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Steam engine comeback
"You might think that the steam engine is an outdated technology that had its heyday centuries ago, but in fact steam is once again a hot topic with vehicle manufacturers."
Environmental Research Web offers an article from this month's Physicsworld magazine. According to the article "[t]ypical cars only convert about a quarter of the energy produced during combustion into work, with the rest being lost as heat. Honda has managed to increase this efficiency by 4% to nearly 29% by using some of this lost heat to generate electricity.
Their heat-recovery system is based on the Rankine cycle, which is also used in most steam-driven power plants. First, heat from the car’s catalytic converter is used to boil water. The high-temperature steam (400–500 °C) produced then turns an electric generator, before a condenser finally cools the steam back into water."
Read the entire article here.
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