BMW Group Works With Steam Power

Super interesting! It totally makes sense to make good use of the residual heat produced by the normal combustion engine. Getting an extra 15% efficiency basically for free is pretty sharp. I wonder what you would do with the system in extreme temperatures though. If the ambient air is too hot to effectively pull the heat back out of the water, or the outside temperature is cold enough to freeze the water in the system, it could run into trouble. That’s easy enough to overcome though, I suppose.

Groovy stuff though. Dissapointing that it would take them 10 years to put it into production. There’s something romantic about steam power – but when it translates into straight horsepower, it turns down right sexy.

Yep – a technically impressive achievement – I must agree and I don’t want to take away from the effort it will have taken to achieve this.

But how much longer do petrol engines really have? 15% isn’t much for something that will take 10 years to appear.

Just seems to me like we are flogging a dead horse…

To PaulG: Combustion isn’t the only method of creating energy that generates excess heat as a byproduct. Fuel cells, for example, generate a considerable amount of byproduct heat.

While this system is designed around current combustion engines, I am sure the concept could easily be adapted to other technologies as fuel-cell cars and other alternatively-powered automobiles enter the marketplace.

I think it’s actually a very smart move by BMW – both relevant in the present, and looking forward to the future.

While this system is designed around current combustion engines, I am sure the concept could easily be adapted to other technologies as fuel-cell cars and other alternatively-powered automobiles enter the marketplace.

I was under the impression that fuel-cells (eg. hydrogen?) were an energy source that gets converted into electricity, not used for internal combustion. In that case, this so-called “fifth cylinder” that would also provide power to the crank wouldn’t have a crank to power. Which isn’t to say that reclaiming that heat energy wouldn’t be beneficial, but I don’t think this technology (as it’s described) would be applicable to non-IC engines.

Once you have the battery in place adding solar panels and a circuit to charge it would not be a far cry. I think any car that converted energy to electric for a major part of it’s functioning would probably benefit from solar cells.

To Nathaniel, I don’t think they’re using water as the fluid in this case. Probably something with some antifreeze/coolant properties (my speculation). Ah, but that is precisely the problem – they have to use water to get STEAM. The anti-freeze solution in normal engine coolant is there precisely to prevent the water from boiling (as well as freezing). Water has chemical properties completely unique to it – such as it’s expansion when freezing, that it exists naturally in all three of its physical states (ice, water, vapor) on earth, and it’s very unique ability to create vast amounts of pressure as steam. That third quality – the ability to expand to 1600 times its original volume when superheated – is what allows steam-power to work in the first place. When you dissolve other solutions into water to move its freezing point (such as ethalene glycol in anti-freeze), you change it’s boiling point as well. That I know of (and I’m no expert – I’m coasting on high school science project research and college chemistry as I write this), there aren’t really any other stable substances whose vapor form has similar properties for producing power. Boiling and then recondensing water in and out of some sort of anti-freeze solution would get very tricky as well. The steam-assist would have to be a completely seperate system from the cooling of the engine (which I think it is, looking at the diagram), otherwise you run into major cooling problems. For example, if it’s an all-inclusive system, in extremely cold weather, you run into the problem of freeze-expansion breaking fittings or the engine overheating from lack of coolant flow before it melts again- the same reason you don’t run just straight water in your radiator now. But even with the steam-assist on its own closed system, you still have to deal with your liquid freezing – and your options are limited if you want to make steam (which is why you can’t just put anti-freeze in the fluid). Likewise, in a combined system in very hot conditions, the coolant gets too hot and litteraly boils off, then you run the same risk of overheating the engine. This is again why you don’t run straight water in your radiator – but you have to if you want to make steam. Even on a closed, seperate system though, hot conditions would sap the effeciency of the steam-assist system itself as it would have much harder time shedding the heat back out of the steam to condense it. All of these are issues I bet they’ve already solved – I’m just really interested to know HOW. Maybe in those temperature extremes, the system simply shuts off, or there is a pre-heating system for the cold. It’s cool stuff.

As long as you still have wheels, even a full fuel cell car will still need to have an electric motor that converts electricity into motion. If you have the motor turning the wheels (or drive-shaft, if you have 1 motor to turn 2 or 4 wheels instead of individual motors for each drive wheel) you can still have essentially a steam turbine at the end of the motor.

You don’t need a cranshaft to latch on to, you just need something turning, but the cranshaft is the easiest thing in an internal combustion engine.

And don’t forget its also 15 more hp, so you could undersize the engine in addition to the extra 15% efficiency. Unless you’re just using the system to get more power out of less.

only one question:

Can I make my car go “Chooo Choooo” as I sail down the highway?

Well BMW is at it again and it ain’t even April 1st. Did you guys get those BMW adverts that came out on April 1 every year claiming they had installed some new fangled option? Well some of the older ones have turned out to be true! But I still can’t understand why they are spending millions on technology from the 1800/1900′s. Sure when the 800 million people in China each have a car petrol is going to be used up real quick. So why are all the big corporates not developing cars that can run on water – yes H2O the dreaded dihydrochloric oxide. I see on the web that some home inventors have actually gotten cars to run on the stuff – and its free!

“Hydrogen, steam, gasoline. What’s next? Solar panels on the roof?”

Easy – why not strao a large sail to the roof – and use the wind…..

Or, why not get two large mamaels – horses, zebras, cows – whatever, to pull the car along…

I was under the impression that fuel-cells (eg. hydrogen?) were an energy source that gets converted into electricity, not used for internal combustion. In that case, this so-called “fifth cylinder” that would also provide power to the crank wouldn’t have a crank to power. Which isn’t to say that reclaiming that heat energy wouldn’t be beneficial, but I don’t think this technology (as it’s described) would be applicable to non-IC engines.

Yes, fuel cells produce electricity, but since we’re talking about a moving object, that electricity is still going to have to be converted to physical work at some point in order to propel the car.

So the fundamental principle is the same…you have a power source producing physical work, and you generate additional physical work by capturing excess heat from said power source and using it to produce steam.

It might not be called a crankshaft, but there’s still going to be something in there that turns.

I wasn’t suggesting that this concept exactly “as engineered” in this example would bolt right onto a fuel-cell car and work, but “as described” it’s quite applicable to non-IC technologies if you don’t get attached to the specificity of things like cylinders and cranks and take a wider view.

Even if it’s only 90% applicable to the new technology, that’s still enough to rebut the “this is rubbish because petrol will soon be obsolete” argument. I have no doubt that the lessons they learn refining this concept now will bear fruit in the future.

Locomotive MINI pullman, instead of the burp it will be a wistle…lol

I need to get a conductor hat :) -alpinamike

I once saw in the adirondak museum, New York, a steam boat which did not use water as it’s working agent. Instead it used napthalene.