Why can't we power cars with water/steam?

Tim Pool made a valid argument the other night on his show in regards to our electricity production. Our 3 main sources are natural gas, coal and nuclear. All 3 forms (even the lesser mentioned like hydro/wind) use conservation of energy to produce electricity by heating water to produce steam that spin turbines w/ magnets to power generators. I may have something wrong, but in a nutshell that's what everything boils down to (no pun intended).

With that being said, and with the greatest technological advancements in human history happening in the last century, why can't we apply this to automobiles?

There are already alternators in automobiles that keep power in the battery. Couldn't we opt for a cheaper alternative like natural gas instead of petrol that heats a canister of salt-water, that powers a turbine and is ejected into a condensing tank where it can be relooped back into the system?

I'm curious and look forward to hearing why this would or wouldn't be a good idea so we can figure out how to work around any issues. I'm not a car mechanic, but I am mechanically inclined as a builder. Maybe, with a little insight from someone more privy to the way a car operates and functions, could cast some doubt on this.

I'd love to take on a weekend hobby attempting to learn about and build a water-powered engine.. I have a pretty rudimentary idea of what my project would encompass..

Natural Gas heats water. Water produces steam. Steam replaces petrol. Rotation of wheels keeps alternator going, making consumption of natural gas less, using only when idled. Water is relooped in a condensation chamber that goes through your air conditioning coolant (or you could just put more water in every now and then....). I know, pretty rudimentary...

Just call me crazy..I don't know why "electrolysis" is the only way to power a car on water when you can also convert the water to steam.

Granted, I didn't say "FREE", but "alternative". To be honest, cheaper, natural gas is 1/2 the price of petrol you buy at a gas station.

They were making nuclear powered steam cars in the 1960's

No joke, look it up.



a reply to: JimmyNeutr0n

originally posted by: nonspecific
They were making nuclear powered steam cars in the 1960's

No joke, look it up.



a reply to: JimmyNeutr0n

en.wikipedia.org...

haha

This reply is one of the reasons why I love ATS

I think the main issue was in a crash you had a potential steam explosion and a nuclear leak.

Not a great combo on top of an rta really.

As to the gas option you get lpg cars already but it's not viable long term and the infrastructure is complex for refuelling.


a reply to: JimmyNeutr0n

Ford currently produces vehicles to be upfitted with compressed natural gas(CNG) or propane. I know there are some vehicles in the U.S., Canada,Mexico, the Middle East and Africa. It's usually done to fleet vehicles and I believe is around 7,500 to modify.

I would guess it's an efficiency thing, not that an IC engine is very efficient. And a boiler takes time to heat up..just guesses.

IC engines can run on natural gas, the idea never took off though, vs propane, not here anyway. My friend had a van converted to CNG, the tanks were smallish, and there was only a few stations that could fill it, that was decades ago, I don't think much has changed.

We have kits in the UK that convert big engined petrol cars to run on LPG or petrol as it's cheaper on LPG but it never really caught on.



a reply to: frogs453

What would the feasibility of putting a steam system into those cars along with? Without nuclear reaction though, because although it would be unsafe in the event of leaks caused by crashes, however....it would give a more sustained amount of energy as opposed to natural gas...

Edit: So would boil down to efficiency basically..

a reply to: JimmyNeutr0n

I've been wondering why they aren't scaling down the Tesla turbine and fitting a couple in the engine bay of the Tesla cars.

That way you could trickle charge your electric vehicle using the energy you're losing to air resistance as you're driving.

originally posted by: rounda
a reply to: JimmyNeutr0n

I've been wondering why they aren't scaling down the Tesla turbine and fitting a couple in the engine bay of the Tesla cars.

That way you could trickle charge your electric vehicle using the energy you're losing to air resistance as you're driving.

Again, it might be about efficiency, the weight of the turbine(not familliar with) or the size it would have to be, in order for the car to retain aerodynamics, may make it a net 0, or even net-. Again, I'm just guessing.

originally posted by: nonspecific
They were making nuclear powered steam cars in the 1960's

No joke, look it up.



a reply to: JimmyNeutr0n

Nuclear powered steam cars. What could go wrong?

DUDE!

They made a car that runs on water!


Then it went boom.

So you want to burn whatever fuel for several hours before your car will move? That is what steam takes. Years ago I ran three boilers that were each the size of a small house. It took over an hour of burning natural gas before they started building pressure when cold.

You have to burn and shovel in coal to a steam locomotive that burns coal for about 24 hours before it can move.

Wood gasification would be easier and faster to use. Those systems take less than an hour. But then you are cutting down all those trees.

a reply to: JimmyNeutr0n


Land Speed Record for a " Steam Powered Car " 155 mph set in 2009. The record had lasted since 1906.

On 25 August 2009, at Edwards Air Force base in California, Charles Burnett III drove the British Steam Car ‘Inspiration’ to a new Land Speed Record for steam power, recording an average speed of 139.843mph. The next day Don Wales, grandson of Sir Malcolm Campbell, drove the car even faster, setting a kilometre record with an average speed of 148.166mph. Altogether the team claimed five international and American speed records

nationalmotormuseum.org.uk...

originally posted by: beyondknowledge
So you want to burn whatever fuel for several hours before your car will move? That is what steam takes. Years ago I ran three boilers that were each the size of a small house. It took over an hour of burning natural gas before they started building pressure when cold.

