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I was wondering if they have someway to fill the boiler while it is in use, as they do not look like they have a steam recovery system, so the water is not recycled!
Yeah, I noticed that. It looks like it is a work in progress, so I imagine he'll nail that down at some point. I wonder how much energy you lose in recovery?
If you get a chance, check out all the vids on You Tube by greenpowerscience, not to mention their site. They sell some of the stuff that I've been wanting to try out (Fresnel lenses, reflective parabolic mirrors, etc). Interesting stuff.
I suppose you would have a slight back pressure from the recovery system, but if done right, you might even be pulling a slight vacuum as the waste steam is converted to water in the cooling tower, or whatever they decide to use! That slight vacuum would actually increase power from the steam engine!
I thought about that. But to get the condensate back to the crucible, would require gravity or pressure? If using gravity, then that means you still have to use pressure to get it above the crucible.
Might work if the condenser was higher than the vessel, steam would rise and recondense and then the resulting water could run downhill to the boiler, but you still need a pump to force the water in against the steam pressure, so you might as well place it where ever convenient and figure on pumping the water in the first place!
I've been working with an engineer for some years now on a steam/turbine/generator invention updating old tech with new tech.
Sun tracking unit on a small mirror array is enough to light a plastic lawn chair on fire from 5 feet away.
I liked how you can melt concrete with the Fresnel lens:
hot
The array we're using is actually built on a Dish Network dish. It doesn't take much to concentrate a massive amount of energy. The main problem we have is we only have surfaces that are 2nd surface reflections. Haven't found a suitable way to get a 1st surface reflection short of polished stainless, but then we would have to build stamping dies to form the correct radius of the dish, and it just gets messy from there.
A low budget solution isn't all that low budget at the moment.
The turbine end of it works perfectly however.
I wonder how the stuff they are selling would compare to what you are using.
(note to Zem: I'm not hawking stuff...it's just cool 
)
I like how the concrete looks afterward. I could see some artist or designer getting creative with this. Ooh! I gotta google that!
Gonna book mark that and pass it along. It might be a viable solution......
That got me thinking about the advantage that a parabolic trough system might have. The focussing would be done, I would guess, more easily.
crabbsaline
Kind of Mad Max looking, but cool.