hi i was wondering why wont a battery supply run the cnc machine mine runs 72 volt DC the gecko drives work well at that voltage.
I dont have enough battery storage or an inverter powerful enough
ordinary deep discharge batterys will work when we designed the system we used 120 toeid transformers droped votage to 72 volts put on a condincer to level out the power surges they only use a couple of ampes they were designed to use battery backup for off grid use. the only thing you need to worry about is the router it uses power.
The Berkley California APL folk did run their shops and living spaces habitat systems for a while on PV solar with battery banks and banks of inverter converters.
They were trying to go Grid-Free in a formerly Navy industial area.
They did show their large battery bank for sale once they changed back to Grid use for the big use stuff. It was just more economical/practical for them.
Jim Mason claimed that they learned to bank/inverters power up some of the largish inductive loads by first powering up to speed one particular old Grinder? and letting the stored momentum energy electrical surge from that get their old big stuff going.
I think they still did PV solar generate and at times woodgas electrical generate for the lighter scheduled loads.
My main point in my previous post was that we all use and need heats too.
If you use the heats from wood-for-power processes as a benefit then absolute finite % effnecnecies drops out.
A living in Hawaii guy frustrated with system heat loss finally took my advice and uses his heats for any-day, all-day-around drying of fruits and nuts now. Become an income stream business.
Point. A neighbor, the one who introduced me to Honda inverter units was, and is still disappointed that his small 600 watt Honda will not operate his hunter trailer space heater or electric drip coffee maker.
So I introduced him to the LIttleBuddy propane space heaters.
My oldest B-i-L took my advice and got a larger 1200 watt Yamaha inverter generator.
Ha! Insists on 800 watt plug in electric heating from that for their utility hunting trailer.
Why not engine and gen heat divert and utilize? I showed him the videos of others doing this. Too complicated he says. So his electricity making heats just blows away in the wind.
Sigh.
S.U.
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Agreed HenryB.
This has been done.
All of the later compression ignition diesel engine for better all-load and lowest emmisions use now use a minimum three phase injection spray.
And these engine do not want to play well with alternative fuels.
My point: better ignition point and controlled pressure rise controllability yield better results.
ALL diesel engine manufactures when suppling engine for gaseous fuel usages do convert their engine supplied to electric spark ignition.
This gives the true controllability for the engine damage reducing results.
Hot loaded engine will need a diferent ignition starting point versus a still cold/cool engine.
Ignition staring point changes from early morning cold air to late afternoon hot air.
Excreta. Excreta.
Love is being able to grow harvest and refine your own motor grade fuels for fuel freedom.
Frustration is loving a refined pump grade system and trying to get it to feed on something else. She will fight you every step of the way.
Choose the right love, and treat her well for the happiest results, and happiest life.
S.U.
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Yeah this is where Im gaining a very new perspective with Charcoal gasification.
Raw wood processing for direct wood gasification requires energy in. Energy inputs to break the fuels down, then energy in to dry the fuel. (Regardless if the drying comes from the sun or air, this is still energy input)
Charcoal is a different animal. For fuel break down you can implement multiple fuel processes some requiring more energy than others. break down process only needs to fit what ever process you use for Torrefaction of the fuels after initial break down. This step is where charcoal gives energy back in its process where typical wood gasifier processes can not. In this process heat is given back and this can be used for heat, hot water, boiler system, all sorts of stuff. If this heat is used, charcoal is quite a viable solution.
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Torrefaction leaves more tar in the fuel compared to charcoaling but definitely drives out any water and keeps it out. The extra tar isn’t necessarily a bad thing. That’s energy (hydrogen) staying in the fuel vs getting carbonized away.
As long as a gasifier can work hot, the remaining tar is converted to producer gas, and the lack of moisture in torrefied fuel lets the gasifier do just that, work hot.
You end up with a good compromise: most of the consistency and low tar of charcoal while preserving more of the embodied energy in the raw wood. I guess if you can use the waste heat from the charcoaling process it’s not a loss.
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Is it open yet ? Plant already cost much more then original price . Also producing something no one wants to buy seems to delay opening of plant until it goes bankrupt . If you call it an essential business then you can change that and keep the forestry industry . I think natural gas interest would lobby against it .
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I think industrial scale biomass has a lot working against it. Solar panel based production is so cheap and efficient. Once the cost and energy budget of harvest/transport/process/generate is tallied for biomass… it’s rare for it to come out ahead vs alternatives.
Now all that can be true, but the sun doesn’t always shine while a torrefied wood pile can sit at the ready. And if that wood is a waste product? Well the numbers might work, but it is an edge case - not broad advantage. Natural gas is so cheap right now. It’s actually free at some pipeline feed-ins. Of course never to the end customer…
House scale biomass energy, the focus of this website, has a lot going for it. Personally my off-grid power plan would be oversized solar generation (cheap), modest battery backup (expensive) and a gasifier generator (fiddly in a fun way). The generator takes care of those short/dark winter days and cloudy ones that happen in the other three seasons. Make it a CHP system and you’ve got all your needs covered right there. Anyhow - that’s where my head’s at.
