any word about rough fuel efficiency ratings, warm-up period, life-cycle reliability, unloaded engine acceleration?

Whats next? back to horse?

I've been looking for a modern buggy.

It burns fuel (to produce steam) so how can there be no exhaust?

It said it exhausts to the condenser so I guess it condenses the combustion vapors but then what happens to the resulting condensate?

I wonder if this could be used as a generator for electricity. Depending on noise and fuel efficiency, this might be a good solution for remote places without electrical lines or damamged lines.

Interesting development. Steam engines were highly developed for trains at the beginning of the twentieth century, having power strokes on the up and down (or forward and back) strokes. Their limitations back then were their size, and that eras limited metallurgical knowledge. I always thought steam could have been a major player in the automotive world, with developed corresponding advances over the years, had it not been for cheap gasoline at the birth of the automotive age.

So it is now interesting to see these types of developments. I, too, would like to see efficiency numbers. But again, another potential option in a market that will ultimately determine its own destinity. Just give us more options.

their website is brief, but to the point. the want to target every power market between 20 and 4,000+ hp.

sounds like it is time to talk to a businessman and find 1 market to start with.

multifuel generators for serial hybrid H1s for the military, perhaps?

There have been numerous attempts to revisit the steam cycle for automobiles. Its combustion is continous and can therefore be much cleaner than that of any reciprocating engine design. Note that this is only true if the fuel is free of contaminants such as sulphur and the burner designed for it. Steam power provides high low-end torque and a hyperbolic drop-off beyond a certain corner point - ideal for a vehicle.

Packaging has apparently been addressed in this design. However, overrall weight and, especially, crash safety are always issues - steam explosions were the reason Stirling, Benz and Daimler focussed on gas engines.

One serious downside is that it takes significant time to build up a head of steam. Therefore, a steam motor responds poorly to load changes (acceleration and deceleration demand from the driver). It is therefore best suited to powering vehicles traveling mostly at constant speed, e.g. ships, locomotives or large trucks on the freeway.

You can mask the lag with a hybrid system, which can also recuperate during braking and soak up the residual enthalpy in the boiler after you park the vehicle. As a result, the steam boiler and motor can be far smaller. However, the expense and weight of the entire system will be substantial.

The biggest problem facing an automotive steam engine is the condensor which these guy's claim to have solved. Now show me doing the job in a Pheonix summer and I will be impressed.

As per Rafael, external combustion can be great for controlling emissions (except for CO2). If they've solved the condenser problem, then the remaining major questions are efficiency and cost. High efficiency means materials exposed to sustained high temperatures which necessitates expensive, exotic metals or ceramics, etc. The beauty of the ICE is that exposure to very high temperature gases is alternated with exposure to cool gas, allowing the use of cheap materials in a relatively fuel-efficient engine.

Since limiting GHG will increasingly become the prime consideration, efficiency vis-a-vis comparable ICE engines should determine the viability of this approach.

Nick -

pls provide a link to a steam motor or turbine that requires ceramics. The temperatures involved in handling steam are far lower than those in ICEs or gas turbines.

Heres an interesting link:

http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/automo.Html

As far as waiting to build up steam pressure, I am not sure that would be much of a problem, considering even the cheapest automatic coffemaker can build up steam pressure/hot water, in as little as 5-10 seconds. Plus this engine, I would think, would inheritently stay warm overnight except in the extremest of cases. Perhaps if the efficiencies are there, they could run overnight in generator mode to connect to the grid somehow. Would be interesting to see this developed, promoted in some fashion.

Mike Mulligan & (Mary Ann ) His Steam Shovel

----Has Anybody Read This Book?

I Loved this book when I was 5.

:-)

If this engine is light and efficient enough, it could be used to extend the range of EVs. An efficiency of 20% would enable to make the car competitive even on highways...
It is a great hope, but the security issue is stil there.

A steam-turbine powered hybride, maybe?

