Why not steam-electric hybrid autos?

Question

Using a small steam engine, which is more efficient, cleaner and simpler than an IC engine, to run an alternator to keep the batteries charged to power the electric motors, solves the problem of short ranges for EV's. It also solves the drawbacks of straight steam power. Water tube boilers do not explode. Thermoelectrics could also generate electricity from the waste heat making it more efficient. It could also use any liquid or gaseous fuel made, reducing dependence on oil.

The steam engine people feel steam is perfect as is, it's not, and refuse to consider a hybrid. The electric vehicle people feel EV's are perfect, they are not, and refuse to consider a hybrid. The Internal Combustion people are married to Big Oil and their hybdrids are so complex to hold down the normal IC pollution that they break down regularly. Can't afford to build one myself. Anyone interested out there?

Answer 1

Good question.

There's a mountain of common sense in your suggestions, and I've never really worked out why there hasn't been more finance for development work in this field.

The problem started toward the end of the 19th Century and the battle to provide the right engine for the 'horseless carriage'. The internal combustion engine won and the steam engine came second. The 'steamer' needed time to warm up, it needed to carry its fuel and water aboard, and it took time to get up to speed - in short it wasn't very glamorous. So the small steam engine was relegated to the ranks of the 'cranks' and the 'eccentrics', whilst the internal combustion engine became the transporter of the world.

For a hundred years, tens if not hundreds of thousands of thermodynamic engineers have researched and developed improvements to the motor car engine, financed by the oil, automobile, and aero industries. A mere handful of engineers have done the same for the small steam engine with virtually no financing whatever.

Had competition been maintained, with the steam engine and internal combustion engine getting equal funding, there is not doubt that steam engines and steam/electric hybrids would today be powering the worlds road transport. But sadly you can't change history and that's the way it was, and today we are stuck with inefficient, polluting, but highly sophisticated petrol and diesel engines.

I'm like you and can't afford to build an electro/steamer myself, but maybe there is a corporate body, or financial institution, or government somewhere out there, willing to spend billions over the next twenty or so years with the potential for a hundredfold return, and a Nobel Prize or two for saving the planet.

Answer 2

good idea. some sensible comments to. Some people really have no idea about steam do they? In the 1950's there were small light steam engines with small light boilers, tube boilers!

So tube boilers are a practical desing, they have improved a lot since the 50's. By the way steam engineering has not been left to back yarders at all, remember steam engines and other related heat engines are widely used in industry, both the turbine and reciprocating type.

The condensor is the largest part.  Water is no issue at all as it is reused not wasted as in wild wst cowboy movies. Waiting time is not much of one either as it takes less than 5 minutes to raise steam in a well designed boiler  suitable for a car. So a modest battery is the go. But the suggestion for an efficient stirling engine is an even better idea.

suggestions that external combustionengines are inherently more dangerous than internal ones is simply false.

A well designed steam engine /cycle will give reasonable efficiency as will a stirling engine. However a deisol engine also has good efficiency and should not be ruled out. They are also easy to modify to use a variety of fuels.

But the best solution may be to accept any limitations inthe existing Evs re range and change the ways we use them/own them. If we dropped our foolish habit of owning cars and instead hired on demand, from a well set up hire facility, we could use the most appropriate vehicle for every journey, a small light EV to do the shopping ,pick up the kids, go to work, as EV sports coupe to impress, a SUV for that bush trip, a bus to move the gang, and as by hireing we share the cost of ownership, we can afford to have all the vehicles we ever wanted. And we wouldnt have to buy the biggest just in case we need it one day and be forced to drive it because we now dont have an option.

Imagine walking down your street maybe 20 yrds to the nearest vehicle waving your rental card at it and driving off, if it wasnt what you wanted you could order a specific one at the terminal, one every 20 yrds, or ring even, or you could drive to a near by yard to make a better selection, drive to your destination and leave it in a designated deposit area. You only pay for the actual use you make of the vehicle, you nwever pay for parking space, you never pay while it is sitting around, because some one else will probably be using it.  Some one is going to make a fortune setting this system up.  The technology exists, the software exists and is used with bicycles in several cities, so why not cars?

Answer 3

Why not simply use a sterling engine

Answer 4

Stanley steam cars, very successful

They even built and flew a steam plane !!!

Look at the Electric cars around the world, that is the way to go.  In the UK we are still building rubbish, but we are not backed up by government

We used to have lots of electric vehiles in this country.

Including Trolley busses and trams

How about using compressed air

Answer 5

Steam-electric would work well; and is infact the basis of most "pure" electric vehicles.

the key is the steam generator, which has to be very heavy, "boiler plated", even with tube boilers  and leave it fixed at recharging points (or connected to an electric grid), where it can easily be fed by a variety of heavy fuels, even wood chip, from a bunker; and have appropriate scrubbers and filters fitted to reduce sparks, Nox and Co2 etc.

