Micro CoGen.

The engine came out of a boat. It has a water pump that circulates lake water through an exchanger, and dumps it into the exhaust. I gotta replumb that for land use. I would like to try a gas/liquid heat exchanger for the exhaust and run coolant through the lake water exchanger...prolly have to go with a bucket at first.
I am attempting a pic.
DF

I was given three 24volt panels...new...its a great boon, except, I am running 12volt components. So I was wondering if there was a device I could make that converted the 24vdc into 12vdc. What about a joule thief in reverse? thoughts? Links?
The most practical option I have right now is to reconfigure some batts, and a Xantrex 60amp charge controller for 24v, then powering two 1kw UPS's to power some 1/3hp motors to turn 12v SI10 alternators to charge the main bank....waiting....for....the ....laughter to die down. I never said this was efficient or simple, just that all the components are here and ready to plug and play.
So...anybody got something simple to build that could just change the 24v to 12v....

 Hi,
My NiCad drill batteries finally died and I thought it was time for a new Li ion model. I had been using the Sears 19.2 volt model for three years. The first one's batteries died after a year, and I got a replacement on the whole kit. The replacement lasted two years and was out of warranty when the batteries died. The drill chuck was getting kinda loose, so rather then buying just new batteries, I decided to shop for a smaller lighter Li-ion model.
I had success with the Black and Decker model from Walmart. I never used the B and D model until it failed, so never knew Walmart's return policy. Today, I asked the Walmart store manager about returning the tool to the store for replacement. He told me, that they only did replacements for 90 days after purchase...so I made the rounds to all the local shops that handled these cordless drills and impacts. Turns out Sears had the best deal.


this was $119 plus tax and another $18 for the purchase protection. These tools have a three year free replacement warranty. This thrills me, to be able to walk into the store and simply pick out a replacement without having to ship the broken one off in the mail.

Also, these Li-ion batteries work in the old NiCad tools I have, so I can still use my flashlight and old drill.
The big challenge is to put the original receipt in a time capsule until the tool dies....

So I replaced the mushroom muffler on the Onan CCK with a home made muffer...I got the exhaust note very quiet. Turns out the valves or something are actually the nosiest things now. Still not an unpleasant noise, as much as just a bunch of clanking.

 So....
A local junkyard is closing and I have been asked to remove this 100kw Waukesha powered generator. He wanted several thousand dollars, now its "get it out of here before I lose it". I am waiting for the load restrictions to go off and then we are going to put it on a lowboy and get it home.
The Waukesha is 1200cid, 6cyl., natural gas fueled and turns the 6 pole generator at 1200rpm.
My complaint is that, when this generator came in, it was fully functional and complete. Now its stuck and parts are missing...grrrr. I doubt I will ever hear it run but I remain hopeful.
I thought it would make an interesting post, because it seems to demonstrate a truism, namely that giant generators are relatively cheap per pound, while microgenerators are really expensive.

 For the last few years I have been using a 36v golfcart around here. This season, I am upping the ante with this rig...I am going to up its voltage to 48v, and mount solar panels on the roof. Its going to get an inverter, charge controller, and a storage box.
Last few years we have cut our fire wood with electric chainsaws...but this year is different, the wood is still piled out in the field...I think it would be more efficient to move the power plant out to the wood pile, so as to use the electric saws. Of course, there will be an ancillary increase in efficiency, involving moving ME away from the kitchen.

So the discussion I would like to have here is about 48volt equipment. I would like to find an  inexpensive 48v MSW inverter in the 5000 watt range.
I would also be interested in some 48v MPPT charge controllers...

Hi,
This topic definitely falls in the "...if you don't know where else to put it..." category.
I bought two 100 LED strings of lights. They are the Volt hawk brand that use 4 D cell batteries. Mr. Wil E. Coyote here, thought if I jumpered them up in series they'd work off of a 12volt car battery. So I bravely voided the warranty by soldering a jumper wire between the two battery boxes... Then I wired up my battery. Nothing. No smoke, no lights, nothing at all. I probed the wires running to the lights and got six volts on each string. No lights. I let it sit for a while. I desoldered the wire, and installed the 4 D cell batteries. Still nothing. Still had six volts running up and down the light"s wires.
After deciding that I was not going to drive 200 miles to argue and exchange the lights, and that I had hopelessly voided the warranty, I started cutting apart the wire string. Turns out that 5 diodes in series will light up on a 12volt battery, but the strings were built with 10 diodes in series. So I added a second 12volt battery and wella!! Happy Kinder! the Christmas lights are working.

