Robert,
Thanks for all these interesting links. After owning a GEK power unit and seeing how well it produces a nice clean flame that could boil a lot of water and how simple the steam engine is with no chance of getting gummed up - it seems to me the way to go. We use tons of wood chips in compost and landscape cover that could be made into electricity and the hot gases produced could be put to use drying etc. But what do we do with all that electricity? Push rocks uphill for energy storage I guess. Frank Thanks Frank Shields BioChar Division Control Laboratories, Inc. 42 Hangar Way Watsonville, CE 95076 (831) 724-5422 tel (81) 724-3188 fax <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] www.controllabs.com From: Stoves [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Robert Fairchild Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 8:09 AM To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves; Paul Anderson Cc: Ron Vanetten; Robert Lerner Subject: Re: [Stoves] Green Steam Engine We go round and round on this. Steam power is neither cheap, easy, simple, or foolproof. See "getting started with steam" parts one and two at: http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com/aeindex.htm#steam Only plans and some parts available from Green Steam. This is not a design that has been proven by the test of time.The engine is only half the battle. The steam boiler is a critical (and potentially dangerous) part of the system. Small commercially available steam boilers at: http://steamboating.net/page7.html (and yes the columns are poorly formatted) and American made steam engines at: http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com/mbsteam.htm prices on order form: http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com/order.htm and cheap Indian complete units at: http://www.tinytechindia.com/steampowerplan.htm ("...These power plants are not automatic. Continuous manual feeding of wood or biomass to boiler is essential....") To put some numbers in perspective, TinyTech's 10 horsepower engine with a boiler and coupled to a 5 kilowatt generator costs $6600. (An American made version is probably twice as expensive) At 10% efficiency of heat to electricity (probably a little high Mike Brown says 5-8% http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com/steamart.htm ) you'll need 50 kW of heat which is roughly 25 lbs air dried biomass per hour. Diesel electricity costs around 50 cents/kWh. The steam system will produce $2.50/hr of electricity, If the fuel is free and there are no other costs (labor, lubricants, maintenance, ...) after the system has run 51 hrs/wk for a year (2650 hrs) the average cost will be at 50 cents/kWh. (In your car 2650 hours at 40mph is 106,000 miles... zero maintenance?) Yes, there's 45kW of "waste" heat but it is near the boiling point of water, so has limited uses, (not much use for cooking). It could be used for drying with a radiator and fan or other heat exchanger system. Bob the Curmudgeon --- On Wed, 5/15/13, Paul Anderson <[email protected]> wrote: From: Paul Anderson <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Stoves] Green Steam Engine To: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" <[email protected]> Cc: "Robert Lerner" <[email protected]>, "Ron Vanetten" <[email protected]>, "Bob Fairchild" <[email protected]> Date: Wednesday, May 15, 2013, 2:09 AM Rob, Very interesting. Cost for unit and output? Some technical people who understand stoves should please comment on this as functional or not. Cost is a secondary issue when electrical power is small quantities are possible!!! Paul Paul S. Anderson, PhD aka "Dr TLUD" Email: [email protected] Skype: paultlud Phone: +1-309-452-7072 Website: www.drtlud.com On 5/14/2013 1:54 PM, Robert Lerner wrote: Here is a link to a very cool innovative steam engine design: http://www.greensteamengine.com/. One big advantage of this design is that it scales down very nicely, suitable for small-scale TLUD burners. I saw it in operation several years ago. At the time he was looking for licensees. Rob Lerner Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 10:54:57 -0700 From: "Frank Shields" <[email protected]> To: "'Discussion of biomass cooking stoves'" <[email protected]> Subject: [Stoves] Using all the energy when char making Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Stovers, Seems there is often a lot of wasted energy that could be used when making char that is just flared off. I'm thinking the reason is that to convert to electricity one needs 1) a very clean syngas 2) an expensive motor and 3) costly up-keep. The generator is a onetime purchase with low maintenance. So why not use a steam engine to convert the flame to electricity? Perhaps not as efficient but all you are doing is heating water so the gas need not be as clean as when drawn into an internal combustion engine. Thanks Frank Shields BioChar Division Control Laboratories, Inc. 42 Hangar Way Watsonville, CE 95076 (831) 724-5422 tel (81) 724-3188 fax <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] www.controllabs.com <http://www.controllabs.com/> _______________________________________________ Stoves mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address [email protected] to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists .org for more Biomass Cooking Stoves, News and Information see our web site: http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/
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