Using a car engine to power a house.

[smileymikey]

Tomorrows World...st showing my age. Ran a feature years and years ago featuring a block of flats somewhere in Scotland that used a Renault Fuego engine running on gas to provide power. From memory they said that because the engine was running at a constant speed service intervals were dramatically increased

[RedWhiteMonkey]

smileymikey said:

Tomorrows World...st showing my age. Ran a feature years and years ago featuring a block of flats somewhere in Scotland that used a Renault Fuego engine running on gas to provide power. From memory they said that because the engine was running at a constant speed service intervals were dramatically increased

Don't you mean decreased?

[AshFlash]

thinfourth2 said:

The turbines get larger along the shaft as the steam expands

Yes I got that the wrong way round, if they were getting smaller there wouldn't be an awful lot of generating going on with all that back pressure.

[ATTAK Z]

Electricity from small car engine ... Mr Softee Ice Cream wagons ... 105e engines running all day on paraffin in the back of a Commer van IIRC

[hidetheelephants]

RedWhiteMonkey said:

smileymikey said:

Tomorrows World...st showing my age. Ran a feature years and years ago featuring a block of flats somewhere in Scotland that used a Renault Fuego engine running on gas to provide power. From memory they said that because the engine was running at a constant speed service intervals were dramatically increased

Don't you mean decreased?

Probably not; if something gets longer it is usually referred to as an increase. Bigger gap between services = increased sevice interval. It will still need attention every 2-3 weeks, unless you have a purifier the oil needs changing every 300-400 hrs or so.

The UK has a problem with joining things up so building infrastructure for district heating is generally only done by dedicatedly green developers; if we used all the waste heat from our power stations bills would be much lower. The location of power stations is often a problem too; many powerstations are bloody miles from urban areas which makes using the waste heat problematic.

As you were.

Edited by hidetheelephants on Monday 13th August 21:05

[RedWhiteMonkey]

hidetheelephants said:

RedWhiteMonkey said:

smileymikey said:

Tomorrows World...st showing my age. Ran a feature years and years ago featuring a block of flats somewhere in Scotland that used a Renault Fuego engine running on gas to provide power. From memory they said that because the engine was running at a constant speed service intervals were dramatically increased

Don't you mean decreased?

Probably not; if something gets longer it is usually referred to as an increase. Bigger gap between services = increased sevice interval. It will still need attention every 2-3 weeks, unless you have a purifier the oil needs changing every 300-400 hrs or so.

As you were.

Edited by hidetheelephants on Monday 13th August 20:57

Guess I was looking at it as a decrease in the number of services required. Doesn't really matter, we both mean the same thing, I think.

[King Herald]

CBR JGWRR said:

I was thinking about kettles, and realised at peak power one of the bikes puts out enough power to run 5/6 kettles, so a fair way to powering the house...


Which lead to the thought/question of why not have V8s at the end of the street running a generator providing cheapish power and a nice soundtrack?

Seriously, why do YOU think they use one giant power station to power the town rather than hundreds of tiny petrol engine generators??

[thinfourth2]

King Herald said:

Seriously, why do YOU think they use one giant power station to power the town rather than hundreds of tiny petrol engine generators??

I take you haven't actually read through this thread

As a marine engineer you should know more about waste heat recovery then most

[smileymikey]

RedWhiteMonkey said:

hidetheelephants said:

RedWhiteMonkey said:

smileymikey said:

Tomorrows World...st showing my age. Ran a feature years and years ago featuring a block of flats somewhere in Scotland that used a Renault Fuego engine running on gas to provide power. From memory they said that because the engine was running at a constant speed service intervals were dramatically increased

Don't you mean decreased?

Probably not; if something gets longer it is usually referred to as an increase. Bigger gap between services = increased sevice interval. It will still need attention every 2-3 weeks, unless you have a purifier the oil needs changing every 300-400 hrs or so.

As you were.

Edited by hidetheelephants on Monday 13th August 20:57

Guess I was looking at it as a decrease in the number of services required. Doesn't really matter, we both mean the same thing, I think.

You got there in the end

[DonkeyApple]

playalistic said:

This is the kind of thing usually written in human st on the wall of a mental hospital.

Allegedly?

[DonkeyApple]

Does remind me of a project we sunk a bit of money into a few years back.

We stumbled across an Aussie guy who'd created a compressed air engine which seemed very interesting.

http://www.engineair.com.au/index.php?option=com_c...

We wondered if there was an opportunity to use it as a foundation to an 'on demand' domestic power source taking advantage of cheaper night rates for electricity v peak costs.

