Survival Steam Engine <G> Question

Hey, sounds like fun to me :P

Tim

-- In the immortal words of Ned Flanders: "No foot longs!" Website @

formatting link

Reply to
Tim Williams
Loading thread data ...

I don't have your post with a distilling link yet, maybe it was

formatting link
?

If, from there, you follow the Introduction/Legality/USA link it has reference there to this site about the production of ethanol for motor fuel:

formatting link
and that will get you a lot of info on the legality and economics of making ethanol for engine fuel. It will explain the magnanimous gestures made by a kinder, friendlier BATF to let smaller producers of alcohol avoid midnight raid by BATF swat teams.

Reply to
Jack Erbes

DejaVU scribed in :

well now, reading a computer publication today i came across another energy source...... methane. seems in some remote spot of Africa a computer center is being run for 5 hours day on the methane from the shit of the 1000 students who use the computers. all collects in a vessel and the gas is bled off.

20000 watt hours per day worth.....

now, what will methane run for us? modified internal combustion engine (as for propane?) is probabyl the most efficient. can heat the house and cool the fridge with it too.

and wherever you are, there is shit..... a secure source of raw material....

swarf, steam and wind

-- David Forsyth -:- the email address is real /"\

formatting link
\ / ASCII Ribbon campaign against HTML E-Mail > - - - - - - -> X If you receive email saying "Send this to everyone you know," / \ PLEASE pretend you don't know me.

Reply to
DejaVU

This has been done for years in places like rural india. A methane digester can provide cooking gas for several families IIRC.

Also, at one time, the sewage pumps at Deer Island (boston harbor) were fueled with methane gas produced on-site. These are enormous flat radial engines made by, I think, Nordberg.

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

Reply to
jim rozen

I grew up in Kentucky, and migrated to North Georgia. Both are areas with a strong tradition of partnership between the preacher and the bootlegger to keep that demon tax paid liquor at bay.

Gary

Reply to
Gary Coffman

Here's the link:

formatting link
John

Please note that my return address is wrong due to the amount of junk email I get. So please respond to this message through the newsgroup.

Reply to
John Flanagan

The explosive is used to break up the rock to increase flow? What kind of explosive was it that a wrench falling on it would set it off???

John

Please note that my return address is wrong due to the amount of junk email I get. So please respond to this message through the newsgroup.

Reply to
John Flanagan

LOL. And thence to upstate ny?

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

Reply to
jim rozen

Did you recover the wrench when it came back up?

Bill K7NOM

Reply to
Bill Janssen

No. I don't think much of it did come back up.

Gary

Reply to
Gary Coffman

I'd have to say that If I found myself in that situation I would also go the alcohol route. Here's a thought though. initailly if I were unprepared I'd do like someone mentioned and run like a honda generator on alcohol. But, if ou think about it modern high RPM engines will wear out, they don't use babbit bearings, hard to upkeep when you can't get new parts. I think ideal would be to revert to something like an old hit and miss engine (prefereably a pair of them so you w9ould still have power while working on one of them). With modest tools you could keep them running indefinitely. Probably could be made more efficient, adjust the compression ratio, maybe modern IC driven ignition (could always keep the old magnito on hand).

Probably be easier to muffle the exhaust, an imprtant thing when you don't want to advertise that you have power.

By the way, since we would be talking about a stationary power plant you would want to go water cooled. Could circulate from the hopper or water jacket for domestic hot water or help heat your mash.

Dave

Reply to
David L Peterson

How much of a bang do you get at the top of the hole?

John

Please note that my return address is wrong due to the amount of junk email I get. So please respond to this message through the newsgroup.

Reply to
John Flanagan

You from like, the valley :^)?

John

Please note that my return address is wrong due to the amount of junk email I get. So please respond to this message through the newsgroup.

Reply to
John Flanagan

The wells were only into the Cypress sand, about 2300 feet. It wasn't terribly loud, but there was a good jolt you'd feel through the ground when it detonated.

Gary

Reply to
Gary Coffman

Actually, I have been thonking about this since it first came up. A mVW, or other small(sort of) *air cooled* engine, would be the best base. Feedingh steam through the intake and outlet valves, while venting through the spark plug hole. They could probbaly be easily converted from a _4_ cycle to dual 2 cycle engine. Since the older engines have the valves easily accessible, rigging something to open a third (plug hole) valve, would be easier.

For thos who don't know, can't visualize it: 1)intake stroke (pull in fuel air mix, down), 2)compression stroke with plug firing (up),

3)power stroke (down), 4) exhaust stroke (up). With steam, it would be 1)steam enters through intake manifold(power stroke, down), 2)exhaust stroke (up) through sp hole & valve, 3)steam through exhaust manifold (power, down), repeat of 2. POwer on every stroke, with nearly simultaneous opposing power strokes.
Reply to
Walter Daniels

Many years ago saw a book available on this subject from the old Paladin Press catalog. Might have involved regrinding camshaft, but from memory could do a simple conversion just by altering the timing by removing the timing chain, rotating the engine or the camshaft by a varying number of degrees and replacing the chain.

