Low cost environmentally friendly home energy

Zack · 03-06-2010, 11:31 AM

My background and history on the subject… (Skip this part and go to THE ARTICLE if you like)
I’ve been into alternative energy [AE] since the 1970’s when I first got involved with AE as a result of the fears of Global Cooling and OPEC oil embargo. I joined an AE club and took an AE class at Fayetteville Technical Institute and immediately constructed a passive/active solar heated home in Raeford, NC. My interests in AE went on the back burner as my Army career took me to Europe and Asia but once I retired I once again became interested in AE.
In 1991 I settled down to take roots in Puerto Rico and decided to build my own home once again. And through a labor exchange with my father-in-law, who is a private home contractor, I was able to cover the construction labor costs by working with him building several houses in exchange for him helping me build mine without money changing hands. I was able to save tens of thousands on the costs of the home and as a result was able to get by with a twenty year mortgage to cover material costs which I just paid off (big smile.) Here almost everyone that uses hot water uses solar hot water systems but they cost over $4,000 dollars to have installed and my AE background told me I could do better than that… so I started brainstorming the hot water problem and came up with a junkyard wars solar hot water system for a total out of pocket cost of around $250. I thought my idea was so good that I started sharing it on the Internet and got in contact with the editor of Back Home magazine from Hendersonville, NC that agreed and bought the article http://www.backhomemagazine.com/ As a result of the article sale my family has been enjoying free hot showers ever since. I guess you would have to contact the editor to find the archive article if you were interested but, if you happen to be interested in low cost solar hot water feel free to inquire here and I will give you all the details directly.
INEXPENSIVE HOME ALTERNATIVE ENERGY (THE ARTICLE)
Nutshell: Key points included below
· Use waste motor or vegetable oil obtained free to produce steam that powers a steam engine.
· The small steam engine powers an electric generator that supplies home electric power needs.
· Excess heat from the exhaust could be used for home heat and hot water.
How to do it safely
With the free hot water I found myself taking way too many cold showers. Puerto Rico is way too hot for a country boy that grew up in West Virginia and the electric bill really restricted my ability to keep the house air conditioned with my other expenses. As a result I started brainstorming an inexpensive alternative energy, AE approach to cool my home and have been working on it now for two or three years. I’m in the final stages of a home electric system that, once working will produce all the free, or nearly free electric I will need. One of the side effects of my invention is wasted heat that here in PR is in very low demand… But, the waste product in NC or almost any place in the upper 49 would be home heating.
ORIGIN OF THE IDEA
A while back, as I sat in front of my TV watching a show on the History or Discovery Channel about old steam engines my solution to electric production smacked me like one of those V-8 moments… at first I thought of solar produced steam with parabolic mirrors and soon dismissed that when one day while surfing the Internet I came across an AE site discussing use of waste motor and cooking oils as a source of home heating. Realizing almost all electric is produced from steam I then considered how the professionals do it… Most electric is produced by burning a fuel such as nuclear, coal, oil or gas to boil water to turn into steam that drives a turbine driven generator. As I mentioned earlier I found a site that had successfully created an environmentally friendly waste oil heater… take a moment and read the article here http://www.journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_motherearth/me7.html At the bottom of that article I found what I thought to be the best idea to use as a boiler heat source in Bruce Woodford’s forced-air oil heater article http://www.journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_motherearth/me8.html I’ll leave out a couple of my failures at this point and skip ahead to how I finalized my boiler. After some frustrations in earlier attempts I came across this site that defined a SAFE, easy to operate boiler… http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/genboiler.html I used the concept of Bruce Woodford’s heater together with this concept of mono tube boiler and finally had success at very low cost.
If you haven’t figured it out by now I love to tinker and I also love to recycle junk into functioning end products. Oh, I did actually look for places to buy ready made boilers and steam engines… check out this guy and the associated prices http://www.sustainablevillage.com/servlet/display/product/detail/37426 and this place http://www.dynamicenergy.us/Steam-Engines.html I did a lot of homework before starting on my steam engine but (fingers crossed), I think I finally have one built from junk that’s not only safe but is also powerful and most of the parts were actually free. I did spend a little over one hundred dollars at a machine shop to have the junk properly put together.
Here is how I concluded the junk I needed to build my own steam engine from junk… first I went to steam engine kindergarten at one of my favorite sites How stuff works http://science.howstuffworks.com/steam.htm After reviewing the article and recalling Mike Brown’s steam engine articles I realized I need a valve, a cylinder, piston and a crankshaft capable of handling the pressure I would be working with. The first item I located was a 4.5 hp two cycle engine at an equipment rental center… I explained to the owner what I was going to use it for and the guy asked, so it doesn’t have to work? I said, well no, I’m just interested in the piston and crankshaft… he said I have hundreds of them in the back I keep for parts, help yourself for free, I chose a 4.5HP 2 cycle engine. The next items on the list were the piston-cylinder and valve to control the steam. I thought modifying the engine and valves would be near impossible so I thought why not just remove the head and attach a separate piston to the engine piston? So I set out to visit my junker that buys factory junk… he had several air pistons and valves from an assembly line production that were double action… so I choose one that had the displacement of a five HP steam engine as described here http://www.glen-l.com/weblettr/webletters-1/wl7steam2.html that looks very similar to the larger cylinder pictured here http://www.aircylindersdirect.com/images/items/334.jpg I removed the head from the two cycle engine and took the cylinder and engine to the machine shop and explained I wanted the shaft of the cylinder mounted to the piston of the engine. In other words as the cylinder moves back and forth with the pressure of the steam it would then turn the engine. I took the solenoids air control valve apart removing all the rubber gaskets and replaced them with high temperature gasket material. I discarded the solenoid and fabricated a mechanical action to open-close the valve with movement of the cylinder. The cylinder is double action, in other words as it receives steam in one side it pushes the exhaust steam from the other side so it, in fact works as a two cylinder engine pushing and pulling the 2 cycle engine piston in each direction doubling the power.
So what I end up with is a steam source, an engine and the engine is used to power an alternator or generator similar to this… http://magniwork-generator.com/articles/home-built-generator-battery-charger-using-permanent-magnet-alternator-6-5-hp-engine/ Considering the engine can run 24-7-365 if set up properly and lubricated it will produce all the home power I’ll need. And, in the case of you folks living in colder regions it could supply all the heat and hot water you could ever use.
I’ll post some pictures of my set up as soon as I have a chance to take some pictures. Keep in mind that my system isn’t complete quite yet but I have tested it on an air compressor so if all goes to plan it should soon be in operation.

