Buddy, pressure's enough to make power … BUT
If I make the pressure gauge out clearly, they are showing 500 pounds per square inch. Admittedly, this photo isn't dazzlingly clear, but that seems like a good interpretation. That pressure is about in the ballpark of an old Stanley steam car and about triple that of a steam locomotive … so you can get some real work out of it IF the engine is sized correctly to employ the pressure and if the boiler can supply the steam in adequate quantities.
BUT Cyclone has long advertised, and drawn investors,with the claim that they were going to deliver phenomenal efficiency using supercritical steam pressures. That's maybe 6 1/2 times more pressure than appears to be shown on the gauge....3,208 psi.
And, even then, Cyclone was way too optimistic, in my opinion. It's one thing to maintain that pressure in the steam generator and an entirely different thing to introduce it into the cylinder because pressure drops across valves. I think you'd need to make significantly greater pressure to actually see supercritical in the cylinder.
That's the rub. Cyclone shamelessly advertised the totally non-existent "Schoell Cycle" and now they are trying to pass off something that isn't even vaguely conforming to that.
Some other things on the panel make me wonder. For instance, what does the 'water temperature' refer to? If it were boiler water temperature, they should be showing almost 3 times as much pressure on the gauge. If it's condenser temperature, they would have to be running wayyyyy below atmospheric pressure. This would be great, and a real boost to efficiency, but the heat exchanger shown in the photo appears to be automotive and never designed for that kind of vacuum. Also, I'm seeing nothing like a vacuum gauge.
The whole thing gives off a weird vibe. I can certainly see pre-production models having little in the way of instrumentation, your car certainly doesn't have the hundreds of sensors put onto a manufacturer's test vehicle. On the other hand, it's awfully crude for pre-production. If it's a research engine, there's simply way too little data being displayed. At an absolute minimum you'd want to know steam pressure and temperature, feed water temperature, condenser pressure and condensate temperature, air pressure and temperature to the burner, exhaust gas temperature, coolant temperature and pressure and you'd probably sneak some extra thermocouples into the boiler to measure temperature changes throughout the flow path.
Honestly, I can't tell if the control panel is a scam or if they simply don't have the sophistication to set up something proper.
In any case, the panel seems to show a system delivering maybe 1/3 to 1/2 the efficiency of the typical gasoline engine rather than the almost-Diesel efficiency Cyclone has claimed.
