Solar Combined Heat Power System

• HABITAT: CEB Press - Sawmill - Living Machines - Modular Housing Units
  
• AGROECOLOGY: LifeTrac Multi Purpose Tractor - MicroTrac - Power Cube - Agricultural Spader - Agricultural Microcombine - Hammer Mill - Well Drilling Rig - Organoponic Raised Bed Gardening - Orchard and Nursery - Modular Greenhouse Units - Bakery - Dairy - Energy Food Bars - Freeze Dried Fruit Powders
  
• ENERGY: Pyrolysis Oil - Babington Burner - Solar Combined Heat Power System - Steam Engine Construction Set - Solar Turbine - Electric Motors/Generators - Inverters & Grid Intertie - Batteries
  
• FLEXIBLE INDUSTRY: Lathe - Torch Table - Multimachine & Flex Fab - Plastic Extrusion & Molding - Metal Casting and Extrusion
  
• TRANSPORT: Open Source Car
  
• MATERIALS: Bioplastics

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Solar Turbine CHP - this is the holy grail of the future world. Forget about expensive solar cells, nukes, coal, or hydro - utilize the heat of the sun directly, with solar concentrators running a power cycle that has been proven in geothermal plants. One key is to develop an efficient turbine - Jeff Sterling, who claims that a working, small scale system (kW power range) is within month from release - from Matteran Energy has told me that it took him 10 years to realize, and now solve, this problem. Conceptually - the problem is simple - capturing the energy of an expanding gas in a rotor, to convert the energy to electricity. A solar turbine is a tractable problem, and deserves full attention. With 1 kW of insolation from every square meter on earth, such a proposition must be consiered seriously. This includes possibilities of thermal storage when the sun does not shine - just do the basic feasibility calculations and convince yourself that this is possible - even for extended periods beyond 12 hour nights. Check out the http://www.shpegs.com/ open source project for further background on a large scale implementation. Note that technical drawings exist for a 50% efficient solar turbine - look for the C. Christopher Newton thesis at http://www.redrok.com/engine.htm#turbine - but fabrication costs need to be proven on such project. All in all, backup power - such as electricity derived from alcohol combustion in an engine - could be used - but it is more interesting to utilize a backup stove that can produce the necessary heat for the turbine cycle. This is especially useful in conjunction with space and greenhouse heating in the winter. Moreover, MIT's Fab Lab has done work in optimizing diesel engines produced by Vigyan Ashram in India (http://cba.mit.edu/projects/fablab/apps.html) - and these may be available for opensourcing. If so, it would be instructive to fabricate diesel engines locally at OSE for backup power, and optimizing them for waste vegetable oil operation. Price predictions are $2-4k per balance of system kilowatt.

Collaboration

Review of Project Status

We are currently designing a scaleable version of a Boundary Layer Turbine, the heart of the CHP system.

Development Work Template

Product Definition

Product Ecology

Scaleability

Scaleability is most crucial in this project. We are pursuing a design with a focus on how scale can be achieved with minimal modifications. As such, the system is designed for stand-alone remote power applications (under 1 kW) to home (1 kW) and village (100 kW) scales. If the the BLT is used with other fuel sources, this is prime for mobile applications - vehicles and all devices which require hybrid power drive.

Technical Design

Component Design - Boundary Layer Turbine (BLT)

The Boundary Layer Turbine is based on a prototype from Dan Granett Product Design. The 12 inch diameter turbine produced 4 kW of electric power in test runs, at a cost of $500 in materials plus fabrication costs.