any vertical standpipes on the outer reserve coils, making for much simpler construction. A feby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Dynamic Viscosity of Saturated Steam Fractions - 6 weeks ago
Hi Rick, Mostly, I am trying to put together a spreadsheet capable of estimating pressure drop across the coil. It's not intuitive. Take a 5:1 circulation ratio. At the coil entrance, we can assume the flow is essentially saturated water. At the exit, the flow is about 5/6 by weight, but by volume it is overwhelmingly steam. I've dug up a few research papers that give various mathematicalby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Dynamic Viscosity of Saturated Steam Fractions - 6 weeks ago
Hi Rolly, I think I found the answer. I've worked with viscosity for many years, but it was almost always in a fluid, occasionally in a gas. It's simple to determine viscosity for both water and steam, at a variety of pressures and temperatures. The problem was finding the viscosity for a saturated mix of steam and water at various vapor fractions -- the process is a bit more involved than oby frustrated - SteamStuff
Club Positions - 6 weeks ago
As per the questionnaire recently sent out with the Bulletin, SACA really needs more member participation to keep matters running smoothly. We especially need a Bulletin editor, and someone to start promoting sales of Bulletin back issues on Amazon. Of course, a new president would be highly appreciated. Regards, Kenby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Dynamic Viscosity of Saturated Steam Fractions - 6 weeks ago
Hi Rolly, You're right on all those parameters -- the only other information you need is viscosity and there was no table or Excel plug-in showing viscosity depending upon steam fraction. As my instructor in boot camp said "Ain't nothin' never simple"! Regards, Kenby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Dynamic Viscosity of Saturated Steam Fractions - 6 weeks ago
Hi Rolly, I think I found the answer. I did a number of Google searches, without any results, until I found the correct jargon -- then a number of references popped out. That's the problem with internet searches, the systems aren't very smart. Fortunately, I wasn't looking in Google patents -- it used to be that worked pretty good, until they "improved" it by adding patents from otby frustrated - SteamStuff
Dynamic Viscosity of Saturated Steam Fractions - 7 weeks ago
Hey Guys, Does anyone know how to calculate the dynamic viscosity of a fluid and vapor mixture? I'm specifically interested in water and steam at saturation -- for instance, how do I calculate the viscosity when the dryness is 80 percent versus 20 percent, and so on. It's easy to find processes to estimate viscosity in liquid mixtures and gaseous mixtures, but a liquid/gas mixture isn't muchby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Steam turbine driven turbojet - 7 weeks ago
The Soviet Era Kirov Class nuclear battle cruisers had a CONAS propulsion system -- COmbined Nuclear And Steam. Basically, the nuclear reactors drove steam turbines, but there were backup boilers in place. This might indicate that Soviet nuclear power was not up to US standards. On the other hand, two alternative uses for the boilers have been suggested and I haven't been able to find a definitby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Steam turbine driven turbojet - 2 months ago
Rolly, There's a group of SACA members, largely out of Canada, who have started an LSR project. I haven't heard of any recent progress. CAD drawings for the cylinder head components have been drawn up, as have a lot of calculations and specifications for the overall powerplant and vehicle. Basically, it's a converted 3-53 Jimmy and a forced recirculation (Lamont) boiler. Regards, Kenby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Steam turbine driven turbojet - 2 months ago
For the last few years of his life, I corresponded with Jim Crank on an average of at least once a day. As it turns out, it was never his plan to use a turbine in an LSR car. He had an unexpected opportunity to buy a bunch of hardware from the Lear bus project for an essentially negligible price -- something like a hundred bucks, but don't take that exact price as gospel. This was quite a bargaby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Steam turbine driven turbojet - 2 months ago
The turbine came from the Lear bus program. Tom Kimmel has one of the turbine rotors, not the whole unit, unfortunately.by frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Steam turbine driven turbojet - 2 months ago
A Pelton wheel certainly doesn't sound like the most efficient turbine layout imaginable, a pure impulse turbine seems like it would have fewer losses -- I've seen one of the rotors built by Lear that Jim Crank used, it was immediately recognizable as a classic impulse rotor. I have some serious concerns about trying to power vehicles with single-stage turbines, it will undoubtedly work but the efby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Steam turbine driven turbojet - 2 months ago
I'm sorry, Novice, but that didn't actually answer my question. Do you have any ideas as to number of stages, types of staging, configuration of rotors and so on? If anything, the number of turbomachinery iterations can challenge the number of reciprocating designs. The British LSR car may not be a preferred example since they took months in the Desert and something like a million dollars to doby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Steam turbine driven turbojet - 2 months ago
Just out of curiosity, what type of turbine layout are you looking at?by frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Steam turbine driven turbojet - 2 months ago
