I was told that Steam cars were fast, clean, and efficient, and at one time it was the vehicle of choice.
In: 6
There are two ways to use steam:
Multiple expansion engine (basically moving pistons)
Turbines.
The piston method doesn’t like high rpm at all, it loses efficiency when used fast. You have to fill the cylinder with steam, then use it. At high rpm the piston is like “running away” before the steam is enough to push it. Being forced to use relatively slow rpm, the result is a very heavy slow engine. 2 to 10 times heavier than an combustion engine of the same power.
The turbine system is not viable due to extreme noise, which requires massive shielding, and the turbine inertia would make your vehicle very slow to accelerate and very slow to decelerate. So it’s good for vehicles that don’t change speed often.
There’s a third way, the turboelectric. Your turbine work at fix speed, and rotates a generator, then an electric motor does the work of moving the wheels/propellers/whatever. The power is adjusted by variable steam input and variable load from the electric motor. Problem, this is already 3 devices and we still need to add the boilers. It’s gonna weight more than any other drive system. It does have the advantage of being efficient at most speeds, and can vary its power quickly. In fact, it’s the system we use to make electricity that then drives our devices. As a whole, a country is a gigantic turbo-electric driven machine.
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