Friction Steam Boiler

[FuzzyTomCat]

Hi All,

I ran across this unique way a gentleman called Lloyd Tanner has built a "Friction Steam Boiler" ...... for the life of me I can't remember where I found it, a Forum or surfin, but it's well worth the look see.

Lloyd Tanner - Friction Boiler

Regards,
Fuzzy

[Jetijs]

They say that all genial things are simple
Thank you for the link

[theremart]

RE: steam boiler...

This looks like a perfect application for a rotoverter... , but who needs a rotoverter if he is generating enough heat to keep it going?

[BinzerBob]

The friction boiler that was demonstrated in the video will be very close to a COP of 1. The COP of 1 is for converting the energy input into steam. But the issue is that an electric motor is used and you have to pay for the electricity.

If the steam is then used to drive a steam turbine and a generator the COP would drop to less than 0.4

Nice idea for transferring kinetic (or rotational) energy to heat energy.... If a windmill was used for input power the system could provide hot water, and heat a house with COP of near 1.

[theremart]

Idea..

The friction boiler that was demonstrated in the video will be very close to a COP of 1. The COP of 1 is for converting the energy input into steam. But the issue is that an electric motor is used and you have to pay for the electricity.

If the steam is then used to drive a steam turbine and a generator the COP would drop to less than 0.4

Nice idea for transferring kinetic (or rotational) energy to heat energy.... If a windmill was used for input power the system could provide hot water, and heat a house with COP of near 1.

Yes that is where one of these come in...

Information on our 20-Horsepower Steam Engine

[rickoff]

Thanks for post, Fuzzy

Say, what happened to your avatar? I liked it.

I liked this, too! Great idea. In fact, I liked it so much that I wrote to Lloyd Tanner and asked him if he would share some information with us, and he just wrote back to me. Here is what he says:
-------------------------------------------
Sent:Sat 10/04/08 10:43 PM
To: rickandlezel@hotmail.com

"Hi Rick - Got your email tonight. I will be more than willing to share the information I have. First of all the unit you see in my video is quite homemade but the new design that I am working on right now is a friction roller not a wheel. We don't use electric motor to turn the friction roller. What's being used is a steam engine. To get pressure in my pressure vessel to run the steam engine I have a built in LP gas burner to get up a head of steam that runs my steam motor. Once the friction roller gets hot from friction to whatever temperature you have your thermostat set at, the gas burner shuts off and never has to be used again. The heat is now generated from the friction roller. Your roller should turn 1700 to 2000 r.p.m. and that should be enough."
---------------------------------------------
Lloyd has offered to speak with me by telephone, so I will call and ask some questions, and will post info later.

Rick

[FuzzyTomCat]

Great News !

Say, what happened to your avatar? I liked it.

I liked this, too! Great idea. In fact, I liked it so much that I wrote to Lloyd Tanner and asked him if he would share some information with us, and he just wrote back to me. Here is what he says:
-------------------------------------------
Sent:Sat 10/04/08 10:43 PM
To: rickandlezel@hotmail.com

"Hi Rick - Got your email tonight. I will be more than willing to share the information I have. First of all the unit you see in my video is quite homemade but the new design that I am working on right now is a friction roller not a wheel. We don't use electric motor to turn the friction roller. What's being used is a steam engine. To get pressure in my pressure vessel to run the steam engine I have a built in LP gas burner to get up a head of steam that runs my steam motor. Once the friction roller gets hot from friction to whatever temperature you have your thermostat set at, the gas burner shuts off and never has to be used again. The heat is now generated from the friction roller. Your roller should turn 1700 to 2000 r.p.m. and that should be enough."
---------------------------------------------
Lloyd has offered to speak with me by telephone, so I will call and ask some questions, and will post info later.

Rick

Hi Rick,

The man from Maine does it again, that is really great news. This could be a nice addition to your cabin and a even better idea for those with high oil heating costs. Several of us here in Oregon have seen this and are going to start a R & D on what the video was we were so impressed, and the news from you makes it just that much better.

