Here is a report from Mark Norton, who presented the OSE Steam Engine Project at the Open Hardware Summit 2011:
I attended the Open Hardware Summit at the New York Hall of Science located on site of the 1964 World Fair site in Queens, New York on Sept. 15, 2011. A few months back, I learned about a call for proposals to present at this conference and responded with a proposal to present an update on the Open Source Steam Engine project. The review responses were quite good and they invited me to speak. I had no idea that I would be in the presence of several major figures in the open hardware movement, but it turned out that way. (more…)
The second annual Open Source Hardware Summit is scheduled for Sept. 15, 2011 in New York City. The summit examines open hardware and its relation to other issues, such as software, design, business, and law. Since I can’t make it out to Factor e Farm that weekend and New York City is only a few hours away from where I live, I thought I’d submit a talk proposal: (more…)
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a breakthrough on the Solar Turbine project. We are adopting the Solar Fire concentrator technology as our official solar energy platform. OSE and Solar Fire are entering into partnership – with a single purpose of creating a state-of-art, replicable, open source platform for solar concentrator power applied to electricity, space heating, and process heat. Prototyping done already by Solar Fire indicates that electrical production can be attained by such a system at a $0.5-$1 system materials cost per peak watt – if combined with a modern steam engine as the heat engine. This is about a factor of 10 lower than photovoltaics. See Eerik Wissenz, Solar Fire project leader, introduce the latest successful prototype of 32 square meter solar capture area:
We met Harry Schoell – lead technical developer from Cyclone Technologies – as one of the many experts at the Steam Automobile Club of America Meeting. Cyclone Technologies appears to have the world’s first modern steam engine since many decades. We would like to point out some of the Cyclone accomplishments on steam engine power – which is important if we ever hope to clear up the great misconceptions about steam. The public has been thoroughly swindled in its conceptions regarding the true nature of steam power – such that Harry does not like to use the word ‘steam’ in describing his engine – because most people simply walk away when they hear the word ‘steam’. At the same time, you are probably using steam-turbine-generated electricity in your computer as you read this – if your electricity comes from a coal or nuke power plant.
In a nutshell – his steam engines are breakthrough. His Mark V engine has accomplished the following, so judge for yourself:
Water-lubrication – need no engine oil for lubrication
Higher efficiency than internal combustion gasoline engines
High power-to-weight ratio. His race-car version of the engine puts out 180 horsepower and weighs a total of 300 lb, including the steam generator. This will be used in the Land Steam Record race next year – more on this topic in the next blog post.
Completely clean burn
Can run on any fuel – from solar concentrator, solid biomass, garbage, pellets, algae fuel, or high-grade distilled fuels like diesel or gasoline
For us, this is absolutely exciting. Will and I were hovering constantly around his engine to absorb its innovation. We think that this engine may be the next 100 years of propulsion, just as the ICE has been for the last 100. At the very least, we’re convinced that steam power will yield significant liberatory potential with off-grid electricity generation (such as with our steam electric generator), and for localizing fuel and transportation systems (such as when solid fuel pellets are used as a high-quality fuel stock in cars). We’ll leave it at this, as our highly-biased perspective on this topic may lead the reader to confusion – so we invite you to look into this more yourself.
Just imagine if everyone in the suburbs mowed their lawns for fuel crop, as opposed to vanity. I guess mower-pelletizer combines will be added to our product line soon.
Here is another engine from Cyclone Technologies, the Waste Heat Engine. Here it is running on steam during the SACA meet, and water is the lubricant. This engine is designed for a maximum of 10 kW electrical generation if used as a generator:
We just got back from the 2010 Steam Automobile Club of America (SACA) meeting. I presented a brief talk on Open Source Ecology’s proposal for the scalable, steam-powered, electrical generator that we discussed in a former post. This talk puts the power generator in context with other OSE product ecologies. It also discusses further development of mobile power units, such as replacing the gasoline engine in the Power Cube of LifeTrac with a steam-power version.