So what I think happened is that when I wired them in series I must have blown some component.

Is it possible that these lights have a small mppt controller taking 6vdc and pulsing it to the LEDs at 24vdc?

https://www.google.com/#q=volt+hawk+christmas+lights&tbm=shop&spd=7455822854561589389

dunno but it sure was a mind bender...
BPJ

So here it is...we feed our Magnum 2812 with a Honda EU3000i. Everything works great. Honda current passes through to the cottage while the inverter charges the battery bank...
I recently moved the diesel generator down into close proximity of the cottage, and thought it would be great to be able to unplug the Honda and plug in the diesel...except the Inverter does not like the diesel power. The generator is from a Marathon light set. The generator is a Leroy Somer I checked the voltage and found it to be 115 volts.
To help with this dilemma I purchased a Sperry multimeter with a hertz setting. Originally I simply tried to plug the meter into a wall socket...it didn't like it. So I set it up in series with a compact fluorescent bulb to get the amperage down to what I thought the meter could handle....I went on a little spree measuring the hertz of various inverters  and found all to be within a half cycle of 60hz. The I started the generator and when I plugged in the lamp the meter said 438 hertz. This at 115 volts. Hmmmm

I have used this generator for many years now, and thought it strange that the Lincoln stick welder refused to work, nor would the Lincoln mig pack 10. Also it always seemed that the battery chargers never gave much amperage and none would make over 13.6 vdc.

Could it be that I actually have a 400hertz generator head? More likely I simply do not know the proper method of using the Sperry Multimeter...still the generator was originally used in Iraq to power four big flood lights...a resistive load that would not have cared about hertz...I dunno but if the hertz is that far off, it might make sense why the Magnum inverter would reject the incoming AC power.
What do youse think?
BPJ

I am starting a thread to upload all the manuals and pamphlets I have about the 10si. The attached .pdf contains the regulator build up from Delco Remy...it is written at a fundamental level easy for the non-electrical engineer to understand.

I have boxes of Chilton automotive manuals and Motor's Manuals from 1988 and back. Here in Michigan, those cars have all rusted out long ago. I find that I only have a 1979 Fairmont left from that era...I collect trucks. So....I would give away these manuals if you pay for the shipping...my trailer is too small for me to try and keep these any longer...so I am considering throwing them on the burn pile...I hate to do it but I just can't use a car out here any more....and there aren't any left regardless...perhaps you fellas to the south and west could use these books? I need a space to sleep so these boxes have to go!
Looks like the big manuals can go in the 12.35 usps priority boxes...If I have to hunt for boxes and label them, then it probably would be better to burn the manuals...
BPJ
Thoughts?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwzesdkSqC4&feature=youtu.be

I videoed my questions about this head...
can I get parts for these?
BPJ

Wow,
I have been working on my Kohler 4.5 CM 21 RV generator, and found that the magic smoke has been let out of the voltage regulator....then when I looked up part #233833 I found that it sells for $368 dollars....
(rant rant rant)
So I have determined that it is indeed time I learned how to build voltage regulators...
I am still trying to figure out how the one on the Kohler works...but I know from the PDF...

http://campkahler.com/files/kohler-7cm21-rv-service-manual.pdf

that a bridge rectifier is involved...Mouser has one for $3.05 that will pass 35 amps...I also determined from the manual that a test of the voltage regulater involves an AC voltage of up to 120vac. The manual says the brushes pass no more then 2amps, so I am thinking the rotor power is less then 250 watts. This makes me think the Mouser rectifier part will work...but, but, but,
I don't have a clue how the voltage regulator works yet...It has the stator AC input wires, and the dc output to the rotor...only four wires. There is an additional dc field flash input wire, but that is inconsequential to regulator operation....
The knee jerk reaction here, is that the stator winding that powers the rotor, puts out power proportionally to the other stator windings making generator output power. So I it makes me think that the voltage regulator doesn't directly control generator out put...like it has some preset parameters that it works in, but no real link to the actual output voltage...


