I’m interested go for it Mark.
Years ago I ran across info on the LaMont boiler, but haven’t seen any mention of it here. Is CDR LaMont’s boiler still a thing? Supposedly it could use seawater.
https://www.steamautomobile.com/northea/lamont.html
Rindert
Thank you, Rindert. I frequented the Steam Automobile Club of America forum years ago (not for long as I don’t do “clubs”). Based on what I saw, it seems a lot of people in the steam power community are very enthusiastic about the Lamont system. In short, yeah, I think it’s still a thing. It absolutely has performance advantages. Personally, I have no interest because I want a design with low cost, simplicity, high efficiency, ease in maintenance, wide fuel use, etc. All these contradict one another to some degree. So, compromises must be made. That noted, if someone wants a compact steam generator with both high power and high efficiency, then the Lamont is the way to go.
I am interested.
18% efficiency is less then a gasifier. You can probably do better with a turbine say from a turbo-diesel. Some of the electric motors do 10-15k rpms so you could turn it into electric fairly easily which is more useful to someone in todays world. Most people could care less about shaft power.
As a warning if you are in the US, you need to be licensed and insured to manufacture and operate it (at least in our state and most if not all states in the US.) All welds have to be xrayed or whatever they use to check welds with. The steel itself has to be tracked to batch numbers. And they have to have a certification tag with a serial number on them, and they might need to be recertified yearly. Too many people died or were injured from them.
I mentioned my efficiency goal for the system mainly because people dismiss small scale steam power for two primary reasons. The first reason is they don’t exist. The second reason is low thermal efficiency. I’m addressing the first by attempting to build a system. I’m addressing the second by attempting to optimize efficiency as much as practical. That noted, the brake thermal efficiency of a good small wood gas engine system using readily available small gas engines is on par with the figures I listed. But the steam engine system can have advantages including less fuel processing, the ability to use fuel oils including waste oil, inherently quieter operation, and highly efficient heat recovery. NOTE: As a CHP system, I consider heat as the more valuable product. I even designed the system to generate low pressure steam for water heating w/o running the engine.
On your other comments, a good small piston steam engine will be more efficient than a steam turbine of similar output. But the very high RPM of a small steam turbine necessary for good performance is problematic. On the inspection requirements, I could not care less about what bureaucrats think about my project. Giving deference to bureaucrats is tantamount to slavery.
I would say that “devil in the detail” lies in:
Such a thing is really masterpiece of engineering with precise machining and superior materials. Also complexity is much higher than other designs.
For a kilowatt range with less than 20% shaft power efficiency improved by CHP I would bet that Stirling or radial turbine will pay back through the simplicity of the whole engine as such.
I agree with the direction of your thoughts Kamil. But I think there are even simpler technologies out there. If you can even call them technologies.
I think that these components, if each were very well understood, could be arranged in various ways to form a wide range of ‘off grid’ systems that would be within reach of most suburban homeowners.
Of course I like all kinds of engines. Hey, I’m a mechanical engineer. But really, I think that too often we serve them instead of them serving us. Not good y’all!
Rindert
Ahh, the veneer of civility stripped away. This quote makes me think of this…
Waving efficiency numbers at me is irrelevant. Provide the pounds of firewood you are burning for the watt•hours you are producing. Also include the BTUs of waste heat you are capturing. This information and the cost of your plant will allow an actual cost basis comparison.
Our plants and our fuel is so varied as to make this comparison nothing more than an armchair exercise at best.
Kamil, I disagree completely. Assembling a useful piston steam engine at this scale is a lot simpler and less costly as compared to a steam turbine or Stirling engine. I argue all else equal, the performance of the piston steam engine will be superior, and it can be a simpler machine.
NOTE: I’m just gonna plug away slowly as I’ve been doing and see what finally unfolds. I know the deck is stacked against me. So far, things have worked out well in part by my NOT listening to others. Small scale steam is definitely a lost art. I’ve found what most people think they know isn’t actually so.
Bruce, of course I did not refer to you as a bureaucrat.
This forum definitely has a “club” vibe to it. I won’t be making additional comments unless sharing material progress on the project.
Just for make things more clear, I wrote about radial gas turbine not a steam one. E.g. you may construct very simple external heating turboengine from spare turbocharger, pipe coil and few fittings.
Mark,
What do you expect? Twelve years ago you asked us to educate ourselves about your ideas and your project. You came to a group of people dedicated to making internal combustion engines run on wood, with emphasis on Driving On Wood! Do you understand the mental gymnastics it takes to justify building, implementing, maintaining a road motor gas producer, in the face of these incredibly low gasoline prices? We are crazier than the Christian snake worshipers. Don’t get bent out of shape when you run into resistance with our acceptance of your ideas.
That said, if you want help building and deploying a wood fueled Dodge Dakota pickup, this is place for you. You can ask the dumbest of questions and always receive a patient measured answer.
