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Topics - justsomeguy

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Lister Based Generators / Power Burst = Mini Grid
« on: January 27, 2006, 08:36:11 PM »
This subject quickly came out of a "Anyone tried propane"? question I posted in the Alternative Fuels area, that, by the way, no one answered.  It did evolve in to all sorts of other discussion though. So I'm moving it over here in an attempt to stay on topic.

I'll be brief:

Have a 6/1 Lister?  Off grid?  Wish you were on grid every time you plug in the air compressor so that 4HP motor would start a little easier, and not blink out the lights?  Wouldn't it be great if your inverter and Lister could "gang up" and give a burst of energy to start large loads?  Wish you didn't have to have a precisely controlled governor?  Wish you could use an induction motor as your generator head, and not worry about RPM, or voltage?

Have your cake and eat it to.  All the benefits of being grid tied, combined with all the benefits of being out in the middle of nowhere, miles from the grid.  Use a Sunny Island to build your own little mini grid.  With a little creativity, (means: Hacking)  an auto-start Lister could be built and hooked up to the Sunny boy controller, and start/stop as the batteries/inverter command without human intervention.

http://www.solarsales.com.au/sunny_island.html

There's a picture, (worth a few thousand words) at the bottom of the page.

Discuss!     :)

2
Other Fuels / CH4
« on: January 22, 2006, 09:20:48 PM »


How about natural gas?


A diesel engine won't run on 100% nat gas, as its octane is too high, and it won't self ignite.  However, a little shot of diesel will ignite, and makes a great "spark plug" for the natural gas/air  charge.  Again......... a local light plant with old Fairbanks-Morse engines does this.  They start and warm up their engines on diesel, grid tie them, and then turn on the gas, and run them on  90-95% natural gas, with 5-10% of the power coming from the drastically decreased diesel as the "spark plug" ignition source.  The diesel smoke vanishes from the power plant stacks when they turn on the natural gas.

Is anyone running their Listeroids on 70-90% natural gas with the remaining 10-30% being fuel/waste/veggie oil for the ignition source?  With the increased talk of cogeneration and combined heat and power, natural gas is about 60% as expensive per BTU than number 2 fuel oil.  And it takes less effort than hunting/gathering WVO.   In a residential/light commercial/light industrial (heat the shop) environment where natural gas is available (already being used as a heat source?) it seems like burning it in an already grid tied listeroid would be a winning idea.  It also burns very clean.

Since they don't need to load follow, no fueling governor connection would be required for the nat gas in a grid tie situation.  Just pipe gas to the intake, and open the gas flow with a gate valve and adjust the governor (liquid fueling) to decreases to where the engine operates in a stable fashion on the minimal amount of liquid fuel.  Use an electric solenoid to shut down gas in event of loss of grid.  If the belt broke or the system was to island somehow, the engine wouldn't run away, because the governor would shut down the liquid fuel as the RPMS increased to the point where the natural gas would go through unburned.  (no liquid fuel = no 'spark' no burn, no power, no increase in RPMS.)  It might hunt quite a bit with excess gas, no mechanical load, and the liquid fuel turning on and off to maintain RPMs,  but at least it wouldn't destroy itself.

3
Lister Based Generators / poly-v belt tension
« on: January 21, 2006, 12:48:46 AM »
Is anyone using an automotive style belt tensioner to keep the slack up on the generator drive?  It seems like an auto matic tensioner would keep tension constant on the "return path" to the flywheel as the belt stretches (under more or less load) and contracts, and as temperature increases/decreases and the belt ages.  Mounting would be somehwhat more simple too, as the generator head would not be required to slide.

4
Other Fuels / Propane Injection
« on: January 17, 2006, 06:51:04 AM »
Has anyone tried this on a Listerclone or other small diesel?  I see that many places sell kits for smaller diesel trucks and claim all sorts of more power, less fuel used, etc.  I know of a guy that uses propane injection on a ford power stroke, and it did increase his horsepower on the dyno by quite a bit.

Being that the listers are naturally aspirated, and some are indirect injection, I figure that might not be the best application for propane, but I thought I'd ask.

This site explaines how/why it works.

http://www.dieselsmoke.com/info/propaneinjection.html

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