Water for fuel!!!

[Motu]

It's always been a puzzle to me how they make the internal cumbustion engine so efficient emission wise,and yet the external combustion engine,where they have greater control of the combustion process is not so good at all.It just has to be development - throw as much money into the various forms of external combution engine as has been poured into the internal job and I'm sure we'd see some results.Pssst,shssst,psssst,shsssst has got to be better than potato potato....

[El Dopa]

No worries. "The Crying Game"? She's a he...

Gaagh. I'll be taking those two back unwatched tomorrow. Oh well, at least I've got "the sixth sense" left. Can't wait to find out if Bruce Willis gets back together with his wife.

[kickingzebra]

So steam proponents are trying to tell me it is more efficient to take one drop of petrol, and use it to heat water, to generate steam, than it is to take one drop of petrol in a direct internal combustion engine??

I mean, OK, I think steam engines are wonderful, but that seems like an inefficient order of operations... Besides which, getting a new can on the gsxr would just not hold the same lustre.
Internal combustion rocks!!

[Ixion]

Yes, because you can have less heat wasted. Most of the energy (heat) generated by burning your drop of petrol in an IC engine gets wasted - blown out the exhaust or lost to the air. Because you only have one one-hundredth of a second to make use of the heat , to extract its energy and turn it into motion.- then it has to be scavenged away to make room for the next "drop".

But with external combustion you can utilise far more of the heat- you pass the hot gases through the exchanger as much as you want, in theory could do it until you reached ambient and there was no more heat to extract (in practice, that would not be efficient, but you get my drift).

To be sure, the steam engine has other losses (the steam needs to be condensed for one thing), but it can still be far more efficient than an IC engine.

[Hitcher]

Gaagh. I'll be taking those two back unwatched tomorrow. Oh well, at least I've got "the sixth sense" left. Can't wait to find out if Bruce Willis gets back together with his wife.

"I see dead people"...

Please let me know before you watch "Fight Club".

[Pixie]

wot Mr Pixie said. Steam engines are wonderful things. I just wish they were obtainable. Dunno about in a bike though, even with modern flash boilers 'twould be a bit bulky I think (love to be proved wrong though)

I saw in a New Scientist article,that the Swiss are developing a steam power unit in which the steam generator and engine would easily fit in a bike

[kickingzebra]

Ah thank you wise and wonderful people!! I hadn't thought of it quite like that...
I feel greatly enriched! Thankyou kiwibiker!!

Still, none the less, the roar of a good v twin... How can steam replicate or surpass that?

[Winston001]

Yes, because you can have less heat wasted. Most of the energy (heat) generated by burning your drop of petrol in an IC engine gets wasted - blown out the exhaust or lost to the air. Because you only have one one-hundredth of a second to make use of the heat , to extract its energy and turn it into motion.- then it has to be scavenged away to make room for the next "drop".

So why aren't internal combustion engines designed to vapourise the fuel before it gets to the cylinder head, using the waste heat? Adds more energy back into the equation.

[Motu]

Carburettor and heated inlet manifold,this is the main reason bikes will never pass emission tests or be as efficient as car engines.That's the main reason bikes are now going to fuel injection.

Big power outputs require external combustion - power stations and large ships use steem turbines.All it needs is billions of dollars of development...but there needs to be an end use,until there is it'll never be done by the big boys.I remember seeing a photo of a steam powered outboard once....jeez.