Need Help!- beginner in steam

[RodKB1]

Hi all, I used to live on St Helena and although it is a lovely place, because of various factors it is also a difficult place to live.
Anyway in order to get by I became interested in steam engines and turbines because I can see that even though it is possibly an old technology it has many applications for use in daily life. I want to learn about steam so that I can use it to make my life better. I want to build a steam powered engine / turbine to use with a generator initially. I know very little about this subject and want to learn. can anybody reccommend a good place to start?

[bogstandard]

First thing you need to do is decide whether you want to do an impulse turbine or a reaction turbine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbine

Impulse turbines are are a lot easier to make and can be based on a pelton wheel design. As mine are. They are really designed to be used with water power, but I have found they run rather well on a generated gaseous jet if you can keep angles and diameters of nozzles, pocket depths and exhaust under control. Model loco builders use this method for electricity generation for their models.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelton_wheel

Reaction turbines are very similar to a gas turbine engine, but running in reverse. They can be rather difficult to make. But do have the advantage that all the power is extracted from the expanding steam, and so a lot more efficient. It is this type that is used for mains power generation, and steam powered turbine engines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine

Here are a couple of impulse turbines I designed and made. The first one is a single rotor, just goes one way, ideal for small power generation. On the three rotor version, the intro shows pics during the build, and it does have full proportional control, both forwards and back.

YouTube - Model turbine working hard

YouTube - Model turbine working hard

YouTube - Three Rotor Turbine

YouTube - Three Rotor Turbine

I hope that this has given you a little insight into the workings.

John

[Ron111]

John

Very nice work!!

Ron

[bogstandard]

Ron,

They are very easy to make, especially if you are using CNC (which I don't).

You just have to keep an eye on tight tolerances and balancing.
Plus of course you need fairly good, high speed bearings. Mine are limited to 45 - 50K RPM, because I can't afford ceramic, as most of my engines are made from scrap or salvaged materials.
Also, they will empty a 100 litre compressor tank in minutes. So running them on steam would require a rather large boiler. But they have been made from compatible materials for steam running if I so wished. They wouldn't last forever though, high pressure steam thru the nozzle system will eventually cut grooves in the rotor, but I didn't fancy making the rotors out of stainless or some other exotic.

John

[Ron111]

John,
I am currently working on a solar tracking program to use stepper motors to track the sun and would eventially maybe tinker with the idea of trying to generate a little electricity using a tiny steam generator. But at this point, I have the basic tracking equations figured out and I am currently coming up to speed using visual basic express edition to develope a windows application and at that point I will practice tracking using a couple of parabolic trough solar collectors. I currently have a stationary flat panel collector, which does not take advantage of all of the available sun.

But, in the mean time I do need to start investigating small steam generators, so I do appreciate the links that you provided and your movies of you engines.

By the way I do have a small cnc setup 3in one shopmaster.

Take care,

Ron

[bogstandard]

In my post above, the two vids were deleted, so if you are still interested, this is a silly one showing both in the same vid.

YouTube - My own designed turbines

YouTube - My own designed turbines

Bogs

[Billyum]

Air Bearings are fairly simple to make but the air must be free of all oil and moisture.