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I've spent a few hours today on and off reading this marathon thread. Very interesting, very informative, all though quite a bit of it is beyond my level of understanding.
I do have a few thoughts.
Yes, steam is a hell of a heat sponge as tvago has pointed out pretty well. And if an ICE was anywhere close to being thermally efficient (probably not the right term, so forgive me) then I would buy completely what he says.
But, it ain't.
So, it would seem that if you kept enough heat inside the engine, rather than venting it through the radiator, then you ought to be able to get some sort of benefit from the expansion of the steam.
Tvago, you point out that pressurizing the feed water eats a lot of power. I do recall drmiller saying he'd introduce it as water vapor before everything gets squished.
As for the argument that if it could work, it would have been done by now, i wonder if it's a matter of materials not being up to getting steam cleaned constantly while running and not a simple matter of thermodynamics. If it is a material problem, maybe it still can be conquered.
Of course, I am not an engineer by training, so all this is guessing.
doug, as for your getting all butt hurt by tvago's responses to you, well, you kinda made your own bed there in your build thread where you initiated the smart ass name calling to us "tailgunners". I will admit that as of late, you seem to have gotten past this, but, you know what they say about first impressions.
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