By the way, that was Harry Shoell in the audience (commenting that we can burn clippings right from our lawn) – the lead developer from Cyclone Technologies. Cyclone Technologies has already developed a supercritical, water-lubricated steam engine that has beat the gasoline engine in efficiency. It’s a clean engine that can run on any fuel, and it uses water instead of engine oil for lubrication. Yes, steam power is for real, and according to the Cyclone group, it may be the next 100 years of propulsion, just as the internal combustion engine has taken over the last 100 years. For those unfamiliar with steam power, this is indeed a resounding wakeup call. We will report on his and other SACA highlights in the next posts, including an interview with Harry Schoell.
Back to our electrical generator proposition – consensus within the audience – of those who actually know what they are talking about – was that our design for the steam-powered generator requires some modifications. SACA is a goldmine of expert experience – the key to our open source project.
We are teaming up with Karl Petersen in particular, SACA Bulletin editor, and the guy who I read about a few years ago in the Educator Buggy steam project. He has about 5 decades of experience with light steam power. We discussed an open source project to take the scalable steam electric generator to full product release by next year, with a first prototype forthcoming early next year. Karl will lead the design work, and he will produce the CAD and fabrication drawings. Our goal is on the order of $500 in materials cost for a 1 kW generator, with favorable cost scaling for higher power. Listen to our introduction:
We are going to crowd-fund this effort, and tap the entire gold mine of expertise from SACA. This approach has been well-received within SACA leadership. To this end, I will be going on the road for about 3 months in December – January, when the weather is cold at Factor e Farm – on a mission. The mission is to search and document the technical due-diligence to make this project happen – everything from pelletization, gasifier burners, heat exchangers, steam expanders, fabrication development, and enterprise model. Part of this will be documenting the steam knowledge of the older members of SACA, which would otherwise be lost. We look forward to initial Power Cube prototypes running on steam by end of next year.
Towards the end of yesterday’s blog post, we mentioned our progress on the modern steam engine. This is part of our near-term development program (and part of Proposal 2011) towards upgrading our Power Cubes and the LifeTrac infrastructre to modern steam power. Yesterday we met with Robert Thomas, one of those rare individuals who builds steam and gasoline engines for fun. He built this steam tractor replica (23 hp) of a larger 1920s farm traction engine completely from scratch, including building the steam engine from heavy-walled pipe and cutting the gears:
We began a design session. Our conclusions from yesterday are to produce a proof-of-concept prototype of a modern steam engine involving Arduino to provide electronic steam injection. This is analogous to electronic fuel injection in cars. The concept looks like this. and can download this conceptual diagram in Dia here to collaborate on the design:
It is a single cylinder, 4” bore, single-acting uniflow steam engine. The inlet port is a solenoid valve operated by Arduino, with a sensor on the flywheel to provide timing. The materials cost is under $200. (more…)
William Cleaver will be joining us at Factor e Farm on May 1 for a Dedicated Project Visit. He’s coming from across the big pond – from the United Kingdom – and we are planning for a 3 month stay.
William is not a novice to creative dexterity – he’s involved in repair and demolition of industrial chimney stacks and natural draught cooling towers – at heights. See for yourself:
He has experience with various tools, welding brickwork, ropework, woodwork, and general shop. He’s traveled the world, studied Romance languages, taught English in Chile, and is certified to teach high ropes courses. He is now showing great interest in the deeper message of post-scarcity, resilient community creation.
We discussed the following tentative plan, with both of us working in the shop and as needed:
May – Work on finishing or building Sawmill/LifeTrac II/MicroTrac II/ anciliary implements for construction – all in preparation for building.
June – begin building autonomous, zero energy housing with solar space. Experiment with CEB floors, CEB masonry stove and chimney, stabilized bricks, stabilized reject lime bricks, stabilized brick walkway and driveway, stabilized retaining walls, and others. We plan on winter food garden and sprouting in the solar space. If progress on the steam engine goes well, we’ll aim to install combined heat and power on the masonry stove.
July – continue building until comfortable accommodations for the winter are ready for several people.
