Friction heater running in my house

[PhysicsProf]

Here is the new build

New Friction Heater running in my house - YouTube

Very impressive, slapstick. I like the direct drive and the quiet running!!!
And your willingness to share is much appreciated.
A controlled calorimetric evaluation would be great. Pls let me know if I can help in any way.
--Steven J

[slapstick]

Very nice machine, good work. I would be interested to see a roto verter running this heater. Question: does the thickness of the discs matter? Is thinner better? Thicker? I was thinking about building one with hard drive platters as i have a bunch laying here. Was hold on to them for a tesla turbine but this would be more usefull to me. Some are 3 1/2" and some are 5". I think they would work for the purpose. Just have to come up with a solution for spacers for the outer discs. What type of material are your outer spacers made out of?

Regards!

Hello,
The .0625 thickness was so there was less mass to start turning and less torque on the motor.
Yes a rotoverter or Tesla switch is the next step. As far as the HD discs go, I am not sure if it would work. What I would do is run some heat tests on them and see if that can hold up to 400F, then go from there. The spacers that I made are out of 304L SS.

Thank you
Gabriel

[slapstick]

Very impressive, slapstick. I like the direct drive and the quiet running!!!
And your willingness to share is much appreciated.
A controlled calorimetric evaluation would be great. Pls let me know if I can help in any way.
--Steven J

Hello,

If we would ALL share there would be nothing to hide!, and nothing to lose.
Greed is the route to all foolish actions.

I am still making the tooling for the smaller model of this heater, that will be the one for testing. It will be 4" in diameter and around 8" tall with a DC Baldor motor running it. Much easier to move around then the one in my house

Thank you
Gabriel

[kenssurplus]

Hello
The pully setup is to keep the high temp from getting to hot and flashing the oil. With that being said, I have ran into a issue with the oil I have been using. I will be using a new kind of oil that has a higher smoking temp. The old oil that I was using had a smoke temp of 400F.
The new oil I will be using has a smoke temp of 700F. This will allow me to get higher temps and not burn the oils.

If anyone knows of an oil that is non toxic with a higher smoke temp please feel free to share. This is still a work in progress and I am tying to push this as hard as I can to get the most out of it.

Thank you
Gabriel

Hi Gabriel,

I am interested in the results from your change of pulley drive to direct drive.
So was the ONLY reason you used the pulley system just the flash point of the oil being reached too quickly, or did it have a little to do with motor loading as well? (i.e. slower rpms and more torque).
Was this change to direct drive the main factor in your nearly doubled rate of temp increase?

Did you also change your disks and outer casing to aluminum? If so, what happened to the magnetized effect of the rotor and stationary disks? Did you maintain that somehow? Permanent magnets somewhere?

My build using a number 10 can as outer casing and using corrigated lids as the disks is almost finnished. Just having a little trouble with getting the correct spacers, and minimizing eccentricity of rotation and warpage with this flimsy steel.

[purelyprimitives]

Do you have any data yet regarding costs? Did you run it all of December and if so, how did it compare to your costs for the same month last year using your previous heat source? You will need to look at the number of degree-days of last December versus this one as part of the comparison.

On average, how long does this run per day and how much do you pay per Kwh?

Thanks,
Charlie

[slapstick]

Hi Gabriel,

I am interested in the results from your change of pulley drive to direct drive.
So was the ONLY reason you used the pulley system just the flash point of the oil being reached too quickly, or did it have a little to do with motor loading as well? (i.e. slower rpms and more torque).
Was this change to direct drive the main factor in your nearly doubled rate of temp increase?

Did you also change your disks and outer casing to aluminum? If so, what happened to the magnetized effect of the rotor and stationary disks? Did you maintain that somehow? Permanent magnets somewhere?

My build using a number 10 can as outer casing and using corrigated lids as the disks is almost finnished. Just having a little trouble with getting the correct spacers, and minimizing eccentricity of rotation and warpage with this flimsy steel.

Hello,

I am running 1800 RPM now and running 4 drive discs.
Then temp rise is faster then it was before with about the same load on the motor. I did make a mod to the static discs with some oil pass through between them.