So what do youse know about all this?
For me, this is a perfect problem...the rest of the generator is really simple...so much so that I feel confident I could make this run for a while...
DF

 Hi,
Do any of you have any favorite reference books about motor and generator repair? I don't need any electrical engineering stuff, but rather the actual nuts and bolts kind of books...similar to what I see for home washing machine repair....
thx
BPJ

Ronmar,
I thought I would bring this over to a "new" topic. It is much more interesting then ranting about HHO...
Your statement about no free lunch does not apply to internal combustion engines, or perhaps it should be modified to read...
"The Lunch is not free, and we are throwing half of it away!"
I had to go back to Ricardo, page 16 of Slow Speed Engines, to find what I was looking for...namely the theoretical limit of efficiency for a gasoline (or constant volume) engine. Its also known as the Air Standard Efficiency. For pressures between 140psi to 450psi that limit is 47% meaning 63% of the heat MUST be wasted.
So if our engines are only getting around 20%, then there is another 27% that can be looked upon as fair game for improvement.
The "No such thing as a free lunch" part of this improvement are things like frictionless bearings, zero pumping losses, and adiabatic expansion. What we do have, is room to improve combustion. The goal would be complete combustion. That is why we have catalytic converters, because of incomplete combustion.
What if one day an alloy or ceramic, or a shape was discovered that eliminated quench distance? Zoom! Up goes the limit of complete combustion.
It is in these very narrow limits of one particular arcane facet of combustion, that any further improvement of fuel effciency will be discovered.
I bet if we went back over what Ricardo did, we'd find that he or the germans knew all about Hydrogen fuel properties and how they related to various gasoline/hydrogen mixture's flame speeds....
Me, I want to find a film with sound, of those giant Maybachs burning blaugas pushing a dirigible around...(yep, doing it before everybody had cars). Sorry I digress.

Please post pictures of your generator sheds...Spring has finally sprung on the Keweenaw and I can start thinking about pouring concrete again. I wanna build an engine house. I would like some ideas. Pictures help me a lot too. Sooo, please post pictures of what you have...no matter how humble....right now we have half a plastic dog kennel sitting on top of the Honda. So whatever you have, has got to be better.

Another trivial thing....they call a shed 20'X10' here...that size and it needs no permit...I am wondering whether that is measured from the inside or the outside. If from the outside, then how do they measure a root cellar?
Thanks,
BPJ

Say I have two small generators...AC putting out 115 volts...can they be synched up some how? So they could run on the same circuit?

Or say I have one small synchronous generator and a engine turning a motor as a generator...I think I can see how to synch up that arrangement.. Is there already a thread here, about that, full of X-members who are now dead because of stupid experiments?

Geez, I mean how do the big boys bring extra generators online?
Is this slighty interesting or is this just going to be treated with the evil question...Why? Hell I don't know why, but it seems interesting, so I thought I would ask.
BPJ

Hi, I wrote a letter to some friends, and thought I would share it with you, to see what your opinions were...

Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 10:29 AM

FROM Bruce Jackson TO 3 recipients

Gasoline products

From Bruce Jackson
To emolivei@mtu.edu
balafran@mtu.edu
mroberts@mtu.edu

Hi,

I took five minutes and found this little wiki chart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent

This has been bugging me for a long time now. The numbers are pretty straight forward. The implications are not. The so called regular gasoline you buy now, has ethanol added. Rumor has it that it is 10% Ethanol. Doing some quick math with the chart I get 110210 BTUs per gallon. Pure regular gasoline is 114000 BTUs per gallon.

The vehicles that you three probably drive every day, don't care whether they burn pure gasoline or gasoline/ethanol mixtures. The engine's fuel delivery system simply compensates for the different air/fuel mixtures required by the different types of fuel. This has been so since the late '80s and in the case of Volvo, since the late 70s. Your gas tank systems are sealed from the atmosphere so moisture laden air doesn't get into the tank (the importance of that in a second). So you as drivers, have accustomed yourselves to the apparently seamless transition to blended fuel. Or have you?