However, don't know how efficient it would be. How large a boiler do you envision, providing how much steam at what pressure? A small 5 horsepower boiler that will produce steam at, say, 100 PSI isn't all that small, requires fairly constant observation to keep the fuel and water up, and may not provide more than a couple of horsepower from an converted engine.

You also have to provide lubrication with steam cylinder oil.

Old steam traction engines looked large and impressive, but from memory only developed 15 to 20 horsepower on the average.

"_Magna est veritas et praevalebit"_ (Truth is mighty and will prevail).

erniegalts [Australia] [misc.survivalism]

Reply to
erniegalts

The old magneto or point distributor would be the way to go. I would want to stay away from any type of electronic ignition system. We are talking survival here and if it came to nuclear weapons then everything with an electronic ignition wouldn't work. Also it wouldn't help to go down to the parts store, because the magnetic flux would have ruined all the new parts sitting on the shelf. Any pre 1972 car with points would quit when the blast went off, but all you would have to do is restart the engine. Anything newer would need a tow truck to get it home. Assuming you could find a tow truck that still ran. I ran into a guy who had a real survivalist mentality and all his cars and trucks were diesels. He also said he had 13,000 gallons of heating oil stored up to run them on. Said he topped off his tanks every year in the spring when heating oil prices went down. I have been wondering how hard it would be to make a press to get oil from corn or beans to use for fuel in a diesel engine? Any one ever try this?

Richard W.

Reply to
Richard W.

I'm thinking that if I was close enough for this to be a problem I wouldn't be worrying about power for very long. :) Actually, I'm not certain, but I'm thinking that using a power transistor driven by the points to drive the coil (I've seen schematics of this kind of thing for a hotter spark) would be robust enough to survive. What blows? Any diode type junction rectify the too much power and blow? you just talking normal nuclear bombs or EMP weapons? I'm not sure any coils or condensors would survive an EMP event. Anyone know the details of this stuff?

Reply to
David L Peterson

I'm pretty sure you could ever get the engine to be a two stroke without regrinding the camshaft no matter which way you do it. The timing just isn't right. Intake opens on a downstroke while the exhaust opens on an upstroke. You can switch this around but they'd one would always be wrong.

John

Please note that my return address is wrong due to the amount of junk email I get. So please respond to this message through the newsgroup.

Reply to
John Flanagan

EMP is the induced surge that causes a static crash in an AM radio when there is a nearby lightning strike (or other high current arc event). If the lightning strike is very nearby, the EMP will induce a surge on any long exposed wiring (antenna) large enough to possibly puncture solid state device junctions.

Just think of nuclear EMP (NEMP) as a very large lightning bolt. If a 1 MT device is detonated nearby, the NEMP will be similar, though on the order of about 10 times larger, to an ordinary nearby lightning strike. For ground bursts and low altitude bursts, the destructive magnitude NEMP effects will be limited to a radius not much larger than the blast radius, so worrying about NEMP effects is pretty much moot.

However, a high altitude burst is a bit different. Because the mean free path of the Compton electrons generated by the detonation is *much* longer at high altitudes, the magnitude of the pulse only decreases inversely linearly with distance instead of inverely to the square of distance (line coupling instead of point coupling). That means much longer range effects are possible. In other words, a detonation at a 200 km altitude will produce NEMP effects on the ground similar to those of a low altitude or ground burst device of similar magnitude 1.41 km away.

Still, the receiving antenna (exposed wiring) has to have enough capture area to gather significant energy from the NEMP. The Navy operates (or did operate in 1988) a NEMP simulator to test whole ship naval electronic systems. The ARRL (amateur radio organization) got permission to test some typical amateur radio installations in the simulator. They found damage to the front ends of HF transceivers when connected to 80 m halfwave dipole antennas (about 136 feet), but no damage at all to handheld transceivers and auto mounted VHF mobile rigs when the exposed wiring lengths did not exceed

1 meter.

What this says to us is that unless the equipment is connected to exposed wiring of significant length, the chance of damage, outside the blast radius of the generating detonation, is slight. The scare stories about every auto, and every stored electronic auto part, being destroyed by NEMP are just scare stories based on ignorance of the physics of NEMP (and electromagnetic waves in general).

Note, though, that the possibility of damage to the power grid, and the telecommunications networks, is very real. That's because they have a huge amount of exposed wiring to act as antennas, so their capture area for the NEMP energy is also huge. So they have to take extraordinary measures to protect connected equipment against EMP. These measures include wiring practices, use of single point grounds, gas discharge shunt protectors, etc.

None of that is a concern for electronics which is not connected to exposed wiring which can form an antenna with a large capture area, however. It simply intercepts too little energy from the pulse to do any damage.

Gary

Reply to
Gary Coffman

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.