Quote:
Originally Posted by Daox
Wooo, another great looking idea! I imagine I can pull the oil pump off the same engine I pulled that alternator off... Anyone know how fast oil pumps in car spin?
Also, I'll be on vacation till Wednesday so its not gonna get done real soon. If anyone has something laying around and wants to test it out that would be awesome!
I was also thinking... A closed system sounds a bit complicated with a high pressure pump. BUT, so you don't have to carry a ton of water, I was thinking of a semi closed system. Basically, you have the heating side and a condensing side. All the water gets collected in the condensing side after going through the turbine/pump/gerotor so you don't waste all that water (which should be distilled so there isn't build up). Now, you just dump the condensed water back to the heating side once its cooled down. You could do this manually or you could use a small cheap pump to do the same thing (windshield washer pump perhaps). You could have it run a few seconds before you start the car up. Simple and cheap! You could even throw an arduino on it with a temp sensor to automatically pump when it has cooled down if you wanted to automate it.
|
If you already have bulky condenser and storage tank plus all the plumbing you might as well add the pump and make it a closed system.
So I'm kinda a closed system pusher. Some of the reasons I like the idea are:
- No maintenance or consumables
- lubricant can be added to the loop to solve the lubrication problem.
- possibility for lower than ambient pressures at start up.
- This will lower the boiling point which may allow power production at lower exhaust temps and therefore power production at start up.
- Lower boiling point will allow you to experiment with recovering the waste heat in the cooling system and greatly increase the potential power producing capacity.
- The lower boiling temp may allow for refrigerants to be used rather than water, no freezing and designed to lubricate the system.
- An a/c is already a closed system so it may be just a matter of plumbing the right parts together with off the shelf fittings and junk yard components, and if we can figure out how to do this I could see lots of ecomoders converting there a/c into a generators.
You are right though it is more complicated that a open system. If you do go the open system idea don't bother with the condenser and just embrace the simplicity. It may be a pain adding water but it will be more simple and a good proof of concept project. It is better to start with a simple setup and succeed that to try for the Ideal setup and fail.