The large and heavy parts of a steam engine are the boiler and condenser.
The cruising speed of a power plant is that of the earth, plus its rotation. Your blender and blow dryer do not run at the speed of the power plants. There’s nothing wrong with a steam engine running generating electricity at its peak efficient speed and use that electricity to supplement a main engine.
Regarding the Tesla turbine idea, it requires very closely spaced plates. It would be fine for a stationary power plant, but when it is subjected to various potholes and rail crossing, isolating these shocks get expensive.
Modern steam plants use every trick in the book to get that efficiency including superheating the steam, sending the exhaust steam of the high pressure turbine back to the furnace for reheating before it enters the medium pressure turbine and reheating the medium pressure turbine’s exhaust steam again before entering the low pressure steam turbine and finally exhausting the low pressure steam into a vacuum in the condenser, not to mention using leftover heat from the flue gasses to preheat the feedwater into the boiler.
A simple single stage open cycle steam engine is only going to yield about 5 to 10% overall efficiency, no matter how efficient a Tesla turbine alledgedly is.
The cruising speed of a power plant is that of the earth, plus its rotation. Your blender and blow dryer do not run at the speed of the power plants.
Whoa, I missed the “Nonsense Ahead” sign. Give me a minute to put on my Patient Hat. Okay, there.
I don’t expect my blender, blow dryer, or my coal fired power plant to propel themselves (and all their associated weight and power supplies) from Point A to Point B. Apple, meet Orange. Orange, meet Jackfruit.
A friend of mine once rebuilt an Onan opposed twin diesel generator (1800rpm) to power his Denver home…He used the cooling system to heat his domestic hot water. He captured most of the exhaust heat through a heat exchanger that he built to heat his house. Very few BTU’s escaped his system. Keeping everything “balanced” was a little tricky, he was always modifying it, (all manually operated controls) and after a year or two he lost interest and scrapped it…But I think a modern, properly designed and engineered system like that has potential. If you don’t waste any of the heat, very high efficiency can be obtained…
Hmmm, Onan is owned by Cummins. For anyone who knows their Bible there’s a joke there.
Serious question: Did your friend’s approach end up being cheaper than using the grid’s electric/gas/kerosene/etc. ?
I think, all in all, the mechanics and complication of using this type of hybrid system in a vehicle that will be used on America’s (or other) roadways will render it useless in very short order.
Regardless of all the above interesting information (I didn’t research at all other than reading this thread), there’s still one problem that won’t be overcome by any notion I can think of…
Speed.
Rather, fluctuations in speed.
When was the last time a train, boat, or any other vehicle or motor run by steam had to accelerate to get out of a problem, pull off the line with any kind of speed, or slow down and speed up in traffic of the type we regularly see on many of our highways and byways?
Overcome that, and maybe it’s (extremely unlikely, but) possible.
Chase
I’m curious about the cost of the diesel fuel. Did it save him money as opposed to his previous electrical, hot water, and heating systems?
I’m also curious as to whether he’s operating an alternator off that motor or has converted his house to DC. AC cannot be stored.
I have to add that I had my old oil burning boiler (forced hot air) replaced with an ultra high efficiency natural gas burner (I had a gas line). I’ve had it through two winters and it’s saved me a ton of money. It’s so efficient that rather than use the chimney its exhaust is vented through a PVC pipe. It also uses outside air for the combustion process.
The new stuff is amazingly efficient.
Well - there have been people working on a 6 cycle engine, with the first 4 being the normal otto cycle, and the 5/6 being used to inject water. This would then make steam which cools off the cylinder and adds an extra stroke of power as well. Crower is one guy who has worked on it: http://www.autoweek.com/article/20060227/free/302270007
The main issues against this idea seem to come down to difficulty re-capturing the water (to avoid having to add/carry so much), rust, and freezing temperatures.