When you put your foot on the throttle, you expect to GO! You keep pushing that throttle pedal until the vehicle is performing at the level you are looking for. Burning fuel, provides performance, and burning more fuel gives more performance. Because the gasoline/ethanol blends don't have the same number of BTUs per gallon as pure gasoline, the engine is required to burn more fuel to provide the same amount of performance as pure gasoline. You have to burn more of this mixed fuel to do the same job. This obviously hits you in the pocket book. This is the most direct implication of alcohol being added to your fuel. There are others, more sinister...

Hey guess what? They don't blend the ethanol into your gasoline at the gas station. Ethanol is ethyl alcohol and is miscible in water (think vodka). Gasoline is a blend of hydrocarbons that is not miscible in water. When ethanol is exsposed to the atmosphere, it immediately begins absorbing the humidity from the air. Blending alcohol and gasoline together only works as long as water isn't present. As soon as the ethanol absorbs enough water from the atmosphere, it falls out of solution with the gasoline. Now you have a problem....the ethanol has a high octane number, so it can be blended with a lower octane gasoline. When the two liquids seperate, the alcohol becomes nearly unburnable and the gasoline is so volatile that your engine must retard the spark timing. This means the spark ignites the mixture late in the power stroke, allowing a lot of the fuel/air mixture to simply go out the tail pipe as waste heat. So now your foot goes even deeper into the throttle looking for that performance.

Another implication that I sense but haven't researched, and which might be more in your wheel houses, is the idea of who is paying for all this? The ethanol in the gasoline, I hear farmers are loving the high corn prices. Does the Federal government subsidize the oil company's use of ethanol? Obviously, the type of gasoline, if it's lower octane, is less expensive to produce, so why aren't we seeing a lower price at the pump? I pay $4.39per gallon for pure premium gasoline, while the RUG price is $3.77. Is that the actual difference (I tend to doubt it, but don't know where to look to answer the question)?

Some other implications that probably are marginal in the grand scheme of things:

The gasoline/ethanol blend is barely volatile enough in this weather to ignite. Pour some on the ground and try to lite it, it won't burn. Try that with pure gasoline and you won't need a hair cut for a while.

The gasoline/ethanol blend is so corrosive that it will devour any non sealed fuel system. Anything with a carburetor, or open gas tank will be subject to acidic corrosion. That means the fleet of engines in vehicles and equipment that is older, will be destroyed if the fuel is not removed after each use.

Who decided this mixture had to be law? If the premise is produce less emissions, then the answer isn't to burn more fuel then needed. If the premise is to make more road fuel domestically, then perhaps reforming frakked natural gas into gasoline would be more sensible then burning up our food supply especially if 46 million are already on foodstamps. We need to find out who is responsible for this and what their reasons were. I think the experiment has gone on long enough.

Some other interesting things about this chart....Methanol which is the lightest alcohol, and also sold as fuel, has half the BTU value of gasoline per gallon. It presently sells for $3.50 a gallon. It is directly reformed from natural gas. The noteworthy point here, is that I have buying Methanol for years and its always been tied to the price of gasoline, selling for about $.20 more per gallon. Because of the natural gas boom, the price has dropped below gasoline. They couldn't hold the price as high, because there simply isn't demand for it, and its production cost has fallen. Methanol could replace gasoline if it cost about $1.80 or so per gallon. This would be a real answer to the domestic fuel production fetish being bandyed about without the dangers of driving a CNG fueled vehicle.

Biodiesel has more BTUs per gallon then gasoline and has to be burned in an engine that has a lower specific brake fuel consumption then gasoline burning engines. I bring in my fuel for $1 per gallon production cost. I have always wondered why I wander off and never consider the expense of making biodiesel, but when one factors in these three facts, the vast difference in cost/mile becomes obvious. A win for me, I guess.

Anyhow thanks for reading this, and have a good day,

Bruce Jackson

Here is something I have been wondering about for a while....its kinda mathy but whatever.
Lets say the battery bank has a resting voltage of 12.4 vdc and suddenly you start charging at 14.7vdc at a 100amps. How many watts are you actually charging at? I have been thinking for years its 14.7X100 or1470 but it occurs to me that up until the charging voltage is over the resting voltage. So would the actual charging wattage be (14.7-12.4) X100 or 230 watts?

What be the deal, EE dudes?
BPJ

Alrighty,
I did some homework (read the white paper) and decided its time to start this project. I have had this Motorola for years and just haven't found the engine I like to belt this up to.
The white paper makes sense. The problem is, I don't have a 24volt bank, and am unlikely at this time to recapitalize my infrastructure to use 24volt. So...I will run the 12SA in its 12volt form.