The spacers.... yea they can be some trouble

Thank you
Gabriel

[slapstick]

Do you have any data yet regarding costs? Did you run it all of December and if so, how did it compare to your costs for the same month last year using your previous heat source? You will need to look at the number of degree-days of last December versus this one as part of the comparison.

On average, how long does this run per day and how much do you pay per Kwh?

Thanks,
Charlie

Hello Charlie,

As far as last years bill goes, I used both Kerosene and electric. electric bill was around $200 and the kerosene bill was around $150.

I am not using my Kerosene anymore and my electric bill was $180 for both cooking and heating.

The average temp for from last year to this year is bout the same..... last night it was 14F

I pay .14 cents a Kilowatt.

Thank you
Gabriel

[Guruji]

Friction with magnets

Look at this guys:

Close up view of magnetic wheel - YouTube

[purelyprimitives]

Hello Charlie,

As far as last years bill goes, I used both Kerosene and electric. electric bill was around $200 and the kerosene bill was around $150.

I am not using my Kerosene anymore and my electric bill was $180 for both cooking and heating.

The average temp for from last year to this year is bout the same..... last night it was 14F

I pay .14 cents a Kilowatt.

Thank you
Gabriel

OK so let's assume that about 70% of your $180 electric bill goes directly for heating in the winter. This would be conservative I think. That would mean that it cost you $126 for the month of December to heat your house.

You pay $.14/KWH, so $126/$.14 = 900 KWH per month was consumed by your heater. Averaged out over the 31 day month, your heater only ran for 29 hours a day?

What am I missing?

[slapstick]

OK so let's assume that about 70% of your $180 electric bill goes directly for heating in the winter. This would be conservative I think. That would mean that it cost you $126 for the month of December to heat your house.

You pay $.14/KWH, so $126/$.14 = 900 KWH per month was consumed by your heater. Averaged out over the 31 day month, your heater only ran for 29 hours a day?

What am I missing?

I should have to tell you this but I guess I do. What you have not taken into account is the hot water and cooking its all part of heating..........It is hard to see the trees though the woods

[purelyprimitives]

I should have to tell you this but I guess I do. What you have not taken into account is the hot water and cooking its all part of heating..........It is hard to see the trees though the woods

OK. Let me try it again. What percentage of your 'heating' is directly related to heating your house. Also, you never said how long this runs per day. I thought you had device to monitor the usage?

Regards,
Charlie

[citfta]

70% way too high!

Hi purelyprimitives,

Your estimate of 70% sounds way too high to me. Our average electric bill in the winter months is around $65. We use gas for heating, hot water and cooking. Our rate is only 11 cents per KWH. Our only use of electricity is for lights, computers, TV and other appliances. If we used electric for hot water and cooking and had the same rate as slapstick I am sure we would have a bill of $100 dollars or more without any heating by electricity.

You need to go back and start from the beginning of the thread. He has posted some videos where he shows his monitoring device and goes into how much his unit runs per day.

Respectfully,
Carroll

[purelyprimitives]

Hello Carroll,

Even if we assume only 50% instead of 70%, using his figures the heater would still have to run an average of 20 hours a day to heat his house.

He states that it consumes between 600 and 800 watts or .6 to .8 KW when running. Multiplied by the 20 hours a day, at $.14/KWH means that it only cost $1.68 to $2.24 a day? That seems rather incredible to me when electric baseboard heaters @ 100% efficiency cost considerably more to run.

As others have pointed out on his YouTube videos, this would mean that his device exceeds 100% efficiency. I guess the proof will be when the test results come in.

Guruji in a previous post linked to a video that uses a spinning set of magnets driven by an 3 phase electric motor claimed to be 95% efficient to heat a copper pipe. In the video he is able to turn a copper pipe glowing red hot in less than a minute. Probably several hundred degrees. And yet, he states that in his tests, it is no more efficient than a simple immersion heater. If this is no better than an immersion heater, how can a device that can only raise the oil temperature by 6 or 7 degrees a minute be any more efficient?

Best regards,
Charlie

[slapstick]

Have you herd of a Fixed loss to Ambient test?
I will post the data when it is done.

[purelyprimitives]

No I never heard of that particular test so I just tried to Google it and nothing came up?? Could it be called something else??

Thanks,
Charlie