Think of steam engines and hazy, romantic images of chugging great beasts of old fill the mind. Steam-powered vehicles are not usually deemed as being parked at the cutting edge of transport technology. Nor do they seem to be the type to race across desert landscapes in a bid to smash land speed records in the 21st Century. But British design engineer Glynne Bowsher and his team have almost finished building a super-fast vehicle reminiscent of the Batmobile. And this car puts a new technological breath of life into what is regarded as a traditional means of power. He knows engine and vehicle design like old friends, having worked on Richard Noble's record-breaking Thrust 2 jet car and having designed ThrustSSC, the first vehicle to break the sound barrier on land. His team, the British Steam Car Challenge (BSCC), is hoping that its Inspiration vehicle will live up to its name and not only break a long-standing steam-car speed record, but also inspire thinking about alternative fuels for the future. The search for a suitable alternative fuel source to hydrocarbons which can cleanly power our vehicles has touched on various different options. Fuels which do not "rot" the environment usually bring to mind images of gently humming electric cars, clean hydrogen, natural gas, or hithane - a concoction of hydrogen and methane. The most promising, believes Mr Bowsher, is either nuclear or hydrogen fuel. The public is reluctant to explore nuclear; but researchers and engineers across the world are exploring how best to generate and, more importantly, store hydrogen fuel, one of the main barriers to its widespread use. Nine European cities are taking part in a pilot scheme to use hydrogen fuelled buses on certain routes, for instance. But until a viable mass-scale way of storing and distributing hydrogen effectively is developed, it remains limited in use.
View: Full Article | Source: BBC News
