[Stoves] Green Steam Engine

Wed May 15 13:14:02 CDT 2013

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

www.controllabs.com

From: Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] 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 <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 <http://www.controllabs.com/> 

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