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Post by Joey on Dec 17, 2021 21:41:14 GMT 10
12/24v depending what you use for the alternator/generator part
This guys got a lot of good toolage that I don't even have as a tradie
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Tim Horton
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Post by Tim Horton on Dec 18, 2021 3:32:08 GMT 10
WOW.... Very inovative and creative guy..
My concern is in one shot of the pressure gauge shown he is using about 50 lb of pressure..
The potential of that volume of water, and pressure to produce a bad situation if any small thing goes wrong..
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Back in the day there was an old retired engineer that built a steam plant to run an old lawn tractor.. Lawn tractors were way less sophisticated then compared to now.. He had a genuine steam trubine motor, run off a propane fueled boiler.. The turbine was a high speed unit with maybe 6 rows of veins or so... The turbine a little smaller than a gas horizontal shaft lawn mower engine..
Disney World ran a dedicated steam turbine about that size, direct drive on an altenator for the Christmas lights on there rail road.. The generator was on the back of the tender and ran off a 1/4" copper steam line from the boiler..
They periodically would give tours of there shop, round house and such.. I couldn't get that accomplished the time we were there...
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Post by Joey on Dec 18, 2021 18:53:18 GMT 10
That would probably be why in the updated version he installed a pressure relief valve, so you can adjust it to a safe pressure before it auto releases the excess pressure
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Beno
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Post by Beno on Dec 18, 2021 21:40:50 GMT 10
Pressure relief is vital. I have limited experience in. steam but i have seen a 2kg lump of corned beef turned into particles as it was ejected through a faulty relief valve in a pressure cooker. there was strands of beef al through out the mother in laws kitchen. lucky no one was in the room upon ejection.
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Tim Horton
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Post by Tim Horton on Dec 19, 2021 5:32:32 GMT 10
My head hurts..... Since reading this and watching the video, I have been running old data through my aged brain... Things like a given amount of water will expand 15,000 times into steam at atmophere pressure... At 100 lb pressure saturated steam is 338F... Number 2 fuel oil is 198,000 BTU per gallon in heat application.. And I can't even start to remember the formula to size pressure relief valves, depending on saturated steam pressure and volume..
I need another hot cocoa and a nap...
Mother in laws kitchen...... At the local thrift store I found a very nice, high end pressure canner really cheap... Problem was it had a bulged bottom and would rock like a kids Rock-um-Sockum doll.. I really hated to see that fine equipment end up like that..
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malewithatail
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Post by malewithatail on Dec 19, 2021 6:53:31 GMT 10
I too have given some thought to steam power as an alternative renewable way of generating power. A turbine would seem to be the easiest, directly coupled to a generator of some kind, perhaps a 240 volt induction motor running as an induction alternator. I have a 5 hp turbine runner and could only need to make a boiler, or flash steam generator and nozzle to construct a working unit. For simplicity it would probably not include an injector for water, but run as a batch process, being refilled when the water runs out and restarted. Calculations show a boiler the size of a 44 gallon drum would run for at least 2 hours between fills, so a batch process is feasible.
I wouldn't worry about condensing the steam as we have plenty of fresh water available, and probably would exhaust spent steam to atmosphere, or use it to heat water. If things get to that point, efficiency would not be the issue, just getting something to work will be the priority. Nozzle design is a science in itself, but a simple 5 : 1 length vs diameter would give reasonable efficiency, and even a brass garden hose will work to some extent. Like I said, this is real SHTF stuff, made as required when the fuel has run out.
Wood is the fuel of choice, as its easy to obtain and safe to use, rather than oil or other liquid fuel.
One advantage that a gasifier has is that the waste is a bio char that can be used directly on the garden.
Even in this corner of the Galaxy, Captain, 2 + 2 = 4...Spock.
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spatial
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Post by spatial on Dec 21, 2021 8:04:06 GMT 10
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bug
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Post by bug on Jan 3, 2022 15:34:32 GMT 10
Pressure relief is vital. I have limited experience in. steam but i have seen a 2kg lump of corned beef turned into particles as it was ejected through a faulty relief valve in a pressure cooker. there was strands of beef al through out the mother in laws kitchen. lucky no one was in the room upon ejection. This, this and more this. Wouldn't trust the average person to get it right. In the early days of steam, people had steam cookers in their homes. Many were killed by explosions. |
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Tim Horton
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Post by Tim Horton on Jan 4, 2022 10:24:55 GMT 10
Like said ....In the early days of steam..... To go along with lack of knowledge of how to use it, many of the materials and ways of connecting the pieces were not as good as modern day...
I can imagine a stream of corned beef from a pressure relief valve stem would cut ceiling tile like a water jet of today...
=== ===
To add a bit of history... The technology revolution of the 1820s - 1890s is due in part to steam power.. We know that... Most of the data that was used to do this expancion of civilization came from earlier Scottish whiskey distillers in the form of data about fuel consumption, evaporation rates, pressures and tempratures and like data charts...
So when you hoist one, with water on the side.... Think of it as payback to the dedicated that produced the foundations of the data..
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malewithatail
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Post by malewithatail on Jan 4, 2022 17:19:37 GMT 10
Not steam power, but wood power in the form of gas, producer or wood gas. Will work in most unmodified spark ignition engines (not 2 strokes though), with perhaps a bit of ignition advance. Even will work in motor vehicles, tractors etc. Safe as its at stratospheric pressure, but there isn't as much energy in wood as in petrol, so u cant get quite as much power out of the engine, and the gas has to be clean or else ash will quickly destroy an engine. But it works.
If all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail.
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