Some central heating boilers generate electric in the ways you describe.

the batteries would only need a 10 minute charge every 250 miles or so. http://www.altairnano.com/markets_amps.h... (if chevron/texaco don't buy the Li battery patents like they did for NiMH used in current hybrids so they can only do 3 miles in ev only mode)

Answer 6

You know what i was actually thinking about that myself recently. if a train could have a steam engine why couldnt we make a small modified hybrid steam engine in a car. i guess the folks designing cars are inundated with a large amount of different alternative fuels, technologies and engines to deal with and they havent thought about the benefits of such an engine. ultimately hydrogen will be the fuel of america, california currently is leading the way developing a hydrogen highway and signing up hundreds of stations to offer the new revolutionary fuel, currently there are only few inefficient ways to extract hydrogen but shorty we will develop more efficient methods of acquiring hydrogen. and hybrids will most certainly play a role going forward even with using hydrogen as a fuel. hydrogen is abundant and able to supply our growing fuel needs, while biofuels will not be able to. biofuels take away from land needed to grow our food supply. current government subsidies for the fuel encourage the massive clear cutting of trees to make way for farms, this is an unsustainable path, i absolutely do not believe ethanol or biofuels will play a large role in the future of the autmobile.

Answer 7

And how would you heat the water for the steam? Internal combustion engine! or a fire which is more polutant than an engine so its kinda flawed

Answer 8

This is a great idea. Steam is one of the most efficient way to produce electricity. I think you would want to model it after the coal plants that provide power for most the world. They are closed circuit mercury vapor steam engines.

You don't have to use mercury you just want something with a lower boiling point than water. Then you want to make sure the steam to liquid circuit is closed to recycle the liquid and as much of the pressure as possible. It wouldn't need to be very large and you could put behind a blast plate for safety.

As another poster said you could use a Stirling engine to capture the external combustion. In that case the internal gas you would use would be hydrogen. The cool thing about the Stirling is there is no wast heat to recapture

There are some guys at Penn state who have developed a solid state generator using peltier junctions. They intend for it to provide power in remote places using the heat from your stove. This seems like the perfect tech for hybrids. Its safe quiet and has no moving parts!

All three of these generator types are very similar in principle. Capture the movement created by heat use it to produce electricity. The Stirling and Peltier junction have an advantage in that their efficiency should go up the in cold weather because the temperature difference wold be greater.

I think the peltier junction will prove to be the best because of it lack of moving parts. That means less wait, less matanice and lower manufacturing costs.

Answer 9

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I was a bit taken aback by your question, as steam engines are not known for their efficiency (as low as 1% efficient, according to Wikipedia), but an internet search turned up some interesting research in this area. So sure, it is an idea worth exploring.

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Short EV ranges are not a problem anymore, however, with the development of fast recharge batteries (Altairnanos.) The batteries in these electric cars can be charged in just 10 minutes, and the ZAP-X has a driving range of 350 miles:

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http://zapworld.com/ZAPWorld.aspx?id=456...

http://phoenixmotorcars.com

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Answer 10

good idea BUT in order to make steam you need a presser vessel that would have to have very high psi if you were ever in a accident you might survive the impact but when the presser vessel blew you would not only have live steam you would have sharp metal pieces flying all over the place. and where on a car are you going to put a vessel that would be capable of making enough steam to go anywhere the thing would be to heavy defeating the purpose think electric no gas no oil no emissions no worries

Answer 11

A very good question. However I remember steam trains, and though they could go almost as fast as the latest British trains they took longer in getting up speed. This meant they were much slower than electric trains on commuter runs.

Back in the 1960's one of the American police forces (Chicago I think) experimented with oil fired steam cars, but it worked out costly & unreliable plus took time to gain speed.

However I remember reading an article where a number of scientists agreed that the worst invention was the internal combustion engine. The scientists felt that much more would and could have been done to improve steam power,  but was now considered to be a waste of time and money investigating. So perhaps we should start seriously considering using steam again.

Answer 12

steam cannot produce enough power efficently for use as an automobile, mainly because of the size tanks that would be needed, this is why the 'steam car' didnt work out in the 1800's

Answer 13

Your question is good and demonstrates "thinking outside the box."  The things to remember are your source of energy (you suggested 'some liquid or gaseous fuel') and your end goal (to move an automobile).  In between those two things is your proposed solution.  The generally sought after solutions today are ones that either use fuels more efficiently, or use cheaper fuels.  This one seems to fall into the first category but has the great potential of being multi-fuel.

The problem with many designs is excessive complexity.  Even the gas-electric hybrid drive train in the Toyota Prius is excessively complex. If it wasn't produced by masters of reliability, it would fail to be practical.

So the challenges to overcome in developing your design would seem to be:

1. Maximizing the efficiency of the fuel-to-steam pressure conversion, followed closely by the efficiency of the steam-to-mechanical motion conversion that drives the generator.  The remainder of the electrical drive train is already reasonably efficient and would not offer a lot of return for redesigning its components.

2. Dealing with the delay between firing up the boiler and creating the head of steam need for the first steam-produced electricity.  Might this be a battery of some sort that could begin moving the vehicle while you wait on the steam to build up?

3. Capturing the left-over steam when you go to shut down the vehicle at the end of a drive.  Again a battery might store some of it.  Retaining the pressure as steam would take some advanced thermodynamic design to keep it hot because once cooled, the steam will have lost all its energy.

4. 'Thermoelectrics' devices such as thermocouples or Peltier-junction devices can do what you are saying but are still rather inefficient and expensive.  This is a kind of "holy grail" for internal combustion engineers because about 75% of energy that goes into a gasoline engine is lost as waste heat.  It would be an amazing breakthrough to reclaim some of it.

5. Managing the high degree complexity in the proposed design.