Micro CoGen.

I'm in the process of putting together my trigen. I'll have a few different heat exchangers and I need some help with that..

I've got a Kubota z482 it's a 2cylinder liquid cooled diesel at apporox 13hp. I want to recover the coolant and exhaust heat for heating house and domestic water.. I know most of you have "build threads" on here but most are scrambaled and missing pictures..

I basically want to know your motor, load, and what size and or kind of heat exchangers you are using..

Any info would be appreciated

Rob

Well I'm going to venture into the world of engine driven ac systems. I've been collecting parts and I still have a few more to go. My plan is to build a tri-gen system for my house/garage. So far I have a z482 Kubota an ac compressor from an 06 mazda3(it was free)also  an old 3ton condenser coil with fan. I think I'm going to buy a brazed plate heat exchanger for the evap side to cool water. Although I do have a 2.5 evap and a large blower motor out of my parents house. So maybe I'll just hack that all together to play with first.. I need to find a pulley to put on the Kubota to drive the compressor..  I'll be posting picture soon

Ok well I haven't designed it yet and I'm not really all that great with programming. But I just wanted to start a thread to get some ideas on what we would like in a controller. Now I'm not talking about controlling an alternator or anything like that I'm talking about putting some logic behind a complete chp system. Things like the generator or in my case it will be generators. I have a larger one capable of 7.5kw and a small one good for about 3kw. I have solar panels and a fairly large battery bank of 24v at 840 amphr. Also I plan to build a waste oil burner to heat water.

So this is the part I want input on. The "logic" part. M

Recently I've found out that you can use an arduino or a raspberry pi to check the weather. More importantly it can tell the temperature and if it will be cloudy or rainy or sunny.

With this in mind we could have it look at the battery state of charge and the temperature of the water storage tank. With that information we can take into account when the sun will come up and approx how much sun we will get.

If it will be sunny soon and the batteries are "low" we can wait a little while and see if the solar panels start charging the batteries. If they don't after x amount of time we fire up the gen.

Or if we know it's going to be cloudy we just fire up the gen.

Also if the batteries are full but the storage tank is cold we can fire up the boiler to make some heat.

In theory we can maximize our efficiency by not running something when the solar will be able to take care of it.

Hopefully my rambalings make some sense. If anyone has other ideas or things to control please add it or if you have a better way to improve the logic have at it.

Just want to get the ideas flowing and see what other stuff I'm missing.

Rob  

Edit.. Could even develop a btu needed chart for your home so the control could know how long the water tank could keep your house warm at the given outside temp.

Hey guys! I've been a member for a while just reading and learning and I've finally picked up a good motor for a small battery charger that might turn into a chp.. I found 2 semi truck apus that both had kubota z482 diesel motors. Both were said to run but had been sitting inside for a few years. I gave 200$ (us) for each unit. Got them home and had the one running the next day it's a direct drive 3600 rpm 7500watt unit. Runs and generates just fine. The other unit is a 2600rpm belt driven 4000 watt unit. Although generator doesn't work(ordered a capacitor for it yesterday hopefully that will fix it) either way I think I'm going to sell the 7.5k unit and use that money to build the battery charger. I have a 24v battery bank at 840ah I have hooked up to solar panels and it does just fine in the summer but its pretty cloudy here in the winter. I am not off grid or remote by any means but Id like to be self sufficient. So I plan to do the 110-555jho alt and a voltage reg to recharge the batteries when needed but I'd still like to swap the belt and have the 4k gen head if it was needed.(assuming I can fix it cheap) ill get some photos up in a day or 2

Feed back is welcome
Rob