Zack · 03-14-2010, 06:33 AM

I've been busy in the final stages of completing my steam system over the last several days and thought I'd share some pictures of the progress. A couple days ago I tested the boiler and attempted to supply steam to the engine only to find out that one of the pipes between the valves and the cylinder had a significant leak, luckily I wasn't standing in front of the leak when it made itself apparent. Since that time I repaired the leak and will conduct another test later today.

Yesterday I restarted the boiler and took some pictures so as to give you an idea of the scale of the operation. Here's the focal points of the system, the boiler, the engine and the high pressure water supply system to feed water to the boiler.

Oh, for the benefit of tadpole and others interested in recycling I thought I'd add how I used recycled materials to make the project. If you take a close look at the attachment, subject invention 6 you will see my high pressure water supply system which is made almost entirely of junk recycled... starting at the left is my old woodworking router that had outlived its useful days, attached to it is a worm drive gear motor with the motor removed. I bought the gear motor at a junk yard just for the transmission, I cut the armature off of the worm drive and inserted it into the router to increase torque and reduce the speed of the high speed router... still turning way too fast for the purpose I had a brainstorm to further reduce the speed and increase the torque and I came up with the idea of using the transmission from an electric hand drill that I was ready to send to the trash can. I removed the drills transmission and welded it onto a large piece of angle iron leaving the chuck attached where I inserted a hex drive shaft that I squared on one end with a grinder. The shaft inserts into the output shaft of a weed eater motor (the receptacle used for the flex drive shaft that runs though the pipe of the weed-eater) The head was removed from the weed-eater along with everything else to the bare minimum leaving the crank shaft and piston. I took the stripped weed-eater to a machine shop and had the piston tapped to attach a washer fitted with a shaft, 1/2 inch drill bit shaft with a small hole drilled throw it so I could attach it to the junk hand pump piston shaft with a short piece of pipe. The hand pump is a commercial hydraulic oil transfer pump I bought at a junk yard that I had tested capable of pumping 300 pounds, I needed pressure in a range of 95-125 pounds so with the high torque system I threw together it works fine. The water supply to the pump comes from a vertical galvanized tank to the immediate left, also bought at a junk yard. Above the pump I installed a check valve, pressure gauge, a new air compressor limit switch that turns the pump on when the pressure drops to 95 and off at 125 PSI. This loop is connected to two five gallon high pressure AC gas canisters I got for free from the repairman that charged my car AC ready for the hot weather at no cost. To prepare these canisters I simply drilled a hole in the bottom and welded a half inch nipple. I then added a couple quarts of used motor oil to assure all the interior surfaces were coated and then drained the oil, this assures the containers won't rust from the inside... Just prior to adding the pressurized water I put some more clean oil in the water lines... since the oil floats the metal surfaces will always be coated At the other end of the two canisters I installed a needle valve and another check valve to assure sudden bursts of high pressure from the boiler can't damage the water supply system.

