Steam Engine Design/White Cliffs

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The White Cliffs Solar Steam Engine project was conducted in the 1980's by the Australian NSW Dept. of Energy. Part of the project involved the construction of a large heliostat to collect solar energy converted to steam which drove custom steam engine to generate electricity. The project was discontinued to 1991 when White Cliffs joined the national power grid.

See Erik Rossen's review at http://www.rossen.ch/solar/wcengine.html.
NSW DOE contact information at http://www.rossen.ch/solar/miniheliostatfaq.html#q10.
Erik's visit to Department Engineering Physics of the Australia National University in Canberra at http://www.rossen.ch/solar/anu.html.

Things to note about this design:

• Use of bump pins on the cylinder head to open ball valves.
• Three cylinder design based on a recycled Lister Diesel Engine.
• Splash oil lubrication

Correspondence

Sent to Erik Rossen on 5/2/11

Have you had contact with Erik Rossen previously? The White Cliffs project review is on his web site. He sounds very much like the kind of person who would be very interested in OSE (physicist, linux hacker, etc.). See http://www.rossen.ch/personal/whoiam.html.

Erik also has an interesting use for our OS Industrial Robot: http://www.rossen.ch/personal/mosaics/index.html

From reading through his web site, I'm not sure that he's been active in his heliostat project or anything related to steam engines for more than 10 years. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to ask his opinion.

(no reply as of 5/5/11)