Off Grid Living / Camping > Utilities

Who is using heat from liquid cooled gennies?

(1/2) > >>

ghurd:
With the cold settling in for half of 'us', and mention of gennies running more often, it has me wondering who is using the coolant for any kind of home heating.

What gets me thinking about it every year is the Amish fab shops.

Some still run a diesel on a 50' jack shaft to power things, meaning the diesel runs about all day, and there should be some serious surplus BTUs at the end of a day.

Most use compressed air now, but the diesel compressor still runs a lot of hours per day.
In fact, many guys just run the compressor all day.

Anybody running a serious genny 1, 2, 4 hours a day to get the batteries up, do laundry, etc, should have a considerable amount of surplus heat that could be collected fairly cheap, right?

Run 2 tubes for a heater core, run into the home (basement?), and a car radiator for the heater core?

Or could heat a 55 gallon drum of water and just let it release heat naturally?


Back on the family dairy farm, the milk cooler had a big fan on a giant radiator, and the air coming out of it was very warm.  Simple plywood on a hinge decided if the heat should go outside or into the barn.

What really gets me is a guy who worked on the farm for years(*), and lots of others, run a diesel milk cooler, and burn coal or wood for heat.

(*) In his defense, his home is across the road from the barn, BUT he is heating a close by 20x30 building 24/7 with wood, and it would be easy for him to run coolant lines between the buildings!

I know some of you guys are doing this in more complex fashions, but anybody doing it in simple ways?

Just something to think about,
G-

mobile_bob:
yup, lots of folks are doing it

cogeneration is what it is all about, and microcogeneration is what most of use small producers are into.

www.microcogen.info
if you want to see what others are doing, have done or plan on doing.

bob g

ghurd:
Thanks Bob!
I am going to talk to a few guys, who should be doing it, again.
Good info about piping, etc.
G-

rossw:

--- Quote from: ghurd on November 22, 2012, 08:56:27 am ---Anybody running a serious genny 1, 2, 4 hours a day to get the batteries up, do laundry, etc, should have a considerable amount of surplus heat that could be collected fairly cheap, right?

Run 2 tubes for a heater core, run into the home (basement?), and a car radiator for the heater core?

Or could heat a 55 gallon drum of water and just let it release heat naturally?
...
I know some of you guys are doing this in more complex fashions, but anybody doing it in simple ways?

--- End quote ---

You should already know I have a "modest" (not sure what you definition is for a 'serious genny' is) genset built from a 1800cc 4-cylinder car engine running a 14KVA alternator, and capture all the heat from the engine block and exhaust, that's stored in two 2000 litre containers for domestic hot water and in-floor heating.

ZoNiE:
An old thread, but I have a water cooled Honda EV4010, and do not. It just makes no sense to run a genny (that large) in the winter, but then it's not in a house.

Sometimes I wonder if it would be cheaper to power (and heat) a house with a genny running on piped in natural gas...

You get double the energy if you are using waste heat to heat the space.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page