Thanks,
Glen

[rickoff]

Re: phone conversation with Lloyd Tanner

Hi folks,

I just finished speaking with Lloyd Tanner by telephone (11:45pm). It looks as though the news channel that did the video about him generated a lot of interest. Since the video aired, he has been contacted by many people, including the engineering department at Rowland College in New Jersey, a NJ congressman who is excited about developing some state funded alternative energy projects, and also T Boone Pickens - who Lloyd says will be meeting with him next week. Pickens, of course, made a fortune from oil, but is now beating a different drum. See this video: YouTube - T. Boone Pickens TV Commercial
Although the "Pickens Plan" sounds like a logical and reasonable way to reduce foreign oil dependency (by switching vehicles to run on natural gas, and building huge wind power projects in central USA states), the fact that he is meeting with Lloyd has me a bit concerned. We all know how things usually turn out when big oil execs meet with alternative energy inventors. I just hope that we can glean enough information from Lloyd, before that meeting, to be able to successfully replicate what he is doing. Lloyd did say that he doesn't really have a set of plans drawn up for his device, but that he would send me some attachments of crude sketches, and some photos. As it was late tonight (11:15pm) when I called him, after receiving his e-mail reply, I didn't want to keep him on the phone very long. Here are some of the things Lloyd mentioned:

The unit seen in the video has been replaced by a new one with a horizontal roller shaft and a wider trough. This allows adding several more pieces of wood, thus multiplying the heat generation and steam output. The roller was made from a thick-walled metal tube Lloyd salvaged, having a 5 inch diameter, and a center bore of 1.625 inches. Perhaps this is a roller that came from a large automated take-away system at a shipping or manufacturing facility? He's not sure what the material is, but says that it shows no signs of wear at all from the pressure of the oak wood 4 x 4's that he uses to create the friction. Lloyd says that only a slight force is needed against the wood to create the desired heating effect. Thus, the wood lasts a long time. The chunks of wood shown loaded in his video would last for 3 days of continuous use, and Lloyd says that one cord of wood is enough to run the steamer for 5 years! He uses a controlled water drip rate that is adjusted to obtain the level of steam pressure desired, and says that his unit is capable of operating at 565 F degrees. He says that the water droplets react pretty much the same as a drop of water falling into a hot iron skillet on a stovetop. The central unit in his video is the steam pressure vessel, and although we don't see them in the video, he is now using additional vessels that control water flow. A "water hopper" holds incoming water from the supply line, which of course is at a relatively low pressure. The pressure within the airtight steamer will get very high, as it must be made high enough to drive a steam engine. Therefore, water entering the steamer must be at the same pressure level as the steamer. To achieve this, valving is used in the sealed water hopper. A float valve shuts off the water supply line when a desired water level is reached in the hopper. This prevents pressurized water in the hopper from causing a backflow through the supply line. Although he didn't specifically say so, I imagine that he also employs a commercial anti-backflow device or two in his supply line. I have such a device (3/4" brass Dual Check Backflow Preventer, made by LEGEND VALVE of Michigan, ph 1-800-752-2082) in my home plumbing, where it connects to the town water line. The water in the hopper becomes pressurized by allowing another valve - between the hopper and the steamer unit - to open until pressure is equalized, at which point water begins a gravity feed to enter the steamer via the drip control. It would appear prudent to also have a backcheck device attached before the drip mechanism, to prevent steamer pressure from going back through the dripper and into the hopper while the hopper is filling with water. As noted and quoted in my previous post, Lloyd now uses a steam engine to drive the friction roller. Lloyd says, "To get pressure in my pressure vessel to run the steam engine I have a built in LP gas burner to get up a head of steam that runs my steam motor. Once the friction roller gets hot from friction to whatever temperature you have your thermostat set at, the gas burner shuts off and never has to be used again. The heat is now generated from the friction roller. Your roller should turn 1700 to 2000 r.p.m. and that should be enough."

Lloyd's steam engine was manufactured by QUASITURBINE of Canada, which builds several sizes of steam engines, and has a distributor in Oregon. See their web site at: Quasiturbine> Type> Steam Engine
The company says that their steam engines will rotate on as little as 20 to 50 psi steam pressure. There is a lot of useful information on their web site, but if you click on the Available Products link for Steam, it looks as though they only offer a pre-production, 5 liters displacement per revolution, model to research organizations and institutions, at a cost of $8,900.

I will post additional information about this as Lloyd makes it available to me. This should at least help some of us get started with a replication. Knowing how Jetijs works, I wouldn't be surprised if he already has a good head start on one. A strong word of caution is advised to anyone attempting a replication, though. Pressurized steam can be very dangerous, and every possible precaution should be utilized to minimize the hazards. Use only enough heat as needed to develop sufficient steam to drive the engine at the 1,700 to 2,000 rpm suggested by Lloyd, and employ over-pressure relief valving and automatic steamer shut-off to prevent excessive pressure buildup. It would be wise to start by building a test model using a hobby shop type steam engine, and scale this project down so that you can use some small diameter hardwood dowels against a revolving metal roller. Something like this Jensen model found on Ebay:
VINTAGE JENSEN STEAM ENGINE STYLE #70 - eBay (item 220287246360 end time Oct-05-08 09:40:43 PDT)

Best regards to all,

Rick

[swompwalker]

Why if O' Boon aint just one big Shweet heart!