Although they don't post any hard numbers on thermal efficiency, they do provide a spreadsheet:

http://www.cyclonepower.com/form_input.htm

...which admits higher base engine efficiency for diesel, hybrid and fuel cell while claiming higher well-to-wheel efficiency for this engine. One guesses they may be assuming lower mechanical losses due to elimination of transmission or lower vehicle weight because of higher power density, perhaps? In any event, as they score their base engine efficiency 7 (10=best) while scoring diesel 8, hybrid 9 and fuel cell 10, it's hard to get too excited about using this invention to lower GHG emissions.

A steam explosion with this type of engine is not going to be a safety hazard. The old steam cars and locomotives--where explosions definitily were a big safety hazard--had large boilers for a hefty reserve of pressurized steam. That's because the control feedback loop was slow: "hey, Joe, pressures's dropping, better shovel that coal a little faster". New steam engine designs like this utilize "flash" boilers. Water is injected under high pressure into tubes where it it is immediately brought up to temperature. To minimize weight, the object is to minimize the volume of pressurized fluid. Ideally, the boiler tubes only hold enough for the next piston stroke.

This type of engine is not a good candidate for use in hybrids. Hybrids get the largest part of their efficiency advantage through elimination of idling and their ability to deliver high torque at low speeds. They compensate for weaknesses in gasoline engines. A steam engine, however, does not idle, and develops very good torque from zero RPM on up. So the added weight and cost of the electrical system would not pay off.

What's most attractive about this engine is that it would run well on "bio-oil"--the condensed product of flash pyrolysis of forest and agricultural wastes. Small-scale flash pyrolysis units can be built at low cost to serve individual farms. So this would be an ideal engine for powering tractors and other farm equipment in a post-oil world.

I would add a steam box to the system. A steam box is a high pressure insulated tank which can store energy for quick power bursts. It would cut fuel consumption considerably and allow for a smaller steam generator and condensor.

I see the potential of marrying the steam engine with the normal gas engine. The gas engine generates lots of heat. The heat is lost via the exhaust pipe. The steam engine could utilize the heat to provide additional power. The likely scenario:

1. Generating electricity via the steam engine
2. Store the electricity in Li-ion batteries for later use (extra boost or electric only mode)

So IF the Cyclone eng. is not (as per cyclone website)
1) any significantly more fuel-efficient from well to wheel in comparison to a hybrid (Prius),
2) not necessarily any cheaper because Cyclone requires expensive materials for its high temp and hi pressure requirement, plus its new unproven and exotic design which will require a lot of R & D investment in term of money and time. Tens of millions of dollars and decades of experimentation. Water used for lubrication? Oil has much higher film thickness and strength that can much better protect against wear than water (too thin). Even 5W20 oil will be much better than water.

3) not much lower pollution than the hybrid, since the Prius is 5 times less polluting than a comparable gasoline vehicle, then, WHAT'S THE POINT OF USING THE CYCLONE STEAM ENGINE TECHNOLOGY?
Multiple fuels capable? So can an ICE, which can run on alcohol, methane, gasoline, biodiesel, hydrogen etc...Biomass and coal can be gasified into syngas (to be used by ICE). Syngas is free of sulfur, mercury and other pollutants that are associated with direct combustion of coal or biomass. Even hydrogen produced by wind or solar generator can also be used in ICE very efficiently and very cleanly.
Please kindly educate me on WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING STEAM ENGINE? (which is an antiquated technology that has been superceded over a century ago with superior ICE technology)

Inventors, by their nature, are unreasonably optimistic about the prospects for their inventions. Which is a probably a good thing, else technology would never advance.

The brass ring that inspires efforts like this has to be better cost-performance, either for the engine system, the fuel, or both. The engine that is described would offer most of the advantages of a hybrid, in a potentially simpler and cheaper system. Whether that's a realistic expectation or not is hard to say, from our remove here in the peanut gallery. Probably not, but it's not off the wall.

The lubrication issue may be moot. There are now dry surface coatings that offer lower friction than oiled steel on steel. I don't think they're in commercial use as yet, so there are presumably still issues of durability and / or cost. But that's the sort of problem that tends to yield to nuts and bolts applied R&D. And while synthetic fuels burn very cleanly, producing them is capital intensive and not terribly efficient. FT synthesis is exothermic, and produces a lot of waste heat. A system that can run cleanly on cheaper fuels, or fuels that can be produced locally from crop wastes, would find a good market.

