New boiler design?

[vic francisParticipant @vicfrancis]

Wow what do people do think? Could this apply to our model boilers?

Regards vic

[vic francisParticipant @vicfrancis]

Mackwell of NZ

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

Are we missing a link?

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Some of my friends/relations say that I am the missing link

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

This might help

 

Edited By JasonB on 26/05/2023 12:24:05

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

Just being renewable does not make it low emission or "green". Don't get me started on Drax and wood pellets.

Robert.

Edited By Robert Atkinson 2 on 26/05/2023 12:39:52

[Martin Johnson 1Participant @martinjohnson1]

What I do not understand is how countless numbers of prior engineers failed to invent a dry firebox and a miniature heat exchanger and then prove it is the best thing ever. Or am I just a cynical old fart?

Martin

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Dry firebox is not new. Bullied Leader for one. It wasn't a great success to put it mildly, but the die hard steam enthusiasts won't accept that as a reason not claim that with a little more effort they can save the world.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Ummm, one hates to put a damper, so to speak on one's endeavours but has one really come up with owt new behind all that middle-management-ese?

The Leader's failings were more to do with its layout and axle-weight than boiler and engine design.

Duncan's point about unbounded optimism reminds me of a book by the 19C Scots historian Charles Mackay. "Extraordinary Popular Delusions…. " tells of many mass-delusional schemes and ideas, with such parallels to us as the "dot-com bubble", but his chapter on Alchemy highlights the power of optimism over realism, or reality.

He recounts how one disillusioned alchemist remarked after a symposium, on how many "If only… " excuses he had heard, to excuse the fundamentally flawed anyway: "If only… I'd heated it for longer / my retort had not cracked, / " etc.

And so it is with all the assorted steam and i.c. engine ideas that have appeared and disappeared over the last few decades; often suggesting a rather weak understanding of basic physics, repeating older ideas or merely complicating the simple. The aim has moved somewhat, from simply greater efficiency ( a Law of Diminishing Returns) to now, Greater Green-ness; but the literal sense of the Americanism "Zero-carbon" is rather "green" itself.

The implication here, complete with the photograph of men operating what looks like a conventional portable-engine, is that the fuel would be cropped or salvaged wood: needing land to grow the trees. So nothing new there: be it wood, straw, or sugar-cane stalks.

Back in the 1980s, I think it was, the agricultural institute at Reading had already solved this circle, by looking into what fast-growing trees to coppice for making gas that would fuel not a steam-engine, but the intrinsically far more efficient internal-combustion engine – simply a slightly modified car unit – to drive an alternator. (Or I suppose, other machines.)

Although the Reading paper I have was about the trees so does not go further into the engineering, distilling wood has other potentially useful derivatives, as with coal; and the charcoal itself may be a source of producer-gas (carbon-monoxide), as a further fuel-gas.

[MacolmParticipant @macolm]

Surely coal and natural gas are renewable too. It merely takes somewhat longer!

[Dave HalfordParticipant @davehalford22513]

Posted by duncan webster on 26/05/2023 14:52:03:

Dry firebox is not new. Bullied Leader for one. It wasn't a great success to put it mildly, but the die hard steam enthusiasts won't accept that as a reason not claim that with a little more effort they can save the world.

Perhaps it's new because it's half dry and half wet firebox if the side stays are anything to go by.

And why is releasing 20 years of locked up carbon a green idea

Edited By Dave Halford on 26/05/2023 17:39:49

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

The side stays are very wide apart, so if they are indicative of a wet firebox he's either using very thick plates or very low pressure. I suspect they are holding some kind of insulation to the inside of the steel box.

The claim that the boiler is 3 times more efficient is also a bit odd. Normal loco boilers are about 70% efficient if you don't flog them, so what does 3 times more mean? 210%?

Wood is only about 30% the heat value of good coal. I'm not sure what the 150hp (111 kW)boiler refers to, but if I take it as heat transferred to the steam, the fuel burn would be 111/0.7 = 159kW, but at an efficiency of at best 10% overall he's got a 16kW output tractor, which isn't going to be very useful in modern farming

Edited By duncan webster on 26/05/2023 19:28:34

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

The guy making the big pitch about his magic boiler is a snake oil salesman, plain and simple. I have watched his occasional pitch videos since 2016. The latest iteration is planning a rubber tired wood or organic by-product burning steam tractor to replace diesels. We'll see how many customers like the idea of costly maintenance specific to steam equipment – maintenance of the boiler and pumps, government mandated regular hydrostatic and ultrasonic tests, the need to employ pressure vessel technicians to do the work, and the labour to handle the fuel and stoke it in use. Gee, this all sounds like the reasons diesel and petrol powered farm, railway and commercial equipment replaced steam eventually, on farms and roads and rails.

I'm a major fan of preserved steam and model steam machines of all kinds, but the magic boiler guy is fooling himself (and maybe investors) that this could be a commercial success and would displace diesels, while cleaning up the planet, etc. Just my opinion.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

He does at least credit Garrett with inventing that form of articulated locomotive.

