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 Marchin 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.

'Sent to Mal Willians on 5/2/11

I am involved with a project to build a small, scalable steam engine for farm use. I came across an article by Erik Rossen (http://www.rossen.ch/solar/wcengine.html) that commented favorably on the solar steam engine developed by NSW DOE back in the eighties. Mr. Rossen mentioned that you might have an electronic form of the report, "White Cliffs Solar Thermal Power Station", Design, operation, and results. 242 pages, 1991. If possible, could you send me a copy? I'm very interested in the diesel engine conversion and the use of bump valves.

I am doing this work for the Open Source Ecology project (http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Main_Page). Our intention is to design and prototype a set of 50 tools (the Global Village Construction Set) that would enable the development of high standard of living and local economy at a village scale in virtually any setting globally.

(no reply as of 5/5/11)