Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
All-Purpose OWF Discussions => General Outdoor Furnace Discussion => Topic started by: muffin on March 22, 2012, 10:06:44 AM
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I have been interested in getting electricity out of my boiler since the day I got it. Seems there should be a way. Then, when I lose power I will still have heat. I only need a 200-300Watts to run the boiler I believe, but since I have forced air in the house I would need some considerable power to drive those blowers. Also be cool if it could power my dehumdifiers in the pool room. I recently ran across this engine "stirling engine" and it seems it might be able to work. Not sure about how much heat it needs to operate though. Was even thinking I could cool the cold side with the pool water which would recover the heat to heating the water. This would put 180-190F on one side and 80-85F on the other. Could the boiler water be hot enough? All the demos use a flame. Anyway, just wondering if anyone ever tried this and what kind of wattage one could get. Ideally I need 5KW to really run the heart of my house I think, at least 3KW anyways.
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I have been interested in getting electricity out of my boiler since the day I got it. Seems there should be a way. Then, when I lose power I will still have heat. I only need a 200-300Watts to run the boiler I believe, but since I have forced air in the house I would need some considerable power to drive those blowers. Also be cool if it could power my dehumdifiers in the pool room. I recently ran across this engine "stirling engine" and it seems it might be able to work. Not sure about how much heat it needs to operate though. Was even thinking I could cool the cold side with the pool water which would recover the heat to heating the water. This would put 180-190F on one side and 80-85F on the other. Could the boiler water be hot enough? All the demos use a flame. Anyway, just wondering if anyone ever tried this and what kind of wattage one could get. Ideally I need 5KW to really run the heart of my house I think, at least 3KW anyways.
Why not get a gen tran hooked up to your house..get a generator 5500k or larger..It will run everything thing..My owb and oil burner are hooked to it.. Your forced hot air is nothing for power..My well pump ya thats power considering its 220amp....like i said 5500k or larger generator..should have no problem on what u want to run..
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correct me if i am wrong but i think he's looking to power his house with his boiler even when the power isnt out. I don't know a way but a local flooring mill has a huge boiler type aparatus that generates electricity back to the electric company in town when the mill is closed as they only run 1 shift. It does not provide enough while they are in operation but it helps a lot to have it. They just burn the cut off that run off a floor type conveyer system that feeds this "boiler". Pretty neat i thought
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Great thread I have been thinking about it, I think to get elec from the boiler we would need to set something up go make steam to turn a turbine , let's get some ideas going here
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I was wondering about gasifaciation from a gasser to run a generator?
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MattNH, I think you mean 220 volts not amps
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Check out this website. This is very interesting and now you have me thinking....lol
These guys even mention creating electricity by using an outdoor wood boiler. Here you go. http://www.tegpower.com/ (http://www.tegpower.com/)
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One more step towards getting off the grid. If generating electricity from an OWB is viable I'd be interested.
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Check out this website. This is very interesting and now you have me thinking....lol
These guys even mention creating electricity by using an outdoor wood boiler. Here you go. http://www.tegpower.com/ (http://www.tegpower.com/)
Def interesting..I guess the question is it really worth forking up the money to do something like that??...Considering that most obws only run a short period of time depending on where you live.. Yeah the heat will keep the boiler going but you still have to have power to your existing furnace to keep your house /hot water up to temp..To me my boiler is pennies to run..Pretty sure I got something in my house that uses way more power than my owb...Just my opinion.
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Very interesting website, I have lots more reading to do. LOL
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Man I love the idea of this. If it could be cost effective.
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Cool I will check the site out more later, tomorrow is my turn off and clean up day
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Check this out thermal electric generator home made (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzEK5eODr6I#)
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Check this out thermal electric generator home made (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzEK5eODr6I#)
Thats neat!
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Check this out thermal electric generator home made (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzEK5eODr6I#)
Thats neat!
Yeah but unfortunately you will never get a usable amount of power off that. The amount of power he was generating, he would needs hundreds of them to get close to what a AA battery will put out.
