Beyond a duty of care and legal requirements, the use of flame arresters and relief valves on flammable gas tanks is a vital part of ensuring the safety and proper operation of extraction operations, storage and transportation of volatile materials.
These systems continue to be developed to advance the safety credentials of the handling of unsafe materials, but a lot of advances in the latter half of the 20th century came about as part of attempts to make the fastest cars in the world.
Gas Turbines And The Quest For Speed
The land speed record has been contested for over a century and is considered to be the greatest test of what is possible with a car if there are no limits to what manufacturers can do.
The gas turbine engine is a fascinating example of this principle in action, with the potential of the technology seen as early as 1950, then the Rover JET1 prototype reached 150mph, as recounted in a BBC article.
Whilst there were issues with power delivery lag which stopped the cars from entering mass production, the hard-wearing nature of a turbine, the then-inexpensive price of natural gas and the potential to improve its performance and safety through modifications meant that it was still a tempting prospect.
A decade later, Motor Panels in Coventry built the Bluebird CN7, which was the first vehicle to break the land speed record using a gas turbine engine, using a novel turboshaft system which channeled the intense exhaust gases to drive the four wheels.
Driven by Donald Campbell, who had set multiple water speed records in the Bluebird series of jet-powered hydroplane boats, the car made several attempts to break the record, but after a crash at the Bonneville Salt Flats and several problematic attempts, he finally reached 403.10 mph.
Land speed record runs are measured on an averaging basis based on two mile-long runs in both directions, so that potential environmental conditions such as the wind will not affect and corrupt the result.
Whilst this was the first record for a gas turbine turboshaft car driven by its own wheels, it has a strange place in history at the centre of a controversy surrounding gas turbine engines and how they produce power.
The Spirit Of America Controversy
At the time of Bluebird’s record, the land speed record was overseen by the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), which had rules about which land speed record vehicles would count as cars for the purpose of their list.
A car had to be driven by its wheels, which Bluebird was through the use of its gas turbines, and it needed to have four wheels.
Whilst the FIA recognised Bluebird’s record as the land speed record, its speed was lower than an attempt the previous year by Craig Breedlove and Spirit of America.
Much like Bluebird, Spirit of America used a gas turbine engine, but the difference between that and Bluebirds was that the former did not use it to turn the wheels. It was a turbojet engine which moved the car through a jet of heated air.
This required careful management of exhaust gases to ensure the engine ran safely, but it was also not allowed at the time via the FIA’s rules for inclusion.
When Bluebird’s slower speed became the record the FIA accepted, the Federation Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM) created a whole new category for cars not driven by their wheels.
This meant that there were three separate land speed records, two by the FIM and one by the FIA, a situation which lasted until 11th December 1964, by which point five additional land speed records had been hit and the record speed had increased by over 120 mph compared to Bluebird’s record five months before.
Ultimately, there was a meeting between the FIM and FIA which recognised the highest speed recorded by any vehicle running on wheels. It did not matter how many or how they were driven.
The Legacy For Gas Turbines
With the exception of Blue Flame, a rocket-powered car which achieved the record in 1970, every single other land speed record has used either a turbojet, or a turbofan variant which adds an additional ducted fan which redirects air to the back of the car.
The most recent record was set in 1997, with ThrustSSC becoming the only verified land based vehicle to break the sound barrier and reaching a speed of 763 mph, although there still remains attempts to go even further beyond the impossible and continue to create cars which can do the impossible, powered by gas turbines.