Its been my experience, when hooking a Delco 10SI to a big battery bank, that the 10SI will give its all. My original set up had a 2hp horizontal shaft Briggs and Stratton engine hooked to a 37amp 10SI. Attaching the jumper clip to a dead battery or a big battery bank would stall the engine. So....14.7volts times 37amps is only 543 watts, which, even with belt drive, should have been low enough that the 1500watt engine could drive it. Turns out a 10hp Tecumseh Snowblower engine was the only one with enough chutspa to not stall when a 37 through 80 amp 10SI were giving full output. From this I suspect that these alternators will give much more then they are rated at. My question for Bob is: what size engine should I belt up to this Motorola?
Should I expect similar behavior from the motorola?
The Motorola should put out at least 1764 watts according to the data plate, how much more could I expect?
I am worried that all I have to turn this thing is a 22hp Wisconsin badged Lambordini diesel. I don't care for this monster at all. Pinging through that aluminum block can be heard even if one is in the next township.
I have a crazy idea: I have a like new 12 or 14hp Briggs and Stratton riding lawn mower engine....its electric start (which is a MUST HAVE feature). I could do the long twisted belt thing, to go from vertical shaft to the horizontal orientation of the alternator.
In this cold weather, its 13F right now, I tend towards spark ignition. Gasoline engines are usually easier to start when its this cold. Two strokes being the easiest.
I have a few 8hp horizontal shaft engines to work with but at 5968 watts, if there is that over charging capability in the Motorola, I would think it would need some kind of current limiting method to keep it from stalling the engine.
Anyhow, thats what I have so far....


(BTW, the way to not have the delcotron destroy itself, is to not use the 10SI but the older externally regulated delcotron, and instead of having a regulator, just hook up an old sealed beam head light between the positive and the field terminal. The head light acts as a resistor and limites the output to something like 12.8volts. You can try different head lights and get the voltage you need, but remember the higher the voltage the harder that little devil will try to charge. So I let it go for a while at 12.8 til the bank is up then I hook up the regulator, and go up to 14.7 from there.)


yours BPJ

 I am still poking around the site, like all forums there isn't any real good way to seperate the wheat from the chaff. So I read, and read. The thing that occurs to me about this forum, is that I am in my wheelhouse here. I live completely off grid. I have three battery banks to charge. I build things offgrid too, welding, cutting, machining, all offgrid.
I want to preface any more remarks by giving you some background first...
I didn't come by being offgrid by choice. I was forced into being off grid because I could not pay my electric bill and the man came and shut it off. So I started making electricity from scratch.
My first system was a $40 inverter from menards, hooked to a car battery, which gave one CFL bulb enough juice to get by for about three days. I make biodiesel so the next step was to start charging batteries with the alternator on the truck. Next came a one ton chevy with a 6.2 and a thousand pounds of used carbatteries  being charged between the house and the woodlot 50 miles away.
Things have progressed and improved since then. I went through a phase where I had desulfators singing at a 1000hz, polluting the airwaves, with their long lead/antennas. We lugged carbatteries to each room to power individual 600wat inverters. Then the whole exciting phase of turning induction motors with capacitors in parallel to make AC power! What a great day that was, when we got our washing machine running (although it was odd that the wash cycle only took about 5 minutes. Which was a lesson in controlling frequency!)
All this stuff happened with no cash, no job, no food, no nothing, except a very generous owner of a small junkyard who was intrigued by our shenanigans, and the internet.
I want the reader to understand that I have bootstrapped my offgrid experience with junk. Only the modified sine wave inverters were bought new. Because of this origin, I have great skepticism and jealousy of purpose built, big money, off-grid systems. Always the question remains, what do you do if it fails? You cannot call anybody. You have to diagnose, secure parts, and repair these systems yourself. If you have enough money to have someone else do this for you, then thats a different realm from mine with different goals entirely (not to mention, incomprehensible).
Presently, I sit upon a lofty tower of experience, and wealth of equipment that my former self could only drool at. We have T105s, a magnum full sinewave inverter, a Honda EU3000i, gasoline to burn, Kyrocera 140dxs, Xantrex charge controllers, and a warm basement to work on the small engines. We pump our own water, make our own fuel, garden, mill our own wood, mix our own concrete. We are doing good and its still cheaper then living in town. Probably by half.
The Blashphemy:
I want to pontificate about engines. I am an engine guy. I joined the forum to learn more about alternators and generators. I also joined to discuss, argue, vent, and otherwise communicate about engines. It just so happens that right now in my life I am at the phase where a sexy engine is one that powers my drip coffee maker, and not so much, one that powers a tire spinning mud bogging 4X4 (although, such a thing, still gets a look).
What is your favorite engine? Why? Justify it?
I totally understand simply liking an engine for itself, after all isn't that the point of all those old engine shows?
This post will make you mad, just understand I am not attacking anyone pesonally, but good debate causes feelings.

