[Stoves] Green Steam Engine

Wed May 15 10:09:02 CDT 2013

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 <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:

From: Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu>
Subject: Re:
 [Stoves] Green Steam Engine
To: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves"
 <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Cc: "Robert Lerner" <bajarob at gmail.com>, "Ron Vanetten" <rsvanetten at hotmail.com>, "Bob Fairchild" <solarbobky at yahoo.com>
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:  psanders at ilstu.edu   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" <frank at compostlab.com>

        To: "'Discussion of biomass cooking stoves'"

         <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>

        Subject: [Stoves] Using all the energy when char making

        Message-ID: <001e01ce5002$fb757a60$f2606f20$@compostlab.com>

        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:frank at biocharlab.com> frank at biocharlab.com

        www.controllabs.com

      _______________________________________________
Stoves mailing list

to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org

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/

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20130515/8c52be50/attachment.html>