I think if someone wanted to accomplish the same thing they could use a small electric pressure washer connected to the loop in lieu of the accumulated junk drive chain I used as long as it were controlled with the limit switch. The steam engine should only consume a couple gallons of water an hour so the pump doesn't run that often... if you added additional canisters the pump would cycle even less. If someone decides to build such a system you may want to consider using trailer truck or tractor tires in lieu of the canisters if you can find them at a reasonable price...free is hard to beat though... I also have used a couple canisters from a balloon clown to feed the oil to the boiler...just don't try to use any canister designed for an explosive gas, balloon gas or AC gas is about the limit of acceptability for canister modifications.

fxashun · 03-14-2010, 11:04 AM

Nerd.

onthefence · 03-14-2010, 01:47 PM

excellent post, nice job!

Zack · 03-26-2010, 09:18 PM

Well for a little while anyway...As I mentioned in my earlier post I was almost ready for a test, well as it turned out the day I planned to test the system the high pressure pump self destructed... What actually happened was the welds broke loose on the drill transmission which caused the drive train to freeze burning out the router motor. Undaunted, I went off to see my junker Poncho who had a small worm gear drive motor which I purchased for $10, I didn't have my reading glasses with me and when I finally read the specifications for the motor I found out it was 130 volt DC. So I go to see my computer repairman who is also an electrical engineer and he tells me all I need is a rectifier to switch the AC to DC and he sells me this little device smaller than a postage stamp with four leads coming out of it and explains the wiring to me...he also pointed out that the motor would cost $150 if I had to buy one.

I removed the router and worm drive and then built a mounting for the new gear motor using an old 11 inch table saw blade using the 5/8 inch hole for the drive shaft... I painted the flat surface and quickly placed the saw blade centered over the drive shaft. The wet paint transferred the exact locations where I needed to drill mounting holes... Then I used my table saw with a carbon steel cutting blade to cut a rectangle out of the saw blade...mounted the motor to the strong steel base and then cut the end cap of a burned out washing machine 3 HP motor in half to get the support brackets to mount the motor using self tapping metal roofing screws. Attached the motor to the limit switch a plugged it in and I was surprised when the 1/25 HP motor brought the pressure up to 125 PSI... those last few cranks were like "I think I can"...and, because of gear reduction the process was very, very slow. I'll take a picture and post it later but for an idea the motor and transmission is about eight inches long and looks like the motor on the right in the attached picture...

Yesterday I do a test and the boiler is kicking but producing steam and my engine isn't starting properly. I conclude it has to be the timing since it operates great in one direction but the return moves slowly even with max steam pressure.

So today I tear the timing apart and find the problem and correct it, crank up the boiler to cherry red in five minutes with max steam pressure and wallah the steam engine is running at about 7-800 RPM and increasing... I run out to yell at my sons to come look... by the time they arrive the action is reversing 600-500-400 and then down to a stall... The test period lasted about a half hour and I analysed the problem to be the high pressure water supply, the culprit being the new motor... the water pressure had dropped to 65 PSI and the motor was running constantly but couldn't catch up with the demand for water to boil... the boiler was so hot I was afraid to starve it with reduced water for fear the boiler tubes would melt so I shut it down.

Tomorrow I'll go back to see Poncho for a stronger-faster gear motor, another consideration is to connect an auto starter motor I have on hand to the original worm drive still attached to the burnt out router... it would crank with plenty of speed and power but the connection would probably require some machine shop work. Regardless, today I recreated 19Th century technology out of junk and operated it on free fuel... there is absolutely no reason the system shouldn't function once the water supply is upgraded.