I was stationed in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq for 10 months, I was also stationed in FOB Anaconda for 2 months. During that time I witnessed the run-to-destruction of several generator light sets. I saw Listers, indian lister clones, Changfas, Lambordini (sp?), Onan, white, military standard, continental, wisconsin, Briggs and Stratton, Yanmar, Mitsubishi, Isuzu, Kubota, and the big boys, Fairbanks Morse, Cummins, and Hercules.
The gensets that lasted the longest were Kubotas. Then Mitsubishi and Isuzu. Yanmar too. The rest were garbage. The chinese engines were the worst. The indian listers were hilariously horrible (I saw a flywheel break off a generator and roll across the compound and put a hole in a concrete block wall, looked like a bowling ball getting a strike!) Onan diesels were another piteous machine, all of them dead. Italian diesels didn't live too long over there either. Briggs and stratton were the same there as here, dead due to lack of oil.
By being allowed to test all these engines, in 150F working conditions (and dust, never forget the talcum powder dust), I formed an opinion about which engines should go home in the conex box.
We were so impressed with the Kubotas that we called marathon electric in WI and asked for a quote for a 6kw light set gen delivered to MI ($8000, at the time).  I realized that the Kubota was the answer. I worked through 75 different light set generators preparing 17 for shipment back to the US. Each was either a Kubota, mitsubishi or Isuzu. Each set had over 10000 hours. This was in 2005 and the generators were all 2003 models. In other words, these generator engines ran continously for 10000hrs. When they quit, they were thrown away. We got them, and rinsed out the lubricating oil with diesel fuel then kept changing the oil until they would run again. That was all that was wrong, they simply quit because the oil got too sooty for the injector pump to operate.
http://www.m-p-llc.com/products/lighttowers/series3000/mlt3060.html
I also shipped one of these....

It was badged as a Cummins. The genhead was junk but the engine was cool so I boxed it up. Its what powers the Homelite model 41A now. Great engine and I would buy one if I ever found one.
So from my desert experience I would say the small japanese diesels are the best, then there was a surprising second place winner, the implications of which are ominous.

Meet the LDS 465 Military Standard Multifuel engine. For 8 months this engine charged my battery bank daily and burned nothing but 10micron filtered used motor oil. Yes, it wet stacked like a bitch. It never missed a beat, sometimes running all night to power my AC unit. This is a good design if its allowed to operate within its original specifications. Bump the pump and they explode fast.

That was then, this is now.

I live on an island, with a large industrial base and heritage, yet we cannot get parts here. Its a lot like Abu. So I would not want an engine like an LDS 465. I would use a Cummins big cam or a Detroit Diesel two stroke, because they are cheap and parts are availible down in wisconsin. I would not want a Lister at all. Might as well get a Honda because the parts availibilty is the better.
Would you believe the all around work horse on this property falls onto these brands, Briggs and Stratton (never blew one up yet!), Tecumseh (blew lots of 5hp and 7hp models up), General Motors, BB 366,  IH 392, 335cid, 150cid gasoline, Ford FE 330, 360, and 390 Detroit Diesel 371, and 6.2.
Discoveries recently, is how good an engine Kohler K series singles were.
So what are your favorites and why? What is your favorite sounding engine. Mine is the sound of an idling 303cc Wankel

another fav....

Neither of the above are as practical as Kubota or Yanmar but they sound cool.
Come I showed you mine, now pony up, what gets youse going?
DualFuel BPJ
(the REAL DualFuel)