GIANT FRESNEL LENS TROUGH MIRROR Green Jobs Training. www.greenpowerscience.com This took all day to set up and nothing went right:-) I went through three leaks and hose breaks. The max power was 20 watts, pretty weak. The treadmill motor produced about 25v no load and was able to get the GTI working:-) BUT it did not last long. This should be much stronger. I rushed today because it was our first REAL day of sun in over 1 month. MORE TO FOLLOW. The Boilers were all wrong, this was about 1% efficient. Shot 3 hours of video, only 2 minutes worth showing. THAT TYPE OF DAY.
Silver Mini SunPlug Solar Charger for cell phones. 0.33 watt solar panel, 1350 mAh rechargable battery.Small and convenient for wherever your day might take you, this iPod sized solar charger can be charged under sun then u… More >>
Are leaks a major problem with this generator? I mean using steam must be a bit painful if something were to come lose and a steam jet pops up.
green power? that thing are making a lot of smoke
, naa, great idea!!
The solenoid valve that was on at one point, reed switch
What’s the battery behind the engine for?
don4407 toy steam engines use a drop of special oil added to the water before heating. also there are oilers that drip oil at a slow rate that may work for this application
dan, i love your videos and you have great ideas. but i think the potential will come through a bit better if you have a better way to keep that camera steady.. i feel car sick now and i’m gonna go lay down for a bit..
Dan, I like this video the most! Have you any ideas for lubricating the engine? How about a spray mist of oil at the air intake. Let me know before I get too far on this project
@curtis92591
Thank!
ouch ouch ouch! I love him he makes it so much fun to watch and learn. Thanks!
Other than the electrical side of things. How about this. Wrap insulation around the engine and around the long pipe from your boiler to the engine. If you can try to loop the exhaled steam/water from the output back to the boiler. You’ll save a lot of energy that way putting water closer to boiling than the one pass system you have now.
Hummm. Maybe someone with more experience here can correct me. But I’m not sure that something as small as 18 W when tied to the house can be taken as wrote. You might want to try something like a large power resistor in the kilo ohm range. The problem is 18 W sounds about right for a low temp steam setup like yours, but noise in such a large system as your house could also be a variable.
@TalksWithDirt The inverter is a GTI grid tie inverter so it was dumping into our house grid.
Dan what were you loading off the inverter? I don’t . If your system was making 18W electrical, that’s pretty good given that you had probably ~1000 W in thermal. 2% is typical without condensing, reheat and insulation and no superheat.
Very good idea Dan, however if I can make a suggestion, if you have not already, take out the rings on the piston and maybe fix a hose of some sort to the bottom of the crankcase to allow cooled water that is trapped down there to return into the tank of water. With the ring removed you should have a speed increase as well as longer running because of the recycled water from the case. The fit between the piston and cylinder wall is small so no blow by should happen.
“Ahh 3-4 Percent for a small steam engine, unlikely.”
I’m curious what you’re basing your determination of likelihood on. I can’t see how it is possible for a rankine cycle engine like the one shown to be more than a few percent efficient. Perhaps you could explain.
If it was an industrial scale closed cycle engine using cutting edge materials and high pressure superheated steam, you might have a point. But frankly I just don’t see it with this sort of rig.
@m3141592
Ahh 3-4 Percent for a small steam engine, unlikely.
All those models steam engine you can buy off jensen, mamod, wilesco etc suck, because their boilers suck.
In Theory 1 part spirits can vaporize 9 parts water, a good boiler will do something like 7 parts, a wilesco boiler maybe 4 .
Well egineered steam motors reach very high effciencys, we have a manufacturer in germany that sells such, they look like diesel engines and with a good boiler they are as effcient but run on wood.
“comparatively inefficient”
I though a small turbine could reach about 10% efficiency if the steam is nice and hot, compared to 3 or 4% for a little reciprocating steam engine. Admittedly, that figure comes from microturbine manufacturers, so maybe it is an exaggeration.
Having said that, a decent Stirling engine probably beats both of them.
@m3141592 No, not at all, turbines are comparatively inefficient unless your getting into the very high power Area, read at least 1000Hp
I’m curious if a small turbine would be more efficient.
Keep them coming Dan! Thank you.
What happened to your lovely wife?
I think you need a small tank to catch the water and allow only steam to reach motor. Spark plug connector looks leaky. What are you doing with the 18W of power? Don’t the Kill-a Watt meters have to have a load to calculate watts or amps used? Every time I watch one of your videos I want to go build something. Do you have trouble throwing things away? Like everything has a part that could be used to make something else? Thanks for all the fun & interesting videos! What will Dan Rojas do next?
Hey Dan,
Pretty cool! Should the fins on the cylinder head be insulated? Kinda don’t need the cooling with no combustion. Would a hunk of metal under your coil (1/2 inch plate) allow for longer run time? An old piece of heavy wall boiler tubing might enable your mirror to maintain a more even preheating.
Thanks for all the work ya put in, back yard solutions and recycling are gonna solve our energy problems someday!
very cool 100/5
Days are warmer than nights, even when cloudy.
Do you get heating in the pipe when it is cloudy? If you do a very long pipe will generate steam when it is overcast.
Over heating on sunny days can be handled by covering the extra tubing.