Hybrid Ship Pulse Detonation Turbine to DC Electrics

[SeaBirdShip]

Hello All,

I recently purchased a 177' all steel ship here in sunny San Diego she has an amazing history which you can read about at www.seabirdadventure.com the plan is to convert her to a exploration and research ship for environmental issues.

Now to where you all can help, as I was thinking about the 600-700 gallons per day she uses it struck me that she creates 100's of gallons of waste oil and her emissions are that of three large diesel engines. So

What if I removed her three mains and replace them with 2x600hp and 1x500hp DC electric motors on direct drive and figured out a way to burn waste oil to create electricity.

The method I am using and currently building a 200HP prototype by using a combination of 3 technologies;

1) Pyrocatalytic Method “pyrocatalytic converter”
2) Pulse Detonation “pulse combustion”
3) Tesla turbine

and I am calling this a The Pulse Combustion Turbine.

Any one that would like to jump into this discussion please do, there are many engineering problems to work through and I need your help.

Thanks, SeaBird Ship

[StianM]

You could buy a westfalia combi master seperation system to make shure the waste oil you burn is off good qualety and burn it in a diesel engine.

If the oil is clean and preheated it should not be a problem. Or buy a sterling engine.

[SeaBirdShip]

Stian,

Thank you, the problem with burning anything in a diesel is the pollution we are trying to accomplish two parts one to burn waste oil the second to have little to no emissions.

I will definitely check out the westfalia separator though, thank you.

SeaBird

[StianM]

If your burn waste oil it will polute annyway regardless to how you do it.

The main problem with diesel engines is the high preshure that create NOx.

This can be reduced by biger chargeair cooler, water injection, alcohol mix in the fuel up to 25% or a combination off two or all three. Water injection and alcohol mix will also help reducing the CO2.

[SeaBirdShip]

Stian,

Thank you for your comments, however the pulse detonation uses a detonation process to burn the fuel not deflagration there by burning clse to 97% of the fuel during detonation and eliminating most of the bad emmisions.

SeaBird

[Kay9]

Im confused.
If you remove the 3 main diesel engines, where are you getting waste oil????


If this is the case then I would recommend sails.

[SeaBirdShip]

Hello Kay9,

Well, there is about 800 million gallons of waste oil created in the US alone of which 200 million is not even accounted for.

Here's the 1st focus, all of the fishing fleets, rec. boats, pretty much anything with a motor today creates waste oil -- all of this must be collected and if I was to get the waste oil I have collected it would cost me about $16 per gallon so I will be able to provide a low cost or free method for all those fishing boats to get rid of there waste oil.

Hope that helps, Sea Bird

PS there will be an entire article on this on the web site www.seabirdadventure.com in the next two weeks.

[Kay9]

it would cost me about $16 per gallon so I will be able to provide a low cost or free method for all those fishing boats to get rid of there waste oil.


Im not triing to be a jerk here. But Im hopeing that $16 per gallon is a typo, as that is about $14 a gal higher then filtered diesel. I do realize that there is a LOT of waste oil, however there is a HUGE diffrence between waste crude oil and waste hydrolic oil. I know nothing about your engine so I would be curious on how your engine handles the diffrence in viscosity (sp?) and flammability. Finally you might find it very hard to find waste oil world wide. Here in the US we collect and refine a lot of our waste oil but a lot of other parts of the world simply throw it out or use it for heating.

Again Im not trying to be a jerk, but a new source of power requires more then simply saying "hey lets burn waste oil" before I can take it very seriously.

[StianM]

I was going to check more on that pulse turine, but have ben too lazy to do so.

I still belive a diesel engine is the one producing the highest hp compared to emisions.

You can reduce emisions futer 20% or something with modifications and alcohol mix in the fuel, intercooler, higher charge air preshure, water injection and so on and so on.

[yipster]

bold thinking great initiative but what engine? the good but almost forgotten Brayton (http://www.todayinsci.com/B/Brayton_George/BraytonGeorgeBoat.htm) or nasa (http://search.nasa.gov/nasasearch/search/centersearch.jsp?centername=glenn&nasaInclude=pulse) tech?
anyway, it think its a hot idea, litteraly :eek:

[SeaBirdShip]

Hello Kay9,

No unfortunately the $16.00 is no a typo, the cheapest I can get large amounts 500+ gallons removed for is $12.00 per gallon, the reason I'm told is that waste oil is considered to be a hazardous waste material and must be disposed of in a proper govt. manner, sigh.

The reason for waste oil is simple, waste oil is one of the easiest fuels for a large boat to acquire in a harbor and second if this system will burn waste oil cleanly then it will have no problem burning any of the natural oils i.e. soy, peanut, etc...