Hi Rick, I met the owner of the Lear car at Tom Kimmel's. One of the biggest problems with the Lear Indy car was that the designer conned Lear into getting the job, he had no real expertise in the field. To give you an idea how bad it was, it was only AFTER they built the car that someone realized that they had dramatically underestimated the condenser requirements. As it was, there was noby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Steam turbine driven turbojet - 2 months ago
Rolly, I never said that they injected oil into the steam system. The steam in the turbine bearings would force its way into the bearings and then travel through the lubrication system as condensate.. These were either 600 psi nuclear systems or 1200 psi superheated units. I'm not sure you'd want to go above 1,200 psi superheat in an aviation application -- it was challenging enough onboard sby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Steam turbine driven turbojet - 2 months ago
One of your bigger challenges is going to be lubricating oil contamination by condensate. Every steam turbine system that I have worked with had centrifugal purifiers to remove the water from the oil -- we kept the main engines on the purifiers for 12 hours a day and the turbogenerators on the purifier for 8. The rest of the time was allocated for disassembling, cleaning and reassembling the puriby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: The Effect of Low Feedwater! - 3 months ago
Hey Chuk, And this is good graphic evidence explaining Bonneville's fear of Stanley type boilers. Actually, I think any sort of drum that is directly heated by the furnace should be avoided at all costs. It would arguably be better to fit the drum in a Bosolver or Ofeldt off to the side rather than directly above the burner. Even when the storage volume is unheated, it's awfully easy to mby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: need some advice on gears - 3 months ago
Just for the heck of it, insert two straight shafts into the gearbox and measure their parallelism quite carefully. If they are out a little bit, the forces can be concentrating on one side of the gear teeth. I ran into a gear box some years ago, built by a big name gear company, and someone slipped up on quality control --- with similar results to yours.by frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Someone found a steam corvair in a junkyard. - 3 months ago
This association with the engine and Besler appears to be a bit of misreading. I found a reprint of a copy of the old Steam Automobile Quarterly somewhere in this thread and, on the right-hand side of the spread, it showed Bill Besler's obituary --- on the left-hand side it showed Joe Ellison's Corvair conversion. I think someone didn't read carefully and juxtaposed the two articles into one conby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Full Steam Proposal for Auto Mfrs - 4 months ago
Hi Rick, Ingrained? A lot of people have bought the Elon Kool-Aid. Tesla consistently announces vehicle launch dates and then overshoots --- drastically. Far from being a manufacturing marvel, it's a bit of a joke in the industry. No other car company would get away with that, but he's running a cult and his followers loudly denounce anyone who points this out. The fact that he came out lasby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Full Steam Proposal for Auto Mfrs - 4 months ago
Maybe I should write about this, again, since I actually work in the powertrain development process for a major American automotive manufacturer. Quite honestly, a good idea will get you absolutely nowhere. Thomas Edison referred to "5 percent inspiration and 95 percent perspiration" and that holds as true today as it did then, maybe even more so since so many of the really basic ideby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Full Steam Proposal for Auto Mfrs - 4 months ago
Rick, As I mentioned before, this particular topic is related to a proposal to automotive manufacturers, meaning the car has to be state-of-the-art. The Stanley engine is highly inefficient, any presumably practical modern engine would not be throwing the same large amount of waste heat out of the exhaust. A modern car would also have a thermostatically regulated condenser in order to preventby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Full Steam Proposal for Auto Mfrs - 4 months ago
I'd certainly argue that batteries represent a better path forward...and they are improving. Allegedly, Volkswagen just came up with a way to prevent lithium from catching fire --- this means we can utilize a higher precentage lithium and extend battery range another 50 percent. There's other chemistries and processes, including nanotech, that promise to likewise boost battery performance. Nikoby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Full Steam Proposal for Auto Mfrs - 4 months ago
Hi Rick, The problem is that you are taking a component valuable in one tiny niche of steam technology and trying to apply it across the entire field. Note that the title of this thread is "Full Steam Proposal for Manufacturers". This pretty much stipulates that we need a steam system that can somehow be competitive in the modern market; unfortunately, feed heaters are most valuablby frustrated - SteamStuff
Re: Full Steam Proposal for Auto Mfrs - 4 months ago
The latent heat of vaporization has to do with the difference between reversible and irreversible processes. We can compress steam and heat it, or expand steam and cool it --- this is a reversible process. We can't do the same thing with condensation, once you reject the heat to condense the steam, that heat is gone...to the tune of 947 BTU per pound with steam. You can extract work from reversiby frustrated - SteamStuff