Micro CoGen.

Alright! Is exhaust going through the shell or tubes?

Naturally I haven't taken a finished photo yet but hopefully soon You cannot view this attachment.

id love to see bob chime in on this. Ive seen lots of talk of what he has come up with but yet to actually see any picture?

Im currently working on building a SS shell in tube exhaust heat exchanger. Hopefully ill be posting pictures soon

Hi Bob.  Not too many postings here of late, but I do try to check in once a week.   For now I have a Deutz 3 cylinder genset from a lighting trailer like used on road construction.  Its about 5kW and water cooled, 1800rpm.  Good candidate for CHP except for the fact that its not a very common engine in the US.  Long term support could eventually become a problem.

I also have 2x Kubota Z482 motors, one of which is in a Semi truck APU package.  I believe that they belt drive the alternator in that configuration and run faster than 1800rpm, but I have yet to dig into it much.

The "subdivision" that I bought in, in Custer County Colorado sits a few miles off the highway and runs from 8000ft up to over 10k ft in elevation.  No utility power.  County population in summer about 3500 and in winter closer to 2000.  Too few people to pay for expanded utility infrastructure.  They have been fortunate that fiber internet was run along highways and this has enabled wireless internet providers to put up towers serving most of the area and thus providing relatively fast wireless internet access.

Its a good location for solar PV systems and also a good location for CHP since its a primarily heating based climate.  No need for AC, low humidity etc based on the altitude alone.  Its not unusual to be snowed in for weeks at a time, high drifts are common with wind that may be over 100mph a few times a year.

Im relocating from Michigan to Custer County this year.  Have a lot of basic work to do before I even get to building, fencing the property, putting in a gate and a driveway.  There are free range cattle in the area, over 350 of them so will have to be able to exclude them from the building site lest they trample everything.   Will be getting a septic put in, rules change means it now has to be done by a licensed installer.  Then after that I can set up a temporary bathroom / washroom with a temporary connection to the septic system.  At that point I could return the rented chemical toilet that is otherwise required by the sanitation dept.   

After that point and assuming I have made the 3 or 4 trips back and forth to MI to move all my equipment I will finally be able to begin with the building foundation.  Im hoping that I can get the slab poured prior to snow flying in October/November.  Then next spring I can frame and close in the main structure.

Perhaps you could recompile your list of what you have available in the way of low speed engines.  I would favor a couple of smaller gennys, which would give me a longer run time when they are actually needed, when the solar is not producing.  So far I have bought about 1.6kW worth of PV panels and I have 4x 75Ah 24V Lipo batteries.   So 7.2kWh of battery storage. This was intended to be the "construction phase" system.  Of course I have the Deutz 5kW genny as a backup in this phase.  I think I will be buying 12 more 370W panels to use in the system, that should give me another 4.4kW of solar generation and will no doubt force me to add significantly to my battery system.  My main battery load will be the solar refrigerator and freezer which need to run 24/7 and some lighting at night.

Im fairly confident that the solar PV array will support my daytime construction activities.  I plan to have a hot water storage tank for the CHP system providing between 1000 and 2000 gal of storage.  Heating in the final building will be via radiant pex pipes and doesnt require a very high water temperature to operate.  Main heating load is likely to be through a propane boiler, with any running of the CHP adding to that.  I will have vaporizing type diesel stoves for the living space, likely later adding a wood stove.   Once I have run the radiant heat system through a winter I will have a much better idea of the heat demand of the building and can then more appropriately size the hot water holding tank.

I could bring an engine hoist to help load things.  I dont have a forklift, but i do have a backhoe although that tends to consume most of the space on my gooseneck trailer when I move it.  Im sure we could work something out.

Keith:
yes i still have pretty much everything i came to kansas with
i would have to figure out how to get it out of my shop and loaded, but other than that?

been a long time since i checked in on the forum, so hopefully you will get this reply

Reassembled without the Management unit, and with the backplate brought out so each phase can be led out, and a connection into the sliprings.

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Now awaiting the arrival of some large bridge rectifiers. I had planned to use an old washing machine motor plus speed controller to build a test rig that would enable me to spin it up at different speeds and put a little electrical load on it, but the pulleys have different groove sizes :-( Rethink required.

Henry, I am totally unable to figure the picture thing out. This thing looks like your run of the mill ST head until the the rain cover comes off. The internals are different.

I paid about USD120 for it. It's about five years old so has some rust etc, but that would clean up and it looks good. If I was going to use it long-term I would probably replace the bearings with some good ones, and get some spare brushes.

Keith, that's an interesting pulley ! Must put a lot of load on the front bearing. But I think that's the 12V alternator from the same car - it has just one large terminal so must use frame as ground, whereas I'm getting the feeling the 48V subsystem is run completely isolated from the main 12V circuit, so my 48V alternator has two large terminals, like this :
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If I put the part number off your listing into a search I get 14V units.

I've done some more checking and actually now think this is a delta (or pentagon!)-wound unit - I can find no star-point. The coils for each phase are wound with a group of four wires, and it's the start and end of that skein (so 4+4=8 wire) that I can see bring brought out to the terminals. With four wires in the skein for any given winding, the resistance is so low that my simple multimeter can't resolve the difference in resistance between different points on the outputs.

I am going to try running it up and seeing what happens. I should be able to use a couple of three-phase bridge-rectifier units, right ? Just only part-using the second one. All you're doing as you add phases is to add more diode-pairs, so I can link the outputs of the two units in parallel, and attach each phase to one of the inputs, leaving one unused. I think that should work OK.

Thanks for the feedback !

Did it have an extra long front pulley on it? Like this one.
  https://www.ebay.com/itm/116094352017?itmmeta=

My thoughts are to spin it up and apply 12vdc to the rotor and then measure what the voltage is across the winding's. With an interesting bridge rectifier setup you might get a nice smooth 48vdc out of it.

What did you pay for this motor/generator??? I'm interested for charging my 48vdc LiFePo4 off grid battery bank.