SeaBird

[SeaBirdShip]

Hello StainM,

Due to the deflagration of the diesel fuel diesel engines burn cleaner then gas engines but much worse then pulse detonation where the fuel oil is detonated and virtually all the by-products are consumed in the detonation process.

SeaBird

[StianM]

Hello StainM,

Due to the deflagration of the diesel fuel diesel engines burn cleaner then gas engines but much worse then pulse detonation where the fuel oil is detonated and virtually all the by-products are consumed in the detonation process.

SeaBird


bi products from combustion is NOx, CO.

They can't be consumed.

NOx can be lovered by lovering the combustion temperature and preshure.

Carbon mooxsyed, trioksyde and dioksyde will also be there, but in variable amound regarding engines running conditions and the abiltey to burn clean.

I would like to see some datta sheet on this turbine and I belive it's a bas sulution to annything.

[SeaBirdShip]

StianM

In order to obtain the best efficiencies from fuel to shaft horsepower we have to look at the entire process -- from fuel in its unburned, raw state, through the transforming of gas kinetic energy into mechanical power, and finally, the exit of hot gas from the machine and the recovery or loss of energy in the entire system.

First of all we have to decide on the combustion mechanism -- do we want a continuous burn or pulse burn? For the Tesla Turbine we settled on pulse burn as a more efficient mechanism for reaching high velocity gas states with the lowest heat loss. A pulse burn mechanism is similar to the constant volume combustion model of the piston engine, rather than the constant pressure system of conventional turbines. While conventional turbines are higher than piston engines in horsepower per pound of engine, they are less efficient (in most applications) in terms of fuel efficiencies.

Gasoline piston engines, as they are designed today, do not work well with mineral spirits, fuel oil, or even pure alcohol. Petroleum distillates detonate too easily in today's engines, resulting in rapid destruction of the engine. Slowing down the burn to avoid detonation results in poor fuel economy (as much as 40% of the fuel in your tank is simply blown out the exhaust port), which is why catalytic converters are mandated -- to burn the wasted fuel.

This brings us to the next point. To utilize all of the energy in fuel we have to pre-process the fuel into a near 100% burnable state. Liquids do not burn -- only vapor or gas phase fuels burn! While carburetors and fuel injectors work to convert liquid fuels to vapor state, the fuel still acts as a quasi-liquid even in a hot cylinder.

Now some of you may ask why we are concerned with ultra-clean combustion. Well, there are several good reasons. First of all, our main goal in working with boundary layer turbines is to replace the 100-year old I. C. piston gas and diesel engines with a new engine that delivers more power with less pollution, and a lower cost to produce & maintain.

Traditional pulse combustors use natural tube length frequencies to compress and detonate combustible mixtures. Our methods use valving, low pressure air compression, and spark timing to shape the "envelope of detonation", allowing us to create reliable pulse burn at much lower frequencies per tube length. The results, compared to continuous burn, are: more of the potential energy of the combustible mixture is transformed into kinetic gas energy, less into useless heat -- which transforms into higher overall engine efficiencies and lower NOx production.

For applications where lowest possible emissions from fossil fuels must be realized, our second approach using our ultra-clean burner technology is the best choice. As mentioned earlier, our experiments with fuel processing for gas and diesel piston engines laid the ground work for our ultra-clean burner.

Now a lot of people may say that they can get ultra-clean burn from natural gas or propane -- that's true. What we are talking about is getting ultra-clean burn from a mixture of crankcase oil and industrial solvents -- normally waste products from automotive & manufacturing industries. Some of you may have heard about these waste oil burners people are buying to burn-off waste oils in their shops. Claims of extremely clean burn are common -- but look at the color of the flame.

Hydrogen burns with a yellow flame, carbon burns with a blue flame. If you turn on your gas stove and view the flame, you will see regions of colors -- blue near the burner head, yellow near the flame tips, white between. A typical waste oil burner that produces a yellow flame is only burning the hydrogen content of the fuel. Our burner flames are identical to a gas stove flame -- complete combustion of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen -- from heavy waste oils!

This information is from our partner research group on this project.

