Exhaust manifold Steam boiler?

[flapdoodle]

I have an engineering handbook written in 1892 that details almost every aspect of a steam locomotive. I found it interesting that they had experimented with injecting steam into the firebox to generate hydrogen and oxygen. They decided that there was no advantage because the amount of energy to make the H2 was the same as the energy it produced when it was burned to form water again.

[ShadowWorks]

Originally Posted by flapdoodle

I have an engineering handbook written in 1892 that details almost every aspect of a steam locomotive. I found it interesting that they had experimented with injecting steam into the firebox to generate hydrogen and oxygen.

That would cool the furnace and reduce the pressure on the piston directly, unless they used more coal no?

Originally Posted by flapdoodle

They decided that there was no advantage because the amount of energy to make the H2 was the same as the energy it produced when it was burned to form water again.

By the time the Hydrgen and Oxygen are made or split the piston stroke is finished, it would need to push this into another piston and ignite it under pressure or spark, those steam engines where very low rpm machines with much larger diameter pistons. Those steam engines had multiple expansion chambers, so the steam was used 3 or 4 times in different size chambers so it could have been done, 1892 was a long time ago.

Look at these guys making a steam car or steam engine for a car, they claimed the California CHP has a few of them that can do 140mph!

http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com/steamart.htm

These article has an interesting take on the whole steam powered car

http://www.stanleysteamers.com/modern_steam.htm

It seems that Steam power has to make a come back if we want FE not just in our cars.

[ShadowWorks]

You have some very good questions here, this is my understanding so far.

Originally Posted by beatr911

Creating steam before combustion is not necessarily creating additional cylinder pressure.

of course this is not the claim, the claim is the wet steam splits at 1000 degrees into Hydrogen and oxygen, so lets say this reaction occurs at 20 after TDC, this means we have two more pure explosives gases in the pistons working range. no?

Originally Posted by beatr911

the energy used to heat the steam would be taken from the other gasses in the combustion chamber.

Yes, but we know there is more heat in the cylinder than the piston can use, there is heat and pressure, one is not the same as the other, the piston converts as much pressure as it can but it does very little with the heat, ergo the larger water cooling system that is giving up many Kilowatts of heat not including the Kilowatt energy lost directly into the engine head and block and oil as well and ultimately the exhaust.

Originally Posted by beatr911

overall effect would be a smaller increase in cylinder pressure than without the water vapor.

Well water vapour and steam are kind of different and kind of the same but water as steam has much more energy in it, evaporation has larger cooling affect over steam.

Originally Posted by beatr911

The water injection alone does not produce more power, it must be used with higher compression or increased forced induction.

I do have a turbo charged engine but I believe this could work on any engine, the reason being we are operating on the assumption that we are using steam at 100 degrees Celsius, but it does not have to be the case, It can be stepped up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit just by a second steam boiler, superheated steam is a very different beast from regular steam but it seems normal steam will work.

I am no steam expert on steam or this system , I am just learning right now, I am surprised Honda is making 30 to 43Hp using this system and with only 13% efficiency, this means 26% would recover 60 to 86hp, 50% would mean 120hp to 170hp extra, they need to talk to steam engineers! ASAP

I have a wall paper stripper and I am tempted to plumb it into my intake manifold just to see what happens at idle, hopefully no boom!

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

Actually if you use steam that's barely dry at 100C ish then superheat it in the combustion chamber it's SHC goes up and you get a mild efficiency gain from that, plus you reduce pumping loss at low throttle opening.

BTW I think they did a better steam injection thing in 1920s or 30s era locomotives, seem to remember hearing about using steam for forced draught, basically using the kinetic energy of the steam to pull air through the firebox or something like that.