Old-School Power When racecar builder Bruce Crower fired up his prototype six-stroke steam engine, it was so powerful that the exhaust blasted paint chips off the ceiling.
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"...A typical engine wastes three quarters of its energy as heat. Crower's prototype, the single-cylinder diesel eight-horsepower Steam-o-Lene engine, uses that heat to make steam and recapture some of the lost energy. It runs like a conventional four-stroke combustion engine through each of the typical up-and-down movements of the piston (intake, compression, power or combustion, exhaust). But just as the engine finishes its fourth stroke, water squirts into the cylinder, hitting surfaces as hot as 1,500°F. The water immediately evaporates into steam, generating a 1,600-fold expansion in volume and driving the piston down to create an additional power stroke. The upward sixth stroke exhausts the steam to a condenser, where it is recycled into injection water.

Crower calculates that the Steam-o-Lene boosts the work it gets from a gallon of gas by 40 percent over conventional engines. Diesels, which are already more efficient, might get another 5 percent. And his engine does it with hardware that already exists, so there's no waiting for technologies to mature, as with electric cars or fuel cells.... snip..."

sweet. id like to see that thing running..

brilliant!

That ISSSS Brilliant!!!! Holy hell! It should be DEMANDED that that engine be available in ALL makes and models in the next ten years just for the 40% better fuel efficiancy! I LIKE it!!!!! Cheers. Later...

Not only is it more fuel effeicent but it also cleans the pistons

Awesome, this is just a single piston engine. The question is could he make a 4 or 6 cylinder motor with the same good results.

...or just use water injection and make things less complicated. Hell, Megasquirt can do it.

quote:

Originally posted by 92PathSE:
...or just use water injection and make things less complicated. Hell, Megasquirt can do it.

Would the fuel injection be told to stop for a pulse, while it squirted water?
datz510N4W 6/2006
Note: This is old news already, tho, I missed it at the time.

quote:

Originally posted by hillbille:

Would the fuel injection be told to stop for a pulse, while it squirted water?
datz510N4W 6/2006
Note: This is old news already, tho, I missed it at the time.

I was trying to find that thread you posted. I thought this all looked very familiar.

The part that I like was at the end of the article:

*****

Crower has been keeping the details of his system quiet, waiting for a response to his patent application. When he gets it, he'll pass off the development process to a larger company that can run with it, full-steam.

****

A larger company that can run with it, or an even LARGER company, that can bury it.

Technology has been around for 50 + years on an engine that burns water instead of gas. That technology was bought up as fast as it was created, and quickly buried as being impractical and inefficient.

They just wanted to make sure that people were still going to have to fill up at the pump as opposed to the kitchen sink or the backyard garden hose.