You have to burn and shovel in coal to a steam locomotive that burns coal for about 24 hours before it can move.

Wood gasification would be easier and faster to use. Those systems take less than an hour. But then you are cutting down all those trees.

Beyond coal, how long would it take for a natural gas flame to heat a 5 gallon bucket of water? Couldn't the moment of the wheels also come into play for conservation of energy?

a reply to: frogs453

Friend of mine converted his Toyota Yaris to propane. It only needed to be filled up about once a month, not even. Although it was a large tank / bottle, but to fill it would cost about half what a full tank of gas would have been, and he only needed to change his oil once a year, and it would almost still look like new when he changed it.
Thing eventually died due to just so many KMs put on the engine, when he converted it it already had about 100,000km on it.

originally posted by: JimmyNeutr0n
Tim Pool made a valid argument the other night on his show in regards to our electricity production. Our 3 main sources are natural gas, coal and nuclear. All 3 forms (even the lesser mentioned like hydro/wind) use conservation of energy to produce electricity by heating water to produce steam that spin turbines w/ magnets to power generators. I may have something wrong, but in a nutshell that's what everything boils down to (no pun intended).

With that being said, and with the greatest technological advancements in human history happening in the last century, why can't we apply this to automobiles?

There are already alternators in automobiles that keep power in the battery. Couldn't we opt for a cheaper alternative like natural gas instead of petrol that heats a canister of salt-water, that powers a turbine and is ejected into a condensing tank where it can be relooped back into the system?

I'm curious and look forward to hearing why this would or wouldn't be a good idea so we can figure out how to work around any issues. I'm not a car mechanic, but I am mechanically inclined as a builder. Maybe, with a little insight from someone more privy to the way a car operates and functions, could cast some doubt on this.

I'd love to take on a weekend hobby attempting to learn about and build a water-powered engine.. I have a pretty rudimentary idea of what my project would encompass..

Natural Gas heats water. Water produces steam. Steam replaces petrol. Rotation of wheels keeps alternator going, making consumption of natural gas less, using only when idled. Water is relooped in a condensation chamber that goes through your air conditioning coolant (or you could just put more water in every now and then....). I know, pretty rudimentary...

Just call me crazy..I don't know why "electrolysis" is the only way to power a car on water when you can also convert the water to steam.

Granted, I didn't say "FREE", but "alternative". To be honest, cheaper, natural gas is 1/2 the price of petrol you buy at a gas station.

William Lear Sr. spent quite a few of his millions working on a modern steam powered car back in the late 1960s. I visited his lab in Reno around that time to see what kind of progress he was making and to talk to his engineers. Some of the conclusions they came to were that water was not the best working fluid and that they had to invent a new configuration for the expander motor. They ended up using a fluorocarbon (like Freon) instead of water and a motor configuration similar to a torpedo motor.

You can look at some of their history here:

www.virtualsteamcarmuseum.org...

The biggest problem, and the one that killed the project is that with a closed thermodynamic cycle you have to recondense all the vapor that comes out of the exhaust end of the motor so you can cycle liquid back through the burner. That takes huge radiators. With an internal combustion engine, you dump the hot exhaust directly into the atmosphere, so the radiator only has to be big enough to get rid of the heat that makes its way into the engine block. They found that, as a practical matter, they couldn’t pack enough radiators into a vehicle to close the thermodynamic cycle.

Water is around 7 pounds a gallon. It would take a tremendous amount of water to produce enough steam to go across town. A 25 gallon tank in a car is not much water, and bigger is a lot of weight.

originally posted by: JimmyNeutr0n

originally posted by: beyondknowledge
So you want to burn whatever fuel for several hours before your car will move? That is what steam takes. Years ago I ran three boilers that were each the size of a small house. It took over an hour of burning natural gas before they started building pressure when cold.

You have to burn and shovel in coal to a steam locomotive that burns coal for about 24 hours before it can move.

Wood gasification would be easier and faster to use. Those systems take less than an hour. But then you are cutting down all those trees.

Beyond coal, how long would it take for a natural gas flame to heat a 5 gallon bucket of water? Couldn't the moment of the wheels also come into play for conservation of energy?

You cannot just light a cold boiler and open it up to high fire. It has to dry out and heat up slowly or it will start falling apart on you. Five gallons might get you a couple of miles after an hour of heating. You would have to have at least 100 gallons of water to get any range, preheated by some of the steam from that 5 gallon boiler. Unless you are thinking about recovering the dead steam by condensing it but that would double the size of the engine. Not practicle in a car sized vehicle.

originally posted by: rounda
a reply to: JimmyNeutr0n

I've been wondering why they aren't scaling down the Tesla turbine and fitting a couple in the engine bay of the Tesla cars.

That way you could trickle charge your electric vehicle using the energy you're losing to air resistance as you're driving.

You’ve just proposed a perpetual motion machine.

You’re proposing to take electricity out of the batteries, power electric motors to make the car move through the air, and then extract energy out of the airflow to charge the batteries. There are efficiency losses at every step in that process. Any attempt to extract energy out of the airflow increases the air resistance which increases the amount of energy you have to pull out of the batteries, and that amount is always going to be greater than the amount you can recover from the airstream.