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If you use biomass for primary heating you can easily make plenty of charcoal for daily off grid. Use enough solar to sustain and maintain the battery bank while the sun is out. Use the gasifier to bulk charge at night.
Most homes will consume 24 kW / hours pr day. So for solar work you would need to produce that in the 8 hours the sun is out plus battery storage to sustain 16 hours of stand by.
So if you design biomass energy, (primary heat, Hot water and Power) into the system, You can get away with less solar and smaller battery bank. If you do use 24 kw / hours daily. A 1000 to 1500 watt solar set up, combined with 12 kW battery storage would be perfectly viable with a bio fueled heat system for primary heat and hot water. If you had a system that could produce bio char as it heated it would easily provide fuel for the power generators daily usage. This is without too much sacrifice of fuel used for heating. You would most likely have a surplus for warmer months.
This is my plan and path forward.
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I wonder if it is possible to out live an age . We still have pipes in the ground carrying water for whole municipalities That are well over a hundred years old . Solar panels you should expect to replace inverters you should expect to replace , Batteries you know you will have to replace . There are some very old gasifier plants , town gas coal . Very old engines , do Edison’s dynamos still work ? Edison Jumbo Enginedriver Dynamo - ASME
There are is more planed pumped hydro storage then we have electrical capacity . We need water , we need to store and circulate water more then we need power .
Australia
Humphrey Pump
The World’s ONLY working Humphrey Pump with charcoal fired gas producers.
Located in Park Terrace at Cobdogla, the Cobdogla Irrigation and Steam Museum is full of interesting exhibits, engines and pumps, tractors and machinery from a past era.
1924
Reports of salinity problems related to irrigation at Cobdogla. Irrigation applications generally exceeded the water storage capacity of topsoils resulting in a large proportion of the applied water draining through the rootzone and perching on underlying aquacludes. The resultant shallow watertables that developed led to surface evaporation and soil salinisation. Tile drainage systems connected to a district or comprehensive collection network were necessary to mitigate this problem – until the 1970s improved irrigation was not understood sufficiently to provide for remediation.
The museum showcases the Riverland’s early irrigation history and is home to the heritage-listed Humphrey pumps, the only two working pumps of their kind in the world.
The pumps, each known as Big Thumper, supplied water to the Cobdogla and Loveday district for 40 years, until 1965.
Volunteers are now focussed on the future of the pumps, which have not been operated since a gas leak in 2012.
An interesting feature of the original plant, was the production of approximately 4 gallons per hour of tar, when the plant was operating, posing a problem of disposal.
Investigations revealed that the tar had considerable calorific value if reburned in the producers, but because of the significant cost, the tar was piped to the North of the plant and discharged into a backwater of the river.
This large black, malodorous lake, adjacent to the new highway within a few hundred metres of the town was a permanent reminder to residents and travellers of the presence of the Humphrey Pumps! It was finally rerouted to a receiving basin close to the pumps, where the solidified tar is still visible. It is pleasing to report that within the last 30 years, nature has erased all trace of the original tar lake.
https://icestuff.com/~energy21/hump.htm
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Henry, The pumped storage plants I have seen are in places where there is plenty of water. The shores of Lake Michigan. Niagara Falls area of upstate NY. They are typically owned by power companies, pumping them full during off-peak periods (keeping the power plants online and stable) and using the reserve hydro power to fill in for peak-usage periods. 
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Henry,
I was intrigued by the Humphrey pump and found this video of it operating:
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So you do not want to be flooded out , and you will want that water back when you have drought . In between you can use that water to store power . If it can ever work the way you want it to when you want it to . Where ? You need to move .
What happened in recent New Orleans storm? S&WB denied requests to power on pumps, logs show
As intense rain fell on Gentilly June 10, Sewerage & Water Board officials refused multiple requests from pump operators looking to turn on more pumps to combat the rising waters, according to logs from the public utility.
Over the course of an hour, as an inch and a half of rain fell on the area served by Drainage Pump Station 4, operators of the station made four requests to turn on one of its main pumps after another pump failed. Each of those requests was denied until finally, at about 8:10 a.m. in the middle of the storm, they were granted permission.
There are five pumps located in the Gentilly pump station. Two smaller ones — Pumps 1 and 2 — are powered by Entergy New Orleans and can pump about 320 cubic feet per second each. Then there are three larger ones, known as C, D and E, which can each theoretically pump up to 1,000 cubic feet of water per second.
Pumps 1 and 2 were turned on soon after the storm began. When more capacity was needed, operators initially asked to use pump D. They were instead told to turn on pump C, which the logs report did not work.
McBride said in his post that the decision not to use Pump D may have been based on concerns about power. While C is powered by a frequency changer that converts Entergy’s feed to the standard used by many pumps, D and E are both powered directly by the turbines at the Carrollton Plant.
