Comment Why LPG? Try new coal! (Score 1) 286
Having examined the specs on this new vehicle, an obvious question occurs to me:
Could the steam car work with new coal technologies?
I believe they could. Coal is still by far the cheapest and most plentiful fossil fuel. Thirty years of mostly mediocre research has yielded a few new concepts for clean, effective combustion of coal; application of these technologies to unanticipated fields (e.g. steam-powered external combustion automobiles, home heating, kilns and crucibles, etc.) would shift the economics of developing these technologies.
Currently, advanced coal technologies are mostly in development as an alternative to costly regulations on the construction and expansion of coal-burning power plants. By that measure, most of these technologies would be deemed to expensive. Measured as a power source to replace our internal combustion engines, coal external combustion could be to gasoline internal combustion what the latter was to the former a hundred years ago.
Just a thought.
Could the steam car work with new coal technologies?
I believe they could. Coal is still by far the cheapest and most plentiful fossil fuel. Thirty years of mostly mediocre research has yielded a few new concepts for clean, effective combustion of coal; application of these technologies to unanticipated fields (e.g. steam-powered external combustion automobiles, home heating, kilns and crucibles, etc.) would shift the economics of developing these technologies.
Currently, advanced coal technologies are mostly in development as an alternative to costly regulations on the construction and expansion of coal-burning power plants. By that measure, most of these technologies would be deemed to expensive. Measured as a power source to replace our internal combustion engines, coal external combustion could be to gasoline internal combustion what the latter was to the former a hundred years ago.
Just a thought.
