Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Hybrid
Clean Power Technologies developing a steam hybrid system
British company Clean Power Technologies is working on a novel new type of hybrid powertrain. They are taking advantage of the fact in an internal combustion engine upwards of thirty-five percent of the energy in the fuel goes out the exhaust pipe in the form of heat in the exhaust gases and a similar amount is dissipated by the cooling system. Clean Power wants to recapture that lost heat energy and store it in the form of steam.
So far that seems like a good idea, the problem is that in the confined space of a car utilizing steam can be problematic. The hot exhaust and cooling system are used to produce the steam which is stored in an accumulator. Power plants use steam to drive turbines and generators. A car would be unlikely to generate enough steam flow to keep a turbine running. Instead Clean Power is using a pair of Mazda RX-8s to develop their system. They have modified the Wankel rotary so that one rotor runs normally on gasoline while the other is driven by steam.
Over the next year they will be modifying the RX-8s and testing them. It will be interesting to see if the steam system can add enough power to the drivetrain to overcome the extra weight or whether it will be better than just a smaller displacement engine of similar efficiency. We'll be keeping an eye on this unique new approach.
[Source: Clean Power Technologies]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
A.Brien 2:56PM (5/20/2007)
The market don't want to create and commercialize
water energy because they tend to protect numerous
jobs of endless improvements, that protect
engineers jobs, re-tooling jobs, ads jobs, politicians jobs, journalists jobs, goverment
bureaucrats jobs. All these jobs are protected
if there are problems with something. What they
forget is the extra money save on not necessary energy can be spent on more fantasy cars (luxury
and performance and speed), motorcycle on weekend,
more plane for more vacations outside, so on and on.
Reply
Arnie 3:08PM (5/20/2007)
What about the BMW system?
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/12/bmw_developing_.html
"The steam is then conducted directly into an expansion unit linked to the crankshaft of the internal combustion engine. Most of the remaining residual heat is absorbed by the cooling circuit of the engine, which acts as the second energy supply for the Turbosteamer."
This seems like a much more elegant solution.
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Tormod Henne 10:25AM (5/21/2007)
Instead of adding a steam system, we can use this technique (the six-stroke engine) and remove the cooling system:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Crower%27s_Six-Stroke_Engine
Adding heavy gear to enhance efficiency is fine on stationary systems, but there is a penalty of carrying it around on mobile systems.
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Ben Tour 1:05PM (5/28/2007)
Crowers answer is an elegant one, still it can be significantly improved.
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G.Gopal 2:01AM (9/14/2008)
Dear all
The concept of steam hybrid engine, may be sucessfully deployed in CNG Engine operates with stoichiometric combustion technology. Generally engine operates with Lambda =1 and allows 35% heat rejection in exhaust and there is huge potential to capture the same by streram hybrid technology.
Will any one inform who will supply the steam engine for the above applications??
Thanks and regards
G.Gopal
Senior Manager,Alternate fuels
Reply