We’re looking at building zero energy homes that look tentatively like this:
Other than this, William is learning Kdenlive on Linux for movie editing, as well as and QCad for CAD work. These are staple tools now at Factor e Farm. William will begin preparing some of the technical drawings for the sawmill, so we can collaborate on making that happen over distance until his arrival.
We do want to consider bringing in additional help from the CEB general contractor, Floyd (see last blog post). We will consider hosting a CEB workshop if progress is good. If the CEB fabrication is going well – there could be resources generated to really get things moving forward, and continue to build more structures. I think now is the beginning of really settling into the land – and getting the place to look half-way presentable. We’re open to all kinds of ideas, such as the proposed CEB vault construction and others – but we’d need other people to get involved to push those projects forward. Otherwise, we’re sticking to basics and all types of experiments in the process.
From post-scarcity communities, open business models, open source tractors, land stewardship, to starting some serious building this year – here’s the latest:
If you are liking what you heard in the video, don’t forget to subscribe to the True Fans to help make the work happen sooner rather than later.
Here are 7 videos from the steam meet, plus other conslusions on our involvement with steam power. We will build a hydronic heating stove with allowance for a steam engine electrical generator – even if we don’t install the steam engine before winter.
Tom’s working museum collection has a large selection of engines, cars, and parts. and it has an extensive library of books, manuals, manuscripts, and patents on steam. It is also a workshop, where he can build boilers, restore cars, and build steam engines. Many of them can be run on the spot by using compressed air instead of steam. Here is a sample of a few engines – from small boat to car-sized in the 100 hp range, running on compressed air:
Tom pointed out a particular engine which he thought was what we need at Factor e Farm – a 3 or so horsepower engine. I personally liked one that was made almost completely with off-the-shelf parts – a double-acting uniflow engine where his valve was a hydraulic valve running off a cam on the main shaft:
Here is the infamous Green Steam Engine – the one that is touted as an ‘efficient, modern steam engine’ by its inventor. I was excited about it at first, but then found out that it has no proven performance record. Tom once wrote a lengthy paper on the flaws of this design, which I will ask to reprint – as people keep asking us about the engine after hearing the ‘efficient, modern steam engine’ claim:
This is one of the points that I learned: just about anything has been tried with steam, and those who attempt to reinvent the steam engine find out that all of their brilliant ideas are already found in 100-year old patents after doing further research – in 99.9% of the cases. So, for me it’s simple – just tap the talent of the SACA crowd, and build the advanced, modern engine with it. (more…)
Here’s something to think about regarding our recent refocus on locally produced fuel and steam engines at Factor e Farm.
Energy is slave labor without the slaves. At Factor e Farm, doomsday peak oil scenarios are not particularly threatening because we know that a high standard of living can be attained readily by using technology that is 100 years old and which can be grown locally. Here’s how.
Pyrolysis oil fuel can be produced locally from biomass, reportedly at yields of up to 75%. There are already personal pyrolysis oil fuel makers on the market. Couple that to a Babington burner, which can burn crude oils of any kind. Add a steam engine, and we have 100% locally grown power – with modern steam engine efficiencies comparable to gasoline engines but lower than diesel engines. Fab this steam engine with the open source lathe, hot off the press at Factor e Farm, and you have local economic power, in both senses of the phrase. (more…)
We are farmer scientists - working to develop a world class research center for decentralization technologies using open source permaculture and technology to work together for providing basic needs and self replicating the entire operation at the cost of scrap metal. We seek societal transformation through interconnected self-sufficient villages and homes. This is a stepping stone to transcending survival and evolving to freedom. Factor e Farm is the land-based facility where we put this theory, Open Source Ecology, into practice. More
This is the bright iridescent future of a global sustainable village, un-tethered by the soul sucking vacuum of neoliberal globalization. Combining ecology and open source ideas, the folks at Open Source Ecology seem to have hit the nail on the head…a well articulated vision for enabling communities all over the planet to partake in global trade of information goods and services, but not be forced into the prisoner’s delima of globalized corporate capitalism. — Greg Landua, Global Village Institute at ‘The Farm’