Your thread will be discussed, you will receive criticism, you will receive snark, and opinion. You are still welcome to be here.
You haven’t even kicked over any cans of worms yet…Just wait until the “storing wood gas” topic resurfaces again, people lose their minds.
The one place where external combustion MAY work out better than the system we use, is if you can burn fuel of inferior quality to that required for use in a gas producer. I suspect you may be up against a low adiabatic flame temperature with inferior wood. Which would mean you couldn’t achieve high enough firebox temps, to achieve the efficiency.
Perhaps look at Greg Manning’s Canadian Gasifier for a solution to allow burning inferior wood.
What you think is a ‘club vibe’ is simply most of us have 40 years of experience looking at alternative energy designs and a lot of them aren’t good. Yes, we are waiting to see what you came up with since you did say you had something working, pictures are good.
Mark, I can see that you want to make a small steam engine viable. I hope you succeed. But it’s going to be tough for you. Suction gas engines largely replaced small mobile and stationary steam systems in the last half of the nineteenth century, then electricity (lights and motors) replaced suction gas in the twentieth. So what’s next? I think the key is to somehow define the right mix of all the technologies we have available in each situation we find ourselves in. Your steam engine will definitely be part of of it if it succeeds. Hey, our ancestors learned to cook their food over an open fire and I, for one, like a steak cooked over charcoal. If it makes you feel any better I think I can make an improved a gas water heater. I hope I succeed, but I realize there may good reasons, that I may not be aware of, why this was not done a hundred years ago. LINK
God bless you,
Rindert
Hi MarkG.
I will add onto some of what Bruce Jackson was trying to convey.
A forum format is definatly not a club.
Now this forum was started by Chris Seanz and Wayne Keith to promote driving modern vehicles on modern roads using wood as the base fuel.
They already knew well, and were satisfied with their abilities to space and domestic water heat using bulk wood.
Me and many others; our concept was wood-for-power. Home/farm/shop shafts and electrical power.
Myself 12 years ago I thought I knew all I needed about using bulk wood for heating. I was 61 then and had a solid 37 years in many stoves and fireplaces using wood-for-heat.
What a forum can do for a fellow is teach you that you’ve a lot more to learn and experience using others experiences.
12 years ago after setting aside mini-steam for home/farm/shop electricity I got sucked into - stuck- on using large heavy stationary IC engines to woodgas for electricity.
Just had to be better, as heavy slow speed known for long life in term of 7500+ operating hours between overhaul restores.
I was sure dumb. Wayne Kieth on his US coast to coast on woodgas trip; and then 1000+ mile use any means without petroleum race from Berkley CA to Reno NV actually showed the much easier way. Cutting up roadside found brush and woods; and behind large stores and warehouse broken wooden shipping pallets with a portable electric motor table-saw. The saw supplied with AC electricity from a standard 3600 RPM portable IC engine generator. That generator fueled on his made woodgas off of his warmed up, and stabilized big pickup truck V-8 wood gasifier.
So I again wasted a number of years developing and experiencing small portable raw wood gasifiers to fuel operate 3500-5500 watt IC engine generators. It can be done. With specialized prepped hardwood fuels in small proportional chunks or specially screen coarse chipped hardwoods.
In the meantime Gary Gillmore and then others simply converted their local hardwood to wood charcoal and had minimal problems chargas fueling small and median electrical generators.
For all of the years until just the last three I had no access to hardwoods. Just confir woods. Sheee. Burns hot and sooty.
So mine and others solution proved to be, was to go engine generator 2X, 3X oversized.
Make the engine sizing and gasses fuel load demand large enough to heat load a raw woodgasifier to clean functioning.
And then the forum usage feedback was proving that going with the newer modern variable engine speed Inverter-Generators simplified the woodgas/engine control problems down to butt simple. No more need for rather difficult, and expensive, to find 3000-5000 watt DC generators. With for direct AC depending loads then needing rather expensive Inverters. And a battery bank.
And all along through these 12 years having determined the critical need for the glowing hot char-bed for good reduction gasification I began used the same developed thick hot char-beds in my glass fronted wood stoves to learn how to burn and heat with really wet woods; really rotten, lost weight and mass woods; woods growing molds and mushrooms; and down to thumb sized limbs woods. Only had just ONE winter woody debris open air burn pile. A mixed building materials tear out; and household trash pile left on the property we’d purchased.
And then Chuck Whitlock and Giorgio Pastor showed how to open air in barrels and bathtubs turn bare wood twigs into small engine fuel grade charcoal. My conifer limbs ends then become in easy steps an engine generators fuel.
My point is forum reading others achievements and successful trials will expand your world of proven useable alternative energies.
I follow the put-to-working practical guys.
