Author Topic: Who is using heat from liquid cooled gennies?  (Read 7400 times)

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Offline ghurd

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Who is using heat from liquid cooled gennies?
« on: November 22, 2012, 08:56:27 am »
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-

Offline mobile_bob

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Re: Who is using heat from liquid cooled gennies?
« Reply #1 on: January 06, 2013, 08:26:32 am »
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

Offline ghurd

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Re: Who is using heat from liquid cooled gennies?
« Reply #2 on: January 06, 2013, 09:43:39 am »
Thanks Bob!
I am going to talk to a few guys, who should be doing it, again.
Good info about piping, etc.
G-

Offline rossw

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Re: Who is using heat from liquid cooled gennies?
« Reply #3 on: January 06, 2013, 04:44:10 pm »
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?

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.

Offline ZoNiE

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Re: Who is using heat from liquid cooled gennies?
« Reply #4 on: June 07, 2015, 08:20:50 pm »
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.


Offline rossw

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Re: Who is using heat from liquid cooled gennies?
« Reply #5 on: June 07, 2015, 09:25:28 pm »
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.

It depends on your available energy sources and their cost.

A gas/petrol/diesel powered genset has a fairly low conversion of potential (chemical) energy in the fuel to electrical energy out, however if you can actually use the otherwise waste energy (heat) as in a co-gen setup, then the effective cost per kWh comes well down.

You don't get "double the energy", you merely lose less. (About 2/3 of the readily available power in your fuel is "wasted" when just making electricity).

As an example: a diesel genset takes around 200g of fuel per kWh of electrical output.
So that's 5kWh per kilogram.

Diesel fuel has about 48MJ per kilogram, or 13.3kWh/kg

The figures are going to be similar (but worse) for petrol or gas, due to the typically lower compression ratios and operating efficiency.

What's that old saying about "no free lunch"?

Offline kurt

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Re: Who is using heat from liquid cooled gennies?
« Reply #6 on: June 13, 2015, 03:13:50 pm »
our huge indoor sports center/concert center they have everything there from basketball to monster trucks to rock concerts  here in town used to run a grid tie natural gas cogen setup durring the heating season from what i heard payback time was reasonable but they use a huge amount of electricity and a huge amount of heat the cogen setup was sized so every drop of heat was put to use or it was not running. i do not know if they still run it or not that place has changed owners and been remodeled a couple times since.
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Offline solarnewbee

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Re: Who is using heat from liquid cooled gennies?
« Reply #7 on: January 29, 2016, 10:27:09 pm »
The U.S. Navy does on frigates and destroyers to distill water and heat water for bathing, laundry and cooking. Now their moving to cavitation pumps for hot water.
SN

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