YouTube - Truth About The Pickens Plan | ZapRoot

[Jetijs]

Thank you Rick for the additional info
This looks like rather affordable and powerful steam engine:
7 Cylinder Rotary Radial live steam engine - eBay (item 260288850925 end time Oct-17-08 15:54:27 PDT)

Thanks

[wpage]

Neat!

Great idea. Hope they dont dog that inventor the death with inquirys and prevent him from new discoverys...

[Jetijs]

Ok, I made a small experiment. I took a 10cm diameter steel tube, about 20cm long with 5mm thick walls and put the tube in my lathe. I set the lathe to turn on about 600RPM. Then I took a piece of wood and while the lathe was running, I pressed the piece of wood on the tube. The surface area where the wood and the tube was touching was not very big, but nevertheless I could het the tube surface to a temperature of 60 degree Celsius rather fast. Then I set my lathe on 1200RPM, this made a huge difference, I could now get the temperature up to 130 degree. And all that with just one piece of wood 5x5cm thick. There was very little wear on that piece of wood after that. I think if there were two pieces of wood pressing on the tube, there would also be more heat. So this looks promising. My only concern is whether my 2.5HP treadmill motor will be able to sustain the RPMs with friction that much. Also I did not quite understand from the video how this guy transfers the heat from the rotating roller to the steam barrel. I would try it this way:


This would work like one of those oil friction heaters that I have read abut in some free energy sites. The oil would not only transfer the heat but also create friction on its own against both walls when the outer wall is rotating.
What do you think about that?

[Burned_NE2]

Running an ICE on compressed air or steam

Hi All

This is very interesting as far as a renewable energy alternative

Just a quick thought.

There's a lot of work going into compressed air vehicles these days and I was wondering if this same principle couldn't be applied by using steam?

I read an article a few years ago about a company (I think it was in Korea) using an ICE (internal combustion engine) to run on compressed air to drive a car. The article mentioned that the advantages were using the ICE technology which is readily available and not having to need many of the usual parts such as the manifold and exhaust as well as the intake head and plugs or the radiator as well as the ignition components to make it cheaper.

Regards,
Paul

[Burned_NE2]

Re: Using ICE

Here is the original article from 2005 CNN.com - Car that runs on compressed air - Mar 30, 2005

In the article it mentions using an electric motor to compress the air to drive the engine but what if a 12/24 V DC electric motor was used to start the roller instead of LPG then have the roller recharge the batteries once it starts producing steam, seems like it could be feasible

Regards,
Paul

[Peter Lindemann]

Excellent!

Hi Guys,

This looks like a wonderful "low tech" solution to the energy self-sufficient homestead.

Rickoff, thanks for contacting Llyod Tanner and posting the up-dated information. Also, I share your concern about Llyod's being contacted by the Pickens Group.

As for the idea that this can only operate at a COP=1, this interpretation is a complete misunderstanding of science and history. First of all, the "official conversion rate" between mechanical energy and heat was based on James Joule's experiment in 1845 where he placed a paddle wheel in a bucket of water. Here is an excerpt of what I wrote in an article for Borderlands Magazine 14 years ago.

"For instance, in 1845, James Joule found that if he placed a small paddle wheel in a bucket of water, he had to apply 772.5 foot-pounds of mechanical work to spin the paddle wheel to raise the temperature of one pound of water, one degree Fahrenheit. This has led to very careful calculations that now set this "universal conversion" between mechanical work and heat at 778.26 FT-Lbs = 1 BTU. For paddle wheels in water, this is no doubt true. But what happens if paddle wheels are not used? Is there another method that does not use paddle wheels in water to convert mechanical work to heat that does the job better, with less expenditure of work for the same heat produced? The answer is YES. In fact, there are numerous patents on record to accomplish this."

Apparently, from Llyod Tanner's experiments, Oak 4x4's held against a spinning steel wheel works MUCH BETTER! Actually, a careful study of the "paddle wheels in water" method of producing heat is that most of the energy is simply dissipated in "drag caused by turbulence" and does not contribute to heat production at all.

I think this is very important and should be looked into very carefully.

Peter