Micro CoGen.

well did this thread go south or what?  so it looks like it is a great car but no one has fooled around with one? I wanted to convert it to propane and make power and heat, but it looks like everyone just drives them

In Da UP of Michigan at the top of the lake so we can look down at Da trolls
(it's Mi. joke because they live below the bridge )

well after using WO for over 25 yrs i just sold the boiler and burner and went to LP gas. unless you have a great never-ending supply of good oil ( i won't bore you with all of my bad oil story's ) and are not on the EPA's radar .........i would re-think it. i would never ever put any WO any thing in my home. mine was in a attached garage and i had a 500 gal. out side. i had to relay on others for oil which was over flowing at first but the last few years had to buy for about 1.00 a gal.
so just my .02 worth and this comes from a guy who would not put a boiler that runs #2 oil in his house either, just so you know where I'm coming from. and unless things have changed most require a air compressor,  i have heard some of the new ones have them built in but i would want to see how much noise they make??

what a breath of fresh air to find this forum! so after going down and taking a tour of the Marathon factory http://www.marathonengine.com/ and going into to a coma after they gave me the price.....i found this forum (after i woke up).
so my qust is has any one converted the guts of a Prius in to something useful like a co-gen unit? it looks like you can buy a good wrecked one for 5-7K strip out the required parts and maybe sell the rest to re-cop some $$ and you would have a good base to start from. and there seams to be LP kits out there for these also.
i would like to heat the house and shop and feed the grid to reduce my power bill which can be as high as 3K a yr. , power here cost over .20 a KWH.
i have a water to air system in the house now and in-floor heat in the shop so the system is ready to go. i would run this in the winter only and understand it will have to start and stop a lot but hey that's  what it was built to do. and i also have access to a master Toyota mechanic through a friend so i would hope to enlist him for all of the "Prius work"
so i would hope to here from anyone that has plowed this ground before, don't need to reinvent the wheel

thanks rich

my background, was in the heating biz (but no A/C ) for 28 yrs. did mostly wood, gas, waste oil, and LP, that was 10 yrs ago, now manufacturing raceramps.com 

Quote from: SPSInc on November 19, 2012, 10:07:34 AM
Hello All -

A colleague of mine and I have been working on a Combined Heat and Power unit. As a disclaimer this is a project we are attempting to develop and market. We have some of the major components put together and have run some test data. We have decided to post some information to this forum to see if we can get some feedback on the concept and its performance.

We used a Yanmar 2TNV70 diesel engine and attached a 24 pole PMG generator. An electronic governor was installed on the engine so it can be controlled for variable speed to regulator the output of the PMG. We are able to get 8KW of electrical power out of the system @ 3600 RPM. We configured the unit for 48Vdc but could be configured for 24Vdc as well. During testing the output of the generator was roughly 54Vdc and 150Amps. We installed heat exchangers on the exhaust and engine cooling water.

Without getting too winded in the details here is what we were able to extract in heat and electrical energy running at full electrical output. The below data is based on a 160deg F input water temperature from the water storage tank.

Fuel Input: 0.7 gal/hr (2.7L/hr) = 93,000 BTU/hr
Electrical Output: 7.9KW = 27,000 BTU/hr
Exhaust Heat Captured = 12,000 BTU/hr
Engine Heat Captured = 30,000 BTU/hr
Sum of Electrical Energy and Heat Captured = 69,000 BTU/hr
System Efficiency = 74%

Our next step in the process is to package the systems in an enclosure and work on the automation. Thank you in advance for any feedback. I will post more as we move along and if any questions arise.

Regards, Eric

just checking in to see if this project has moved forward? looking to get a system ready for next years heating, power is would be a bonus!
Rich