Ethanol replacment for gasonline...

Bullsh!t.

Sorry, couldn't resist

YGPM

 

[SagaLore]

I was obsessed about this last night, ATOT haunts me even in my dreams...

Roger,
Pre-internal combustions engines: Why did they use water/steam to expand the piston, instead of just heating air?

 

External combustion engines = Steam engines.

How are you going to effectively heat air, transfer it to a piston while still admitting more cold air to the heatbox ?

Remember that back then we did not have liquid fuels such as gasoline and diesel fuel, all we had was coal, wood and whale oil. (Which is prohibitively expensive), this caused inventors to work with what they had, if liquid fuel was available at the time, I surmise that they would have burned the fuel in a external combustion chamber and routed those high pressure gasses to the pistons.

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: Roger
External combustion engines = Steam engines.

How are you going to effectively heat air, transfer it to a piston while still admitting more cold air to the heatbox ?

Remember that back then we did not have liquid fuels such as gasoline and diesel fuel, all we had was coal, wood and whale oil. (Which is prohibitively expensive), this caused inventors to work with what they had, if liquid fuel was available at the time, I surmise that they would have burned the fuel in a external combustion chamber and routed those high pressure gasses to the pistons.

It would be the same way they heated the water. You have 2 resevoirs - a cold resevoir, and a hot resevoir. The difference between the resevoirs is proportional to how much work can be done. What I'm asking is why they chose water over air?

The answer is because water has a very special property where the absorption of heat creates a very quick expansion of gas due to the kinetic transformation of the water particles. If you take a mixture of air and carbon dioxide, and apply heat to it, and then take water vapor and apply the same heat to it, which one creates more pressure within the same chamber volume?

edit: to clarify, the heat would be more than water's boiling point

 

It would be the same way they heated the water. You have 2 resevoirs - a cold resevoir, and a hot resevoir. The difference between the resevoirs is proportional to how much work can be done. What I'm asking is why they chose water over air?

The answer is because water has a very special property where the absorption of heat creates a very quick expansion of gas due to the kinetic transformation of the water particles. If you take a mixture of air and carbon dioxide, and apply heat to it, and then take water vapor and apply the same heat to it, which one creates more pressure within the same chamber volume?

What part of my answer do you not understand ?

How are you going to design and build a hot air boiler ?

You have a box which is sealed to contain the pressure, you apply tremendous heat, the air expands and it is used to push pistons, now, how are you going to admit frsh air into the heat box when it is pressurised ?

In a steam engine the water is sealed in a boiler as a liquid, you do not need to keep adding water, understand ?

Now, listen carefully, in a internal combustion engine adding water has no effect because you are not increasing the thermal efficiancy of the engine, nor are you adding more air and fuel, this is the ONLY WAY to increase horsepower and/or torque.

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: Roger

It would be the same way they heated the water. You have 2 resevoirs - a cold resevoir, and a hot resevoir. The difference between the resevoirs is proportional to how much work can be done. What I'm asking is why they chose water over air?

The answer is because water has a very special property where the absorption of heat creates a very quick expansion of gas due to the kinetic transformation of the water particles. If you take a mixture of air and carbon dioxide, and apply heat to it, and then take water vapor and apply the same heat to it, which one creates more pressure within the same chamber volume?

What part of my answer do you not understand ?

How are you going to design and build a hot air boiler ?

You have a box which is sealed to contain the pressure, you apply tremendous heat, the air expands and it is used to push pistons, now, how are you going to admit frsh air into the heat box when it is pressurised ?

In a steam engine the water is sealed in a boiler as a liquid, you do not need to keep adding water, understand ?

Now, listen carefully, in a internal combustion engine adding water has no effect because you are not increasing the thermal efficiancy of the engine, nor are you adding more air and fuel, this is the ONLY WAY to increase horsepower and/or torque.

Heh, I get what you're saying, I just don't believe that. I only agree that would be true if engines had a near 100% efficiency. But when you only have about 25% efficiency, what can we do to suck a little more out of that... you say that water would cool the gases... but I say that water converted to steam exerts a great pressure (at the expense of heat)... so if water was injected into the piston just after (complete) combustion, we could get rid of the radiator and let the steam exhaust excess heat. So more of the heat gets put to use.

I'm not saying steam would create more push from energy that didn't exist. I'm just saying it would create push from energy that is otherwise not getting used.

By the way, if a steam engine used air instead, you'd just have a pre-cold-resevoir to radiate heat through a heatsink, you wouldn't have to keep the system open. Air does expand and contract... but very little compared to water/steam - that is the point - you're pointing it out to me, what I already know, and I what I'm trying to say would be useful within an internal combustion engine.

Oh well. I guess we still disagree. No matter.

 

[Howard]

I just wanted to throw this in for you guys. Should have no/little emission of NOx.

Runs off of methanol/ethanol, possible 450Wh/kg by end of year