The concept was to use Economy 7 to charge an air cylinder over night to store the energy for it to be released to power this motor/generator during the day.

We also looked at various angles that involved wind or solar generation to compliment and then the income stream from selling back into the govt subsidised grid.

It was quite an interesting concept and at one time there was probably a good market for domestic production units.

It slightly fell apart when trying to talk to the Aussie guy.

[b0rk]

Rammy76 said:

Maybe now they are getting better but my point was quite often the principal is better than the reality.

CHP is getting remarkably common in large scale new build resi or decent sized commercial units. The heating element as a by product of electric generation is fairly compelling against conventional electric space heating or even a heat only gas boiler plant.

[tank slapper]

DonkeyApple said:

Does remind me of a project we sunk a bit of money into a few years back.

We stumbled across an Aussie guy who'd created a compressed air engine which seemed very interesting.

http://www.engineair.com.au/index.php?option=com_c...

We wondered if there was an opportunity to use it as a foundation to an 'on demand' domestic power source taking advantage of cheaper night rates for electricity v peak costs.

The concept was to use Economy 7 to charge an air cylinder over night to store the energy for it to be released to power this motor/generator during the day.

We also looked at various angles that involved wind or solar generation to compliment and then the income stream from selling back into the govt subsidised grid.

It was quite an interesting concept and at one time there was probably a good market for domestic production units.

It slightly fell apart when trying to talk to the Aussie guy.

Compressed air energy storage can be viable if you have the right elements in place. There is one at Huntorf in Germany which uses a salt cavern as an air reservoir that has been in operation for a long time. Instead of using the air to directly drive an engine, it is used to feed a gas turbine. Since charging the air reservoir is done using excess electricity at off-peak times instead of taking power from the turbine it dramatically increases the efficiency. It is used to balance peak demand in a similar way to pumped storage hydro electric power.

http://www.kraftwerk-wilhelmshaven.com/pages/ekw_d...

Edited by tank slapper on Tuesday 14th August 00:00

[JB!]

Double post!

\/

[JB!]

On the VW thing, will a derv 4-pot generate enough heat to replace a gas boiler as well as supply electricity?

We run Marine generators at work, and damn they get hot, but whats the best way to transport that heat? Use the house as a giant cooling system with the generator shaft also running a pump?

[tank slapper]

When you consider that most small internal combustion engines are only 30% efficient or thereabouts, a 75kW engine (~100bhp) puts out over 50kW of heat. That is more than most domestic boilers, so there is plenty of energy there. To extract that energy would just need heat exchangers for the engine cooling circuit and probably for the exhaust gasses.

[Flibble]

tank slapper said:

When you consider that most small internal combustion engines are only 30% efficient or thereabouts, a 75kW engine (~100bhp) puts out over 50kW of heat. That is more than most domestic boilers, so there is plenty of energy there. To extract that energy would just need heat exchangers for the engine cooling circuit and probably for the exhaust gasses.

A 30% efficient engine putting out 75 kW of useful energy (which is what bhp measures in engines) would be dumping more like 250 kW of heat. You could certainly heat several houses with that much heat. 75 kW is probably only enough for a few houses in terms of electricity though - peak draw for a domestic supply is around 23 kW so you only have enough peak capacity for 3 houses there. If you don't spec for everyone using full draw all the time you might extend to 4 or 5 houses.

[Mr2Mike]

tank slapper said:

Compressed air energy storage can be viable if you have the right elements in place.

It's a pretty inefficient energy storage method however; lot's of heat losses compressing air and then the air cools when it expands giving losses at both storage and release. I notice the much publicised Tata compressed air car seems to have been quietly abandoned.

Edited by Mr2Mike on Tuesday 14th August 16:11

[FoundOnRoadside]

Gensets tend to run their engines at 1500rpm, that's the easiest speed to get 50Hz from. I've got a 6kVA generator at home, and it's run by a small 600cc single cylinder diesel. It'll run for about 18 hours on a decent load in 11 litres of diesel. It'll do 24 hours at least on it's 15 litre fuel tank if we're just running a few lights, the TV and the central heating.

[King Herald]

thinfourth2 said:

King Herald said:

Seriously, why do YOU think they use one giant power station to power the town rather than hundreds of tiny petrol engine generators??

I take you haven't actually read through this thread

As a marine engineer you should know more about waste heat recovery then most

I was answering the OP question, not summarizing a response to the whole thread. That is why I quoted the question.