Stirling engines for the third world

[solo_1_2]

I think that there is a vast untapped market just waiting for the right design. Unlike most idealists about this, I don't care if the thing is the size of a car, or even 20x20 and has a 30ft stack as a low differential motor, and only moves at 20 rpm, as long as it can turn an armature at 20hp. First off, if I were to think about how funding, and demand were not even hinderances, I would gear it to new home construction where you can get the most impact, and do the most to eliminate the other problems, like lack of insulation, which is the bane of most pre-existing structures, and makes energy needs greater. Who wouldn't pay an extra 40k for a house that is PERMANENTLY off the ENRON grid, and starve those greedy bastards from day one? You can't tell me that a pre-designed half-basement, with the "cooling" section of the motor, couldn't be placed in the foundation's concrete, which even in death valley, has an ambient temperature of 64F. I know. I used to grow shitake mushrooms there in "man-made caves" that were primarily 14in reinforced concrete bunkers, and it was always 64F, even when it was 125F outside. Couple that with a heat source, like a 280ft deep well, and you get about a 25F variance. Would someone design me one? I'm no physics guru, or mechanical engineer, but I'm more than willing to go the extra mile to build it out of my own pocket, and then I believe I have the funding sources to make it a practical reality for mass production once I have a working prototype. With gas at over $3.25 a gallon, I think there would be more interest than anyone could imagine. I dread seeing my electric bill this month, as I'm sure many do; and we're all sick of the games the energy companies are playing. And when it comes to the end consumer, I think you will find that most people would sacrifice alot more that 4ft x 3ft (average genset size) to be completely off the grid.

[tmckissick]

Ok Ken (and all), I'll take you up on your offer. I have been heading up a small international team to design just such a system for the last 5 years. We've created a completely different engine design which has much better efficiency, becomes more efficient as it's built in larger versions, is made with affordable/available materials and is expected to cost much less than a traditional Stirling engine. However, our quest for the last 2 years has been funding. We have come to realize that it surprisingly qualifies for no grants and there is no private interest in funding anything that doesn't lead to a highly profitable business. This leaves out all public 'open source' type of cooperation strategies for getting it built. The general opinion is that it needs to be patented and based on a strong business model or the business (and their interests) will be taken over shortly. I personally think this is a lousy way to do business when the world's hitting crisis status on this. Once they do invest, they all want controlling interest in how the company progresses. Read that as "we're in it for short term gain and want to sell off the company before 5 years."

My goal is to avoid those hassles and just start making these systems from scratch. I've got quite a bit of it built and tested many of the individual principles with surprisingly good results. For the techies in the crowd, we're estimating over 80% of Carnot efficiency in most applications. We've got full computer analysis of it's thermodynamics that confirm this. We've even got a full business plan, including a manufacturing plant, laid out. Our problem is getting someone to invest that has enough interest to stay involved. In the last two years, we have spent literally months entertaining each of our interested investors to find out that they really didn't have the money or that they started listening to some oil company executive saying it's not practical/necessary.

Our projections are that the average US household with 4 kwh/sq. m/day of sun (everwhere south of Canada / Great Lakes) can be totally energy independent from electricity and natural gas for somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000. Yes, that not only includes electricity day and night but all heating and cooling needs as well. Once this gets going, we estimate that a 'basic system' could provide a 3rd world village with 2-3 kw of day-only electricity for around $5,000 or 1 kw of day-night electricity for the same. Mass production may bring that down even more.

The time has come to do this people. The one thing that would help those countries out of poverty is affordable energy and internet communications. With those two, they will become as educated as the rest of the world within a decade. And we all know that knowledge is power.

To anyone truly interested in funding or raising the funding needed to go to the next stage, feel free to contact me at mckissick@gmail.com

Todd McKissick

[bptdude___2569]

I know the last post sounded maybe a bit cagey, asking for funding, but I also have learned in my own poking around with people who are big business, that there really is a problem.

