Engines...

[TransMan]

Originally posted by PyRo

How are you going to keep people from pushing them hard, beaing on them, deciding they can do there own work etc. Now the worst that happens is a car will catch fire, and you have plenty of time to get away from it. An explosion is a little differant.

"Hold on mr explosion while I get out of the way ok?"

Well you could have safty features like a presure release valve so it the presure of the steam got to a critical point it would just vent out. Also if someone pushed one hard enough to blow it up they would be going WELL over 100mph and most people dont want to go that fast. Just to prove a point back in the early 1900's the stanley brother built a two cylinder steam car that went over 100 mph which was about 3 times as fast as any gasoline car would go.

[Python14]

Transman....you don't drive very often do you? First of all, imagine a hot summer day, 106* in the shade, stuck in a traffic jam on a black asphalt interstate with 1500 steam engines chugging away. I hope there is a frozen wasteland nearby because in about 10 minutes time, 1500 steam engines would be venting excess pressure in the form of BOILING HOT STEAM. Now imagine ONE blow-off valve malfunctioning and a 1000 lb steam pressure vessal exploding, sending boiling water, scalding hot steel, and a propane gas explosion the size of a small blimp 360*. Now imagine this happening a couple times in a major city like Atlanta or Dallas.
Steam may have been super neato 100 years ago....but do remember, there is a reason the railroad industry puts steam engines on display in HISTORY museums.


I still stand behind diesel. Not as a permenant fix, but something that we can use until another resource comes up that makes alternative fuels a good idea. Hydrogen cells, battery powered cars, and nuclear fission cars are cool and all, and I'm sure with lots of work, they could all be atlease viable....but they simply are not within reach economically. Susan Sarandon and Tim Robins can tell me how eco-friendly the Prius is, but until it can haul 2 cords of firewood and tow a boat, it's not on my list of cars to buy. It's one thing to be expensive. It's another to simply be fiscally not possible.

[PyRo]

How much more efficant are electric cars? That electricity does have to come from somewhere you know.

[SGTKennedy]

screw all that hybrid/electric/air/hydro stuff, we need to work on telekinesis.

the electricity has to be generated somehow,
If the electricity is produced using a STEAM TURBINE in a Nuclear power plant its not burning fossil fuels. and eventually we will just start blasting the radio-waste into space.

Also what is a more effecient way to do things? using the pressure of exploding fossil fuels to push a piston, and needing cooling mechanisims to remove unwanted heat or using teh heat from a less explosive fuel to boil water to turn steam turbine.

Or the electricity could have come from an alternative source such as wind generators or the hoover dam.

my hs chemistry teacher was an EcoNut and he went on and on about how ineffecient internal combustion engines are. He couldnt naysay though because we dont have any real alternatives yet.

[PyRo]

If we blast radio waste into space eventually we are going to kill a bunch of aliens who will retaliate

[Python14]

how can they retaliate if we've killed em all?

[PyRo]

I said a bunch, not all

[SGTKennedy]

if they die from our radio waste, then they will also die from our nukes. problem solved. kinda like the russians. its called MAD.

[PyRo]

But do we have nukes capable of hitting worlds millions of miles away

[SlartyBartFast]

Originally posted by cphilip
No I think you were right Pyro.... I think it would take more energy to compress the air need than it would take to just put it directly into making the car move directly.

[Ironmag]

Originally posted by SlartyBartFast

What REALLY interests me about the air car though is the possible technology application to paintball. What technology you ask? Look at how the tanks are filled! The on-board compressor can fill 90 cubic meters to 300 bar in 5 1/2 hours! That would be hundreds of 88 cu in tanks to 4350psi every minute! And it plugs into 230Vac with a 120Vac model available.

It would be interesting if you could hook up your car to you PB marker and have near infinite shots per tank. Oh what a thought. Just picture parking you car next to the field and towing a 300 ft air line, might be rediculous but who cares, no worries about running out of air.

[Maksimus54]

You don't need a steam engine to use propane in a car. Propane conversion kits have been around for a long time. My dad used to drive a 454 suburban with a propane conversion, it let him switch between gas and propane so when he was just driving he could use the super efficient propane and when he needed to haul a lot of stuff he would use gas. Propane as an energy source is very feasable, and also cheaper than gas. In california I believe most of their public transportation is natural gas powered.

[Python14]

I've seen some pretty cool propane trucks before. The problem is, since it's a pressurized gas and requires pressure rated equipment, it's asking for trouble. How many times have you gone to the paintball field and someone's gun/tank/hose/whatever is leaking? And that's with like 3 different fittings that only need loctite(and some don't even need that). Imagine an engine with 300 HP fittings, each one requiring a corrosion resistent seal and probably some little EPA cover....and then imagine your redneck neighbor taking the engine apart and forgetting two fittings. KABOOM!

Moral of the story: Until people are smart enough to operate loctite, a powerplant with pressure fittings is an accident waiting to happen. That doesn't mean I don't like the idea though. Next to Diesel, Propane is my favorite fuel(that's why I mix em )

[mcveighr]

Assuming the electric car was charged from a coal plant, its less efficient than a gas/diesel engine.

I think gas's efficiency is around 50% , diesel is like 55-60% and coal is 40%ish.

[SlartyBartFast]

Assuming the electric car was charged from a coal plant, its less efficient than a gas/diesel engine.

I think gas's efficiency is around 50% , diesel is like 55-60% and coal is 40%ish.

Electric cars powered by dirty generation may also have a greater effect on the environment too.

However, generation palnts can have smokestack scrubbers installed. Thousands of individual vehicles can't.

Discussing efficiency is pointless. If a process is only 2% efficient, but cheaper to run than a process that's 90% efficient, efficiency certainly won't be your deciding factor.

And as far as alternative fueled cars go... Well, in university I was a member of the student SAE association. Our group won honours and prizes in two modification projects. On was making a corsica run on Methanol, the other was making a GMC Sierra run on propane.

In both cases, once the team was finished with them neither could run on regular gasoline any more. However, both were more powerful than their gasoline powered original state.

Can accomplish a lot with turbos, compressors, and shaved blocks and heads.