Here, anywhere; not so much the hobbyists; the better idea dreamers; and especially not the armchairs guys. I only have an interest in pragmatic users of their creations.
Even if they chose a route that I would not.
So your continuing to pursue in real metals with real results personal steam power is why I gave you a hearts-like on your coming back post two days ago.
As said. Show pictures. Show results, and many will follow along.
I can now in an airtight wood stove make pretty blue flames any time I would wish. Heat energy driven by the made-in-place char bed.
I can burn old dry aged books for heating. Energy driven by a made-in-place wood char bed in the center. That center wood char bed made with rain wetted speed dried small wood splits. The fluffing expanding, flows clogging book pages sections only on the outer edges.
And I can make direct-use, home & shop AC electric power in now proven on charcoal by others, modern Inverter-Generator units.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Hey Mark,
I don’t think you are necessarily wrong about small scale steam. I think it probably can be done as you describe.
You are obviously aware of the issues involved, so perhaps you are well equipped to succeed. A steam plant with multiple stages, reheat, significant superheat, regeneration, high cutoff expanders, etc, can achieve reasonable efficiency numbers (but oh my, the complexity and cost).
Your use case is spot on I think. If you have a significant number of biomass heating days where solar isn’t viable, a micro steam cogen plant could work. In that context, efficiency is never going to be the primary objective.
I like your philosophy about the steam/boiler danger issue. Monotube ‘steam generators’ don’t deserve irrational fear.
It’s a bit of a hazard to compare it to other options like gasification. Too many variables, all with personal and circumstantial weightings that will never translate to anyone else.
I think if I ever went back to steam it would be because I wanted to, no justification necessary or attempted:)
Like others around here, I pursued micro steam for quite a while. I’d surely love to see you succeed (by your own definition).
Here is a video of a ‘piston operated valve’ expander I built. I gave up on multistaging and reheat and figured very high superheat and cutoff was much easier. My monotube control system grew up and moved away:)
I still dream of micro steam for stationary biomass cogen.
It will never compare to gasification holistically, but there is a tiny little sliver where it might belong if it were integrated with your biomass furnace when you are burning wood seven or more months of the year.
I envision:
**8 hour stoker furnace (forget it if you can’t walk away for long periods of time)
**single pass monotube steam generator with Doble control (de-superheat injection)
**slow speed uni-flow piston expander with POV (think Corliss engine with simpler valve gear)
**regulated by running against a battery bank (with fail safe of some kind)
You could probably achieve an electrical efficiency into your battery bank of about 4%, with all the hot water and space heat you need (round trip is much worse). Rough numbers; 300w electrical at 4% would require about 26k btu/hr… which is the size of a smallish wood stove.
Just think of it as part of your furnace and design for rugged simplicity over efficiency.
I can dream, right:)
Every time I fill the stove I think, "what if this were keeping the lights on and the fridge running?
4% good enough? Maybe my dream of making a Newcomen, condensing engine for micro cogen wasn’t so off the wall. I’m going to look into this again. Thanks for the video Chuck.
Rindert
Since this whole forum is about making personal use powers with wood as the fuel source . . .
Then the only efficiency that truly matters is how with your own and family wood sweating labor can you make a moderate reasonable needed amount of power for yourself and your family.
And daily-use and heavy seasonal needs for heats certainly counts for overall labors-to useable-wood-forms, efficiency.
Waste the wood and then you will be wood sweating annually a lot more.
All else is head games masterbations in my opinion.
An all EV vehicle that must use a significant portion of its stored power to defrost; de-mist and cabins heat aint at all that overall efficient imho. Sorry. It is not.
Put a small IC engine in the power mix to make as needed those heats, and on-the-go batteries recharging like the wife’s Toyota hybrid is much more useful, and practical.
So PV solar and micro-steam in northern climates needing a full half of year heats may be the useful hybrid system.
Sorry for saying this again MarkG. but half of this type idealize hybrid is now off-of-the shelf. The PV solar.
So for me and others it does come down to having to one-at-a-time individually develop and build up the other half. Which way is possible? Which way is best? Wood to charcoal; wood into engine grade fuels gasses; or a full steam power system.
Under 100 hours to do an IC engine fueled charcoal system. And you will get useable heats.
200-500 hours to do an IC engine woodgassed fueled power system with again; useable heats.
Micro-steam how long to develop build and set up? How many years? How many steps dependencies?
Source the need de-minerlized one gallon an hour of water needed for a small home system?? Where? How? At what additional costs and efforts?
Put a bunch more efforts and systems costs for a full recapture and re-use condenser system?
Steve Unruh
Hey Rindert,
My fantasy system revolved around 750F/750psi steam, uniflow, with short cutoff… a condensing/atmospheric engine would be much, much less efficient as it violates pretty much all of the thermodynamic rules. Tacking it onto the high temp system makes sense but then our fantasy system gets really complicated.