If a stirling engine could be designed "open source" and the rights can not be owned and controlled for short term profit, then business people want nothing to do with it. What is to prevent anybody else from building the same? To be honest, people in the oil business will shock you when you say there may be a way to replace the burning of fossile fuels, with answers such as "why fix something that isn't broken?".

The world is suffering from global warming, except as contested by the people in fincancial circles who have a lot to lose. The world suffers from close calls of major warfare competing for resources, meaning fossil fuel resources. All the people running for the next president in the United States are talking about paying extra cash for iffy research for "carbon credits" so they can drive their Ford F-750 Global Warmer super SUV. There is no recognition that solutions like Stirling engines should have the diffenece between thier cost/kWatt funded to match fossil fuels, to "grow the industry" and that Stirling engines provide added social value.

It is sad but true, that the developers must still push to work the technology, but please don't give up. The technology is a good long term investment, as the change will happen. Sooner or later, somebody, somehow, will light up public interest. At that point, he who has the best toy, will win. As my favorite quote from my favorite Republican president, Ronald Regan, goes: "Just get the pigs to smell the slop, and nobody will get in their way".

[piolenc]

I realise that I am coming very late to this conversation, but please indulge me, as I am fairly new to Stirlings. I'm an American/French dual national mechanical engineer living in the Philippines since 1998. This country has no domestic oil resources. On the other hand, it has a lot of waste biomass - mainly rice husks, coconut shells and rice straw. The price of coconut oil is gradually dropping, and the middlemen who buy copra (dried coconut meat) and sell it to the mills for processing are offering such a low price that it doesn't cover the cost of producing the nut and processing it into copra. They're now shocked that producers are reluctant to sell. A Filipino friend is already building the solution to that problem: small, palletized coconut-oil plants that can operate at the co-op level, cutting out the middleman. This sets the stage for using the oil for making biofuels...but that's a separate discussion. One remaining problem is the need for mechanical power to efficiently express coconut oil - current technology is a handpress, which does work but has limited output. (Incomplete oil recovery is not a problem, as the remaining cake makes good feed for animals.) His idea is to use the abundant coconut shell supply to provide the heat source for a Stirling engine which can be locally produced and used to drive a screw expeller (about 12 hp at 600 rpm), and Yours Sincerely is scouting for the right design...and if I can't find it I have already promised to dust off my copy of Martini's textbook, dig up the relevant texts and do my own. So far, it looks like the ST-5 comes the closest to what we need, but it seems to follow the 19th Century, single cylinder, low speed model when what I think is needed is a multicylinder engine. I suspect the deterrent is the cost of the heater head, so I'm leaning toward indirect heating, using either a reflux boiler or heat pipe (exotic, hazardous?) or a simple heat-exchange look using something like Dowtherm or Therminol as the heat transfer medium at ambient or near-ambient pressure. For the engine, I'm leaning toward a Rider-type design. I'm interested in reading the thoughts and suggestions of the veterans of this forum. Marc de Piolenc, Iligan City, Philippines

[njimihunt___5788]

Marc de Piolenc says he wants to power a plant for producing coconut oil at village level. Until he, like many of us, finds a suitable Stirling engine to use the heat from husks or firewood, he might like to look up www.kokonutpacific.com.au and find out about a man who produces a small plant which uses electric powered cutters to bore out the coconut meat, the heat of burning husk to dry the copra on a stainless steel bench, and hand powered hydraulic press to get the oil, which is pure enough to power the small diesel generator. Jim Hunt.

[piolenc]

Jim Hunt suggests an Aussie Web site as a source for a packaged coco-oil plant, but the guy I'm doing this research for already has a similar one - only the grater is manual, not electric - in testing at a remote (100 nm by sea in a small boat) production site. No need to go to Australia for that! The problem we're working on is that most of the sites that would benefit from such a plant have no access to mains electrical power or paved roads. He is looking for a solution that provides electrical power, or mechanical power directly, at the lowest possible cost so that the hand press can be replaced by a screw expeller, which has a much higher output and gets more of the oil. Based on my research so far, I have recommended that we use a conventional IC engine for that purpose, fueled by gas from a gas producer fired either by coconut shell or coco-shell charcoal. I figure that the 12 hp he needs can be provided by a 45 hp gasoline engine deeply de-rated to run on producer gas. A Stirling engine might follow, but should not be our first project.