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Check this out thermal electric generator home made (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzEK5eODr6I#)
Thats neat!
Yeah but unfortunately you will never get a usable amount of power off that. The amount of power he was generating, he would needs hundreds of them to get close to what a AA battery will put out.
I wonder if the length or size of wire has anything to do with how much power you get from this? Also the hotter temp inside the stack as apposed to the temp outside of it on a cold day?................ just wondering
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correct me if i am wrong but i think he's looking to power his house with his boiler even when the power isnt out. I don't know a way but a local flooring mill has a huge boiler type aparatus that generates electricity back to the electric company in town when the mill is closed as they only run 1 shift. It does not provide enough while they are in operation but it helps a lot to have it. They just burn the cut off that run off a floor type conveyer system that feeds this "boiler". Pretty neat i thought
Well, I was not really looking to power my house full time, I was thinking when the power was out only, but hey, if it works well, why not. I was looking for something off the boiler though. I know I can buy a generator, but then I need fuel for it. I already have the boiler.
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Check out this website. This is very interesting and now you have me thinking....lol
These guys even mention creating electricity by using an outdoor wood boiler. Here you go. http://www.tegpower.com/ (http://www.tegpower.com/)
I had checked them out awhile ago. Did you see the price tag at the bottom.. wow. Almost 2K for 200 Watts. something tells me that isn't going to pay off. It is really cool though and would certainly work great.
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Check out this website. This is very interesting and now you have me thinking....lol
These guys even mention creating electricity by using an outdoor wood boiler. Here you go. http://www.tegpower.com/ (http://www.tegpower.com/)
I had checked them out awhile ago. Did you see the price tag at the bottom.. wow. Almost 2K for 200 Watts. something tells me that isn't going to pay off. It is really cool though and would certainly work great.
And did you see you would only get about 20% of the 200 watts on an owb? So it is about $4000 for 40 watts. You could buy a lot of solar panels and batteries for that.
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I was wondering about gasifaciation from a gasser to run a generator?
Maybe combine this idea with the wood gas engine brought up and other threads and power a generator, I think my have to be a non-gasser however. As for the other ideas what I remeber from thermodynamics is that steam would be required to generate much power. (more enthalpy between the hot and cold sinks)
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Check out this website. This is very interesting and now you have me thinking....lol
These guys even mention creating electricity by using an outdoor wood boiler. Here you go. http://www.tegpower.com/ (http://www.tegpower.com/)
I had checked them out awhile ago. Did you see the price tag at the bottom.. wow. Almost 2K for 200 Watts. something tells me that isn't going to pay off. It is really cool though and would certainly work great.
And did you see you would only get about 20% of the 200 watts on an owb? So it is about $4000 for 40 watts. You could buy a lot of solar panels and batteries for that.
I posted this from my phone and apparently hit the wrong button. I meant to say $2000 for 40 watts.
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Yeah, it wouldn't be worth the cost. But, atleast we know it's possible now.
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I was wondering about gasifaciation from a gasser to run a generator?
I saw this done on youtube....pretty cool.
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Figures...now I can't find it. But as I recall the guy used a small gasser with a filtration system piped directly to the carburetor of a small generator. If you could do this with an OWB gasser...maybe you could run a large "stand by" generator and power your entire house with it?
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I have been deeply interested in generating electricity from heat for some time. As you guys have already discovered TEGs are far too expensive for the output. Do a google for "Organic Rankine Cycle" this has the most promise right now. The problem is in the expander, but this will happen in the next few years.
Jeff
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This ORC looks very intriguing. I found a site:
http://www.infinityturbine.com/ (http://www.infinityturbine.com/)
That seems to sell what you would be needed to build one of these. I have emailed them about it. I'll let you kow what they say. The parts seem pretty simple. Basically the same technology that's inside a heat pump with a turbine stuck in the middle.
