Wheels: Steam Car Speed Records

The British Steam Car Challenge noticed that the steam powered land speed record of has stood for over a hundred years. It was set at 121.57 mph in January of 1906. The Brits have decided to do something about it.

I considered making some pithy references to steam punk and Queen Victoria here, but honestly I've been thinking about steam cars for a while and not just because Jay Leno owns two. I wonder if examining the old technology would result in new found efficiency.

You see with the internal combustion engines you have a pretty involved system. Fuel and air has to get into the combustion chamber, get burned efficiently, and the results have to get pumped out. Then the process repeats. You have to worry about fuel spray and flame fronts and all sorts of things.

On the other hand with a steam engine, you can decouple the combustion process from the rest of the engine mechanics. Fuel burns efficiently in the boiler to produce pressurized steam (which can be handled in a closed system via condensers so you don't need to regularly add water). The steam is then used to carry that energy to the pistons. Unlike modern gasoline engines, you don't have waste products from combustion you have to expel which means an efficient two-stroke engine is fine. Even better, you can push the pistons both ways (up and down) and use the steam as it's own lubricant for the engines internals. Potentially this could create a very robust and efficient engine.

The problem is weight and start up time. Old steam engines used relatively lightweight, but still heavy, boilers which took a long time to reach operating temperature and pressure. But I think modern boiler design could overcome that. While we haven't been developing steam engines all this time, we have been developing more advanced boiler designs for all sorts of other uses like power plants and heating systems.

So I'm hopeful. Maybe the ecological answer to making power is steam. Wouldn't that be a kick?