[john___2802]

We currently have several working prototypes of low-mass steam engines that would meet this 12 hp criteria. Interestingly we plan to produce these in Philippines, where one of us also works on a producer-gas boiler/extractor. I hope to be in that country mid-November for manufacturing meetings. Perhaps Marc de Piolenc would like to meet?
/j

[piolenc]

This is in response to John Read's message about a packaged steam plan intended for production in the Philippines, and producer gas work.
I am also interested in producer-gas plants, though primarily to feed derated IC engines. The gentleman with whom I was exploring Stirlings and I concluded that our first baby step should be a gasifier/IC engine arrangement, because it minimizes development work and technical risk. He's in Metro Manila, but I'm living in northern Mindanao, about 700 miles away. I would like very much to meet, so please let me know your itinerary as soon as you know it. Where is your intended manufacturing site for the packaged steam plant?

[mco]

Do we have a piece of the jigsaw to offer? We have global interest in our process for 100% recycling of municipal waste. This produces recyclates and converts the rest into a sterile cellulosic fibre (fiber) which can be used in the manufacture of wood-plastic composites, so for decking, fencing and economy housing, also for soil amendment where it has the possibility to assist in slow recovery of desert. Finally this material is a stable source of fuel, with a calorific value comparable to that medium grade coal. (The process also gnerates water to potable quality).

What occurs to me is to integrate our waste process as one of the sources of fuel, both to generate the steam which we need (c 1/3 MT per MT of waste in, at 6 Bar / 165 C, under which conditions, the cellulosic material changes character.

Does anyone else see the potential for integration? We have reasonably good access to funding here in UK, and are at last about to get some, having done 5 years research at our own costs, although it is slow!

We might be able to come up with an integrated power and waste plant!

We welcome co-operation with interested parties. See our web site www.evrs.co.uk for link to the Defra write-up on our process.

Please persevere - having visited South Africa and seen the needs of the third world first hand, we are committed to helping if we can.

Martin

[dai.davies]

In some ways i am glad to see this discussion continuing although I am surprised to find it is still relevant... I first contributed to this thread a few years ago but have been distracted by other projects...

Have read the recent posts and it seems that todd mckissick hints at the real problem... technology and application issues seem to be as generally agreed no problem what is missing is a co-ordinated effort to actually design , build and field trial a unit. of course this requires funding and thats why i have been distracted... I now have access to funding source that is very interested in sponsoring the idea of a scaleable or modular unit that would fit the demand - in conjunction with a UK university NDDI is preparing a funding proposal along these lines. The 'touchy feely' arguments and the commercial market opportunities are covered but it would be good to get some practical/technical inputs - Initially we are looking for suppliers of stock components to build 3 pilot models which will be tested in UK and Nigeria... Ideally this is part of an overall development plan and not just a sales campaign therefore we are interested in the suitability of the generator (and or chp) unit for local commercial manufacture and are thinking that adapting and evolving simple kit based engines... too much detail to go into here but if anyone wants to contribute in any way they are most welcome.... NDDI is a registered UK charity so we dont have a direct commercial interest only in facilitating the project to ensure its ultimate commercial viability and benifit delivery - a much more accurate description of the over used 'sustainable development' mantra

That reminds me... comment was made about 3rd world being 'uncool' I hate trendy development speak so gotta point out that 3rd world has nothing to do with 'rank' it merely was used to describe non aligned nations(cold war leftover) - problem with using 'developing world' is that in many cases (and particularly Africa) they aint developing!
How about we agree on 'underdeveloped' and let the PC academics argue over Rostow, Gunderfrank and Rodney ;-)