I am a licensed Chief Engineer of Steam and Diesel power plants, unlimited
horsepower. Im writing a book about power plant operation and maintenance. I looked
over your Design for converting an engine into a steam engine and think I might have
some useful thoughts on the subject.
First, your use of an internal combustion engine really interests me. I see your concern
with figuring out intake valving and distribution. Actually the incoming steam pressure
should be high enough that you could probably screw some kind of piping right into the
sparkplug hole. As for exhausting the expanded gas, the larger the valves the better. you
don't want to recompress the steam trying to get rid of it. Way back in the early 1900's
when generators first were introduced to ships, the generators and main propulsion
engines were strictly reciprocal engines. Maybe you can find some old steam ship info
that would help.
Meanwhile I was thinking about 2-cycle outboard engines, what we call uniflow
engines. They have ports at the bottom of the cylinders to exhaust the gases instead of
valves in the head. As the piston moves down in the cylinder it passes these ports and
allows the expanding gasses to leave the cylinder directly to atmosphere. If you were to
screw a steam line into the existing sparkplug hole and attach a simple valve actuating
timing system directly to the flywheel on top of the outboard engine, it might work. Of
course you would have to disable the original intake valves as you showed in your
drawings by grinding off the cams. As for starting it, you might have to use the old rope
start. And timing would be a function of trial and error, but the flywheel is a nice big
rotating chunk of steel, suitable to work off. And it has the advantage of being directly
coupled to the engine for timing purposes. A nice old two cylinder Merc of about 25
horsepower would be a good place to start. I'd stay away from Aluminum casings.
Offered by Gary.