I can't see that boiler being very efficient at all. Really, all he's done is make a water-tube boiler shaped like a conventional locomotive type; but if the diagram is any guide the steam-raising part is a long way from the fuel-burning part. Without seeing proper drawings or photographs though we can't judge how the tubes are really deployed.

Curious that the fire-bed seems to rely entirely on top air entering through several holes in the throat-plate – no damper either, at least not on that prototype. I don't know if the company had found it the best way to burn the sort of fuel intended.

Nothing new in following the firebox itself with a combustion-chamber though.

The photograph of a boiler on test shows it does work, but I wonder how efficient it really is. The drawing suggesting a version as a replacement boiler for something like a BR Standard 9F, seems optimistic!

Water-tube boilers are hardly a new idea either, but why have they had little or no adoption on the railways in decades past? Genuine engineering reasons, or just same innate conservatism that put the cabs on early diesel-locomotives, at the back?

That valve-gear on the proposed locomotive is new to me. I think it's called the "Southern Gear", on the caption. I assume it works somewhat similarly to Baker or Walschaerts; but the illustration shows the upper parts hidden by plate-work.

'''''

I know it should not, but this company's fancy web-site reminds me of an article in one of the railway magazines in about 1968.

It purported to preview or reveal a "secret" project by the British Railways Technical Centre, in Derby, to develop a replacement for the steam-locomotive.

As I recall, the drawing showed a vaguely-conventional Pacific with its chassis turned end-for-end so the cylinders were under the enclosed cab; while the tender appeared to have been made from a Diesel locomotive sawn in half, giving an extra cab at the end. It was not clear if the layout was inspired by the 'Leader'. The long text was full of ever-so-scientific rhubarb about this thing using the vapour of a volatile fluid evaporated at high temperature and pressure in a heat-exchanger….

The magazine's publication date was April 1st.

[Neil LickfoldParticipant @neillickfold44316]

Some time ago, around 2014, was a guy in Morrinsville , Waikato, NZ, was working on a very high temp burning wood burner, that used water vapour tubes, to transfer the heat from the fire to create steam. One thing about the system, that the exhaust was only around 10 to 15 deg above ambient, and the system recovered as much energy as possible. It did not make a boiler of hot water steam, but only turned the water needed to be steam as it ran through what I imagine as being a flash boiler arrangement. I only saw part of the system, and never got to see the whole thing in it entirety. He did say, that it could never over heat and explode like conventional steam boilers. He also said that instead of making steam, it could be used to make hot water for a home heating system, and the water would never get above 50c , aiming at the retirement home heating market, he thought.

The most interesting aspect I saw of the part they were testing, was the wood went in down a chute, and you could not see the fire at all.

[noel shelleyParticipant @noelshelley55608]

While I wish the young fellow good fortune I fear he is 150 years to late. I concure with most of the comments made above, there are only so many ways of burning fuel and making steam. Why not just use a wood burning agricultural engine, Fowler, Case Etc. They were not short of power, I seem to recall a big Fowler giving around 200Hp, Small donkey engine to drive the hydraulics for the front loader and 3 point linkage, unlikely to need a rear counter weight ! What's the current price of snake oil ? Noel.

[mark costello 1Participant @markcostello1]

Snake oil was always too expensive.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Neil –

Sounds as if the chap you quote didn't really understand the subject very thoroughly!

As you say, he is sort of re-inventing the flash-steam water-tube boiler – it is still a "boiler".

Boilers are not in the habit of "exploding", the fuel is burnt at very high temperature and the most efficient steam-engines have always gained the greatest heat energy they can from the steam (hence low exhaust temperature)….

….oh, and I'd suggest to him that he reads the current state of knowledge on heating systems and precautions against the Legionella bacterium, before specifying hot-water temperatures at least if he intends using a storage tank. It's a while since I was told, but I think 55ºC is the required hot-water tank temperature for safety. It is certainly above 50º. I am not sure of this for instant-demand water-heaters but a solid-fuel plant won't be that. (A shower would be fitted with thermostatic mixer-valves to reduce the delivery temperature to a safe maximum.)

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

More of a steam generator than a boiler. Which means it has no reserve supply of steam when coming to a hill or varying load for other reasons. Not sure if the wood fire would be responsive enough to keep up the pressure under varying conditions?

And nobody can convince me that cutting down trees and burning them to create steam is somehow green. If we all converted to that, the planet would be treeless within a very short time.

But it looks like he is having a lot of fun and certainly putting some effort into it.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I suppose the idea is to use cropped wood but extensive use would simply mean natural forests, and farmland, being replaced by huge monocultures.

[martin haysomParticipant @martinhaysom48469]

could not watch all the video." corporate cow poo" we get it all the time at work .good fun to point out to young managers "that's not new we tried that years ago"

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