FREEWATT "home cogeneration " units--good idea or bunkum?

It does sound a bit like Mao's idea for small iron smelters in every village.

The efficiency of the device (particularly the turbine) will largely depend on the combustion temperature and pressure. There may be some necessary design tradeoffs for the water heater and the turbine inlet that lower the overall efficiency of the unit. I suspect you would get better efficiency optimizing the burner for the turbine and using the exhaust gases to preheat water in a conventional water heater with storage tank.

There may also be some negative economies of scale. Small, high speed turbines have been around for a long time, but I don't know if their efficiency equals larger ones.

Finally, there is the question of maintenance with a large number of widely distributed small units.

THis thing is like an ONAN gennie that we use on our RV, except the RV one is directly fired by diesel (It sucks diesel out of the fuel tank just like another engine) . The whole unit with a 91% efficient boiler, is eligible for Pas 35% energy grant for innovative tech. Theres also the 30% tax credit from the FEds.
I just had my "bullshit antenna " get a bit tweaked by the concept.

I dont have any drawings but the specs include an "exhaust venturi" that kicks up the generator. I was wondering that, how often will the "venturi" set up a harmonic and start screaming like a banshee. A turbine in my diesel truck wouldnt close properly and it sounded like a space ship.

Thanks George, if you can think of any points that I can send to the FreeWatt people, I would be forever grateful.
I am known for my leaps into untried technology and often regret it in leisure.

I was originally going to install an entire grid of PV units on My SOuth facing barn roof. I later found out that PV cell systems are very touchy , susceptible to really wild swings in output due to cleanliness of the cells. Imagine me up on my 150'X70' barn roof with a giant squeegee.

We are going to install an entire new gas burner system (we have oil now and I had the oil company overfill my tank TWICE this year. Thanks to (I believe it was Rockhead) I was able to clean it up and deodorize using a 5 lb can of cheap coffe grounds.
The water heater will be one of those tankless units with a 6gpm cap. The FREWATT system only came to my attention last week.

The concept of small sized smelters isnt that stupid. Iron was originally made as an "Iron bloom" technique in campfires and later, by stone lined "bloomeries". The chemistry of iron smelting and refining is actually easier than copper and bronze, so I guess the only reason that Bronze and copper came first was because the ores were more readily visible in nature. Iron ores in nature tend to be just piles of "rusty sandstones " or hydrates of iron **** from a bog. Pure metallic iron like that from Magnetite , or even fools gold, is rarer unless one actually digs into bedrock to find it. Copper ores generally showed up as , efulgent masses of "metallic crap' layered in rock outcrops.

I suppose everything in our advances in technologies merely was dependent on LUCK. Science came later ,more as a means by which we were able to explain the phenomena that we were utilizing to make fire or weapons.

Well I think a lot of that LUCK was the result of educated, pragmatic intuition such as yours. With you in charge it will probably work. If you're set on a tankless water heater then I wouldn't worry about the efficiency thing (I was thinking you had this in mind for widespread application).

You will need some controls on the generator to deal with the rapid loss of turbine torque that may result when the water heater cuts in.

The water heater is a unit separate from the home heater. Its an "on demand" heater that the Germans have whipped up. (company named Rinnai). Tell you the truth(army story coming up). I liked the ide of the Rinnai heater. In summer our "summer winter" hookup only kicks in to heat and maintain a tank load of hot water. Seems like a waste of energy when were not using any hot water. The Rinnai, at 5 gpm, will heat the water by 65 degrees F (ambient ground-) water temp in our area is 58 degrees )

Seems like plenty much delta for our hot water needs. Hell 125 is scalding to me and our dishwasher has a booster heater anyway.

I suppose you could also set a wind generator on the hood of your car. Drive and get free energy!

It wouldn't be free. You'ld be lucky to get back 1/3rd of the extra energy consumed in the car's engine.

Sarcasm, George. Sarcasm.

Obviously, it would increase the gasoline consumption by a far greater amount than you would gain back in electricity.

I do own a Ford Escape Hybrid and , inside the car is a 220 and a 120 v on board GFI circuit. We were doing a pumping test at a site when I ran the well pump off the car instead of the Gas generator. The car engine was quietre and was so cool sounding where we could talk at regular sound levels.

The only bad feature was that the hybrid kept kicking on and off as the W draw was exceeded by the batteries.


I think my cartoon was funnier because it was energy exchange to a ridiculous end

How can you have a working GFCI, when the car is insulated from the ground?

Edit: Nevermind. I just read up on GFCIs....

Mysteryman.

Right, as I said Mysteryman gave me some excellent advice about deodorizing a basement in which a fuel oil spill occured. He advised me to
1 clean up the visible oil

2 Then, dump a can of ground coffee over the spill "foot[rint" The coffee acta as an iimmedioate odor mask and then, as the coffee begins to act like an activated charcoal filter, the actual fuel oil odor is cleaned out of the space.
I had two spillovers this year (part of it was due to a malfunction in the "whistle" that the delivery guys use as a fill signal), but anyway, my basement smells fresh (as fresh as a 250 year old basement can smell)

The PV cells we are installing have a 12 year warranty on 90% of the minimum power and a 25 year warranty on 80% of minimum power.
i was thinking a hose off every 12 months would keep them clean enough

if the flue gas is slowed down by the turbine the boiler will choke.

The bernoulli is designed to account for that. Its like a "tuned exhaust". Thats why I wondered whether it ever sets up a harmonioc.

Not to mention the costs of carrying around an unwind/windup transmission line to get the energy to your home.

The beauty of a cartop windmill would accrue mostly to folks who only use their cars for short trips.

Like this person.

http://www.slideshare.net/mayur.0123/car-for-sale