steam!

[George M. Dailey]

At 11:59 PM 9/14/96 -0700, you wrote:
>
>  Allright! Anybody got any good ideas about how to reclaim the water when it's
>been thru the engine?....
>   I heard of a guy locally that put a outboard motor in a ups like truck with
>a homemade rotary valve and "modern" boiler(this was in the mid 70's) There
>were 
>several little problems, but one of them was to much power. He hooked the crank
>direct to the driveline, no tranny. You had to be careful with the throttle
>because
>it had a tendency to fry the 4 rear tires...
>Superheated steam(1200psi) in the case of a ruptured pipe can be invisible,
>and if you happen to walk by can cut your leg off without warning so they tell 
>me at the local steam generating plant. Anyhow suffice it to say that 1200psi
>anything in a vehicle is going to have a real rough time with the market, and 
>govt.'s.

Hi Tom, I'm a super critical power plant worker (761 mega watt of net
generation using 3,600psi steam at 1,005 F). I have thought about this same
concept. A simple surface condenser (air cooled radiator) would be able to
condense the vapor back to water (plant folks call it condensate). You would
need a big one in my opinion, because of the other hot gases in the exhaust
stream. If you could seperate the water vapor from the uncondensable exhaust
gases,  before going to the surface condenser, you could use a smaller unit.

Now, let's say you reclaim each and every drop of water. You've got another
technical tid bit to overcome. You will have to purify the condensate before
you put it back into your piston turbine or engine. Welcome to the
un-glamorous world of water purififation! In any steam plant, water
purification is the single most inportant item. Bad water/steam quality has
caused more high dollar damage to steam and water equipment than any thing
else, period! Yea, yea... I now some real smart person is saying "We'll just
put one of them there real fine filters in line and call it fixed." It's not
just the undissolved solids that will have to be removed. MOST of the
dissolved solids will have to go also. "Filters" that remove dissolved
solids are called Reverse Osmossis units and they cost much more than
regular filter systems. And of course, there are de-ionization systems that
will do the same.  As one DIYer said, early attempts of this have lead to
chemically fouled engines.

Cleaning the water isn't impossible. It just adds to the technical
complexity (cost) of the steam engine. Our water treatment plant is our
largest cost in our operation and mainteance budget. Keep in mind that we
reuse most of our water.

I've been within a 20 feet of leaking super critical steam, you would
recieve severe heat burns long before you got near enough to be cut by the
steam. Also, steam leaking under high pressure and temperature gives off
it's own audible warning, like a 100' cobra. This still might not be fool proof.

I'm fairly certain that supercritical steam has no place in the automotive
market, a 100-300psi system might be feasable.

Think about this, a turbine connected between the rear axle and tranny (to
assist the engine). Hot water from the engine is routed to water jacketed
exhaust manifolds for 'super heating'. This steam is then routed to the
drive shaft turbine. Low pressure steam leaves the turbine and enters the
radiator or back to the engine to be condensed or heated again. And, don't
forget the water purification unit right before the turbine. 

I'm sure there is a simple reason why this will not work, besides cost. I
don't know it. Let's see what the thermodynamic experts say.

GMD