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This ORC looks very intriguing. I found a site:
http://www.infinityturbine.com/ (http://www.infinityturbine.com/)
That seems to sell what you would be needed to build one of these. I have emailed them about it. I'll let you kow what they say. The parts seem pretty simple. Basically the same technology that's inside a heat pump with a turbine stuck in the middle.
Not cheap either. I got the price list from them a couple weeks ago.
The IT03 (600w to 3000w) is $20,000
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This ORC looks very intriguing. I found a site:
http://www.infinityturbine.com/ (http://www.infinityturbine.com/)
That seems to sell what you would be needed to build one of these. I have emailed them about it. I'll let you kow what they say. The parts seem pretty simple. Basically the same technology that's inside a heat pump with a turbine stuck in the middle.
Alas the price tag is pretty high, but the undermining factor is they have terrible efficency. They only get 10% so you would have to dump 200K-400K BTUs into it to get anything useful out. Very sad. Gotta find something else I guess!
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Yes, the overall efficiency is about 10%. There is loss at the HX, at the expander, and at the generator, it mounts up. Plus parasitic loss at the working fluid pump and perhaps elsewhere. I don't think Infinity has a recoup which uses the exhaust of the expander to preheat the working fluid before it enters the heat exchanger. That helps a bit.
If it were not a tough nut to crack they would be everywhere.
Jeff
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This ORC looks very intriguing. I found a site:
http://www.infinityturbine.com/ (http://www.infinityturbine.com/)
That seems to sell what you would be needed to build one of these. I have emailed them about it. I'll let you kow what they say. The parts seem pretty simple. Basically the same technology that's inside a heat pump with a turbine stuck in the middle.
Alas the price tag is pretty high, but the undermining factor is they have terrible efficency. They only get 10% so you would have to dump 200K-400K BTUs into it to get anything useful out. Very sad. Gotta find something else I guess!
If you were heating a pool it would work out very well because the other 90% would go to the pool and it wouldn't waste much at all.
They do sell just the turbine for $3000 but I am guessing you will have just as much in the setup if you put it together yourself.
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Hi there. I'm new to the board and just stumbled across this thread. I know the original poster was trying to get electricity from the boiler he already has, but there is a company that offers a wood burning power plant that generates 5kW of electricity. Check it out http://gasifier.wpengine.com/personal-energy-grid (http://gasifier.wpengine.com/personal-energy-grid) The waste product is heat which the unit can use to heat the house as well.
I don't own one and I've never seen one in action, but the idea is cool.
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I checked out the above post kinda cool. Check out this YouTube video.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7jbU150ulSQ (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7jbU150ulSQ)
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Hi there. I'm new to the board and just stumbled across this thread. I know the original poster was trying to get electricity from the boiler he already has, but there is a company that offers a wood burning power plant that generates 5kW of electricity. Check it out http://gasifier.wpengine.com/personal-energy-grid (http://gasifier.wpengine.com/personal-energy-grid) The waste product is heat which the unit can use to heat the house as well.
I don't own one and I've never seen one in action, but the idea is cool.
Very cool, but at that $$$$$$$ you would never make a profit.
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Hi there. I'm new to the board and just stumbled across this thread. I know the original poster was trying to get electricity from the boiler he already has, but there is a company that offers a wood burning power plant that generates 5kW of electricity. Check it out http://gasifier.wpengine.com/personal-energy-grid (http://gasifier.wpengine.com/personal-energy-grid) The waste product is heat which the unit can use to heat the house as well.
I don't own one and I've never seen one in action, but the idea is cool.
Very cool, but at that $$$$$$$ you would never make a profit.
Depending on the life of the machine. It may take 20 or 25 years but I dont think the payback time is much cheaper for solar setups? Now if the machine was used up after 10 years then you def lose. But it looks well built. never seen one in person though.
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Solar is getting cheaper, electricity is going up up up!
When solar first came out people were spending 50-60k.
I see some awesome systems online now for 8-10k, producing around 6000-6500
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I would love to find a way to burn wood and make usable electric energy. Then we could stick it to the propane man and the electric co.