Hi Guys,
Been busy lately building my Changfa 195 CHP powerplant.
I now have the engine/generator finished.
I wanted a very compact system so I mounted the generator head on top of the engine.
The footprint for the system is not much different than the bare engine.
I machined the flywheel to accept a flat poly-vee belt for driving the gen head.
The system is sheaved to run the engine at 1300 rpm and develop 3kw of power to charge a battery bank while the cooling system heats a 100 gallon water tank to store heat. When the tank reaches 180f, heat will be dumped to a fan/coil to heat the building. If the building is already warm, the hot air will be dumped outdoors.
I would really like to recover the exhaust heat also. If anyone has ideas on where to get (or how to build) an inexpensive heat exchanger, please let me know.
Alternatively, I could wrap an exhaust pipe extension with copper tubing and insulate it (although not the most efficient way of collecting heat.)
Here's a few pictures of the power plant which will be powered by WVO or biodiesel....
Cheers,
Veggie