S&WB officials have raised warnings recently about a lack of capacity at Carrollton and at the time of the storm only one turbine was running, far less than would be needed to run the full system.
City Councilman Joe Giarrusso, who chairs a committee that oversees the S&WB, said he has asked an engineer who works for the council to review the logs and report back. But he said the assurances from S&WB that it was running as many pumps as possible may have been technically true, but practically different from what the public understands when the S&WB says it is running at full capacity, known as a “full house.”
“I think they’re dancing on the head of a pin to say all the pumps are at full capacity and on paper we’re fully powered but Turbine 4 trips and (Turbine 1) isn’t up and running or the (S&WB generators) aren’t up and running, then as a matter of academics and semantics is it a ‘full house?’ Yes. But in a matter of practice it looks like something’s wrong and that needs to be explained,” Giarrusso said.
a list of Herbert Alfred Humphery’s papers in the Imperial College Archives
A similar pump, the Joy pump, was also described at around the same time. This was much smaller, around six inches in diameter rather than six feet, and also had much smaller water pipe connections to it. This reduced water mass also reduced the compression ratio available in the combustion chamber, leading to reduced efficiency. The pump’s ability to work with a suction lift of a few feet, rather than needing to be submerged like the Humphrey pump, was a convenience though. This pump was thought to have some application for small-scale or portable tasks, where its convenience outweighed efficiency
3 . drawing 431. LO pump for deep suction ; marked in pencil 'siemems , stafford ’ .
The first limitation of the Humphrey pump is that it has no suction capacity, in fact it must be installed in a dry sump several metres below the supply level. Given the pump’s physical size and the need to protect the equipment against flood events, this is no small engineering exercise, requiring (in the Cobdogla example) several thousand tonnes of concrete. Also, it has a maximum lift of only around 10 metres.[8] Its usual fuel, producer gas, contains very high levels of carbon monoxide, from which staff and visitors need to be protected in the event of accidental leakage. It is due to this concern that the Cobdogla demonstrations were halted.
Its advantages however are: with no moving parts except for the dozens of spring-loaded inlet valves, it has low maintenance and high reliability. It is also quite efficient, consuming roughly half the fuel compared with a pump driven by a mechanical gas engine doing the same work
Four-stroke and two-stroke cycles
The Humphrey pump could operate with either a four-stroke or two-stroke cycle.[2] Their normal operation was a four-stroke cycle. This required mechanical interlocks to the inlet valves, so that the exhaust and scavenge valves open once during the cycle to allow scavenging of the exhaust, but not during the compression cycle afterwards.[6] A two-stroke cycle was also possible, if adequate scavenging could be achieved. The air trapped within the combustion chamber of a Humphrey pump has two roles: both for combustion and also as an air spring to maintain the oscillating water column. As this spring action involves a large volume of air, relative to the minimal air needed for combustion, the air cools easily to below the ignition temperature to pre-ignite the next charge. There would still be a risk of inefficient four-stroking though, unless the scavenging is effective enough to sweep out the previous exhaust gases. This was done by using a tall, thin combustion chamber so that the combustion air remained roughly isolated from the majority of the chamber’s air and so was scavenged through the exhaust valves first. There was no separate scavenge air valve.[7]
The two-stroke offered efficiency advantages. As the charge compression was carried out by the more powerful first compression stroke, a higher compression ratio was achieved, giving better efficiency.[7] Despite this, the two-stroke design does not appear to have been used commercially.
patent drawing 73 siemens schuckert two cycle pump . dated jan. 1912
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Fiat’s TwinAir engine is an Straight-twin engine designed by Fiat Powertrain Technologies as part of its Small Gasoline Engine (SGE) family — employing Fiat’s MultiAir hydraulically actuated variable valve timing and lift technology.
Offered in a variety of FCA vehicles in turbocharged and naturally aspirated variants, the engine is noted for its reduced size, weight, fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.
In the 2011 International Engine of the Year awards, the 875 cc (53.4 cu in) TwinAir won Best Engine Under 1 Litre, Best New Engine, Best Green Engine and International Engine of the Year. [1] Dean Slavnich, editor of Engine Technology International and co-chairman of the International Engine of the Year Awards, called the TwinAir one of the "all-time great engines.”[2]
Configuration Straight-two
Displacement 1.0 L (964 cc) (naturally aspirated)
0.9 L (875 cc) (turbocharged)
Cylinder bore 83.5 mm (3.29 in) (naturally aspirated)
80.5 mm (3.17 in) (turbocharged)
Piston stroke 88 mm (3.5 in) (naturally aspirated)
86 mm (3.4 in) (turbocharged)
Block material Cast iron
Head material Aluminium
Valvetrain 8-valve, chain-driven SOHC, MultiAir
Compression ratio 11.2:1 (naturally aspirated)
10.0:1 (turbocharged)
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