If it were a matter of betting my own money, I don't think I'd invest in this particular effort. Too much of a long shot, IMO. But it's not crazy. And it's certainly NOT your grandfather's antiquated steam engine. There's an outside chance that its inventors are on to something that will pan out.

Appreciate your comments, Mr. Arnold. That dry low-friction coating is real interesting stuff. Agree with you that synthetic fuel is very expensive. Hitler tried to do it in WWII and lost the war. Ethanol production or bio-diesel is likewise not very energy-efficient. However, gasification of biomass to produce syngas is different, because the heat thus generated will be used to run a steam turbine to generate electricity to feed the plugged-in hybrid auto. Direct use of coal or biomass such as crop waste in a steam engine produces obnoxious pollution such as particles, sulfur, mercury, ash that requires labor-intensive cleanup etc and would likely be banned. Therefore, steam engine or IC engine, the various fuel sources must be cleaned up by a process such as gasification, turning the polluting raw fuel sources into a clean fuel such as syngas before combustion by the end user.

The basic advantage of this engine is power per pound. Since the engine does not require a transmission, nor a radiator, and has about 2x the power density of an ICE, it can produce equivalent power output for much less weight. Because of steam/piston's high torque at low revs, it will have many of the advantages of a hybrid (near zero fuel use at 0mph, virtually silent operation, etc) without a hybrid's enormous materials cost or weight. It is also a very very clean engine.

The oilless lubrication is not tacked on, it is a requirement of the design. One of the weaknesses of traditional steam designs is oil contamination in the boiler. Oil will coat the inside of the heat exchanger, turn to carbon, lower the efficiency, and eventually destroy the steam generator tubes. No one has found a way to keep the oil from getting into the water stream. Cyclone eliminated the problem by removing the oil from the engine. This is done through the use of ceramic bearing surfaces at very close tolerances.

I think it is an excellent design and expect to see it turning up, at least in generator and similar (10-20 hp) applications fairly soon.

Please visit www.new4stroke.com

Sir,

What are some of the reasonds for adapting a steam engine such as the Cyclone to a motor vehicle? How about these below?

1.) The Cyclone engine would burn most any vaporizable fuel and use no engine lubricating oil. This would assuredly reduce dependence on imported oil. If this country could produce enough fuels such as methanol, ethanol, butanol, propane, compressed natural gas and perhaps a few fuels not even mentioned to power a large number of steam automobiles, dependence on imports could be greatly reduced. This reason alone should be enough incentive to look at developing a steam driven vehicle.

3.) This country is short of refining capacity according to experts I have heard on TV. Getting a permit to build a new refinery are almost impossible to get. Some refiners are getting around this by building extra capacity in existing refiners, but I don't know if this strategy can overcome the short fall in refining capacity.

2.) Hybrids are serving a purpose in reducing gasoline consumption, but the current cost of the hybrids compared to a regular gasoline driven car would require a number of years for the owner to pay back the difference in initial cost. I don't know what the payback time would be but I have read the the payback would require 3 to 5 years. In addition, there is the battery life issue. How long will the batteries last?

3.) As for spending money for development I have read that many millions of federal grant money are being spent for fuel cell developement. What is a few million more for steam engine development?

I am an old retired engineer but I still believe the steam engine should be given s shot.

Sincerely

The extra efficency of a Hybrid IC engine vehicle is due to savings at low speed torque and idle. This would not help with that.

However a Hybrid Steam engine vehicle could get advantage during passing and short hill climbing by reducing the need for increased maximum power. This would normally be done on a steam engine using a steam accumulator (steam box?) or increased boiler reserve which would be impractical on the cyclone due to the supercritical pressures and temperatures.

This might be best with ultracapacitors rather than batteries. Has anyone done this weight/energy savings calculations?

