[Land-speed] New technology S-CO2

[23weldon]

It's been a period of enforced personal silence after I got involved in an
unfortunate exchange here.  But I thought it was worth making this one post
which may be of interest to some.
Check out:
http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/110211.html
It's a Sandia press release of sorts describing one of their projects.

For extensive detail here's the Sandia technical paper on the project.
http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-control.cgi/2010/100171.pdf

So what's the connection to land speed racing?
The first photo in the web page shows a picture of some equipment under test
and in the back ground is a young engineer from Barber-Nichols, a Colorado
company.
Remember that name?  It's painted on a car in a Reno museum.
http://www.oiccam.com/reno/car_museum/racecars/1977_steamin_demon.shtml
 The Barber name is also on the first page of our Bonneville records in the
rule book under class  /S.

Now take a close look at that photo in the Sandia release and just left of the
center of the picture is a cylindrical metallic assembly about a foot in
diameter and 30 some inches long.  That is a 240 KW (320hp) Turbo generator
pumping high pressure supercritical CO2 (S-CO2) from one end into a boiler of
sorts which feeds a turbine on the other end which in turn sends the now
energy depleted S-CO2  to a condenser from which it returns the loop to the
compressor.  The energy output is electricity.  At this point there is a lot
for me to learn about this process; but I can't help but wonder if the
"boiler" and "condenser" can be made a small enough size to fit in a
streamliner or lakester and whether the condenser cooling can be compact
enough to fit into a practical streamliner body.  I'm assuming here that air
cooling with the S-CO2 coolant being reused is the only way.  I doubt if
enough CO2 could be carried along to just exhaust it into the air the way a
steam loco or Stanley Steamer dumps water.  Nor is such an approach liable to
attract any outside technical support for obvious political reasons.
PorkPie:  Got your ears on?
Ed Weldon