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“Flashing” is a process where high temperature liquids held in a subcooled state, explosively release large amounts of stored energy when depressurized. The rapid volume expansion that results from the flashing has been harnessed to drive an expansion engine working on a cycle called “The Superheated Liquid Flash, Boiling” (S.L.F.B) cycle. In cyclic operation, the expansion engine power output was seen to be directly related to the mass and temperature of the injected subcooled water. At low levels of subcooling, smaller masses of water were able to achieve higher levels of efficiency in converting the total enthalpy of injected subcooled water to work, than larger injection masses with the same level of subcooling. However, with higher levels of subcooling, smaller injection masses show a reduction in efficiency.

High temperature liquids held in a subcooled state are capable of storing large amounts of energy and then explosively releasing this energy when depressurized in a phase change process known as “Flashing”. The rapid volume expansion that results from this flashing has been harnessed to drive an expansion engine working on a cycle called “The Superheated Liquid Flash, Boiling” (S.L.F.B) cycle. The first stage showed that multiphase convective boiling of the unflashed water off the heated walls of the expansion unit supplemented the Flash work output. Furthermore, Flashing was seen to improve the effectiveness of convective boiling off the walls. The results were shown to be repeatable in a modified piston engine. Convective boiling was again shown to be able to supplement the power output under specific conditions.