This engine is the best thing to come along in a long time. It very elegantly solves a great number of problems in one fell swoop. It is unfortunate that so many persons posting comments here clearly fail to understand the potential. Compare the cyclone with a Diesel automotive power plant. Including all auxiliaries (including transmission) required to use the Diesel engine in an automitive application, the Diesel system weighs 2.5 times as much as a Cyclone automotive system of identical power output. The Cyclone is self-starting, can use almost any liquid or gaseous fuel with no modification to the engine at all, the starting torque of a 350 hp Cyclone is about 2500 ft lbs and the average torque is more than twice that of a Diesel, the lubrication quality is the same as modern internal combustion engines but only water is used, the water/steam system is a closed system that does not need to be replenished, the thermal efficiency of the Cyclone is the same as the Diesel but the net efficiency in the automotive application is better for the Cyclone because there are fewer losses in power transmission. The Cyclone has 1/5 the number of parts as the Diesel system. The operating temperatures are much lower.

I emphasize that there is NO need to hybridize an automotive drive train when the Cyclone is used. A steam engine sees far less changes in efficiency with speed and power changes as an internal combustion engine does. A hybrid steam car will not see appreciable gains in efficiency, if any.

The Cyclone has no catalytic converter or any other emissions controls equipment.... no computers. The cyclone is cleaner than any internal combustion operating today, and with NO emissions controls. The cylone has operated on diesel, biodiesel, gasoline, orange oil, ethanol, E-85, vegetable oil, waste crank case oil, crude oil, propane, butane, coal dust, and even wood flour (that's right, solids!). The cyclone can even be powered by concentrated sunlight (solar) in stationary applications.

The Cyclone engine in an automotive application is a hands down winner over internal combustion, electric, or hybrid. I welcome any discussions on the Cyclone. Please contact me.

Where can I buy one please?

The cyclone engine would most likely operate on ALGAE - a slurry of unrefined 50% oil rich algae - that was fractionated with ultrasound, to burst the cell walls and expose the oils. And since algae yields are already being reported in the 100 to 200 tons per acre per year range, we have a win-win here. The cyclone engine can also be run on other forms of biomass slurries such as Dynamotive (Canada) fast pyrolysis bio-crude oil slurry, made from trees. Dongfeng Motor Corporation (China) is building cars that run on hydrous ethanol, 65% pure ethanol and 35% water. Surely the Cyclone engine could also run on that too. Also what should be experimented with is putting a pulsating charge on the water portion of the hydrous ethanol, so it turns into brown’s gas as it enters the combustion chamber. Then the cyclone engine would be running on a combination of spinning ethanol and hydrogen.

aaaaaaaa

Thank you for your web site. A couple of my friends and I have been talking about the usefullness of the steam engine,and with todays technology, Wow it would revolutionize the auomotive industry.I remember seeing Jay Leno's old Stanley Steamer,and the power it produces, He has to start off slow or he spins the tires on the rims. I am afraid the oil companies wich run this world,would try to burry you. I am realy interested in your Cyclone engine technology, and if I could be of any help, or you can use one of my vehicles as a test bed.,Just let me Know..JB

Thank you for your web site. A couple of my friends and I have been talking about the usefullness of the steam engine,and with todays technology, Wow it would revolutionize the auomotive industry.I remember seeing Jay Leno's old Stanley Steamer,and the power it produces, He has to start off slow or he spins the tires on the rims. I am afraid the oil companies wich run this world,would try to burry you. I am realy interested in your Cyclone engine technology, and if I could be of any help, or you can use one of my vehicles as a test bed.,Just let me Know..JB

Two thing I can think of.

1) How is deionized water lubercate the parts?
2) How did they solve the sealing problem?

One reason steam engine never caught on is beside needing fuel, it also needs water. Sometime it uses water faster than burning fuel.

Auto made 1/2 weight

Utilize engine 1/2 weight

This cuts fuel requirement 1/2

MPG is then doubled for all cars instantly

Alternative Fuels and Electric and Compressed Air Models

I want to use the steam production/condensation process of the cyclone engine but not the piston engine itself.

Has anyone seen this engine running?
I have been following this since June and even emailed the company asking where I could see a prototype running.
All I got back was a lot of double talk.
I smell a rat!