[yipster]

http://www.seabirdadventure.com/images/engine.jpg
ambitieus plan but really cant spy enough from the picture
have seen drawings of PDE turbines and here a RC working model
http://people.zeelandnet.nl/bramw/david/modelvlieg/plaatjes/turbine.bmp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsejet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_detonation_engine
http://www.pulse-jets.com/
hello Bruce Simpson ? (http://aardvark.co.nz/pjet/)

[SeaBirdShip]

StianM and Yipster

Here is a report done on fuel burning of PDE

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=15362753

Titre du document / Document title
Energy and exergy analyses of the pulse detonation engine
Auteur(s) / Author(s)
HUTCHINS T. E. (1) ; METGHALCHI M. (1) ;
Affiliation(s) du ou des auteurs / Author(s) Affiliation(s)
(1) Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, ETATS-UNIS

Résumé / Abstract
Energy and exergy analyses have been performed on a pulse detonation engine. A pulse detonation engine is a promising new engine, which uses a detonation wave instead of a deflagration wave for the combustion process. The high-speed supersonic combustion wave reduces overall combustion duration resulting in an nearly constant volume energy release process compared to the constant pressure process of gas turbine engines. Gas mixture in a pulse detonation engine has been modeled to execute the Humphrey cycle. The cycle includes four processes: isentropic compression, constant volume combustion, isentropic expansion, and isobaric compression. Working fluid is a fuel-air mixture for unburned gases and products of combustion for burned gases. Different fuels such as methane and JP10 have been used. It is assumed that burned gases are in chemical equilibrium states. Both thermal efficiency and effectiveness (exergetic efficiency) have been calculated for the pulse detonation engine and simple gas turbine engine. Comparison shows that for the same pressure ratio pulse detonation engine has better efficiency and effectiveness than the gas turbine system.
Revue / Journal Title
Journal of engineering for gas turbines and power (J. eng. gas turbine power) ISSN 0742-4795 CODEN JETPEZ
Source / Source
2003, vol. 125, no4, pp. 1075-1080 [6 page(s) (article)] (19 ref.)
Langue / Language
Anglais

Editeur / Publisher
American Society of Mechanical Engineers, New York, NY, ETATS-UNIS (1984) (Revue)

Mots-clés anglais / English Keywords
Thermal efficiency ; Methane ; Air ; Fuel ; Working fluid ; Compression ; Gas mixture ; Gas turbine ; Pressure ; Combustion ; Wave ; Detonation ; Exergy analysis ; Fuel mixture ; Gas engine ;
Mots-clés français / French Keywords
Rendement thermique ; Méthane ; Air ; Combustible ; Fluide travail ; Compression ; Mélange gaz ; Turbine gaz ; Pression ; Combustion ; Onde ; Détonation ; Analyse exergétique ; Mélange carburant ; Moteur gaz ;

001d06d03d ; 230 ;
Mots-clés espagnols / Spanish Keywords
Rendimiento térmico ; Metano ; Aire ; Combustible ; Fluido trabajo ; Compresión ; Mezcla gas ; Turbina gas ; Presión ; Combustión ; Onda ; Detonación ; Análisis exergético ; Mezcla carburante ; Motor gas ;
Localisation / Location
INIST-CNRS, Cote INIST : 6120 A, 35400011898443.0280


Copyright 2006 INIST-CNRS. All rights reserved

Toute reproduction ou diffusion même partielle, par quelque procédé ou sur tout support que ce soit, ne pourra être faite sans l'accord préalable écrit de l'INIST-CNRS.
No part of these records may be reproduced of distributed, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of INIST-CNRS.

Nº notice refdoc (ud4) : 15362753

[yipster]

http://www.pulse-jets.com/valveless/10.gif
here (http://www.pulse-jets.com/valveless/index.htm) tesla's valveless valve you named for a turbine
and here (http://www.pulse-jets.com/phpbb2/files/gb741253.pdf) valve drawings for a hybrid pulse piston turbine by pioneer Paul Schmidt
all planty interesting but apart from some testbeds and a misterious aurora
i havent heard of any attempts for boat propulsion yet so keep me updated

[SeaBirdShip]

Yipster,

You are correct I have not seen anyone doing this work for ship propulsion. Hopefully this will be a new and unique project for the time being. My hopes are that by combining these three technologies we can come up with a very good propulsion power system. The links of technologies are as follows;

1) Waste Oil
Standard 3 point contaminant filtering

2) Pyrocatalytic Conversion

3) Fuel pre-processing

4) Pulse Detonation
6 x PDE's

5) Tesla Turbine
3 x pairs of 350HP turbines

6) AC Generators
3 x 500KW by 600v

7) DC conversion and control electronics

8) DC electric Motors
2 x 600HP Mains and 1 x 500HP Bow Thruster

9) 600vac to 220 and 115 transformers, multiple for ships services.

Seabird

[SeaBirdShip]

Good Morning All,

Well I have hired a friend who is fantastic with CAD/CAM software and I have completed the dimensions and calculations for the Tesla Trubine. Hopefully by the end of this week we'll be in final drawing review and next week order the first metal parts for the turbine. The Tesla turbine will be 18" really 17.75" by 12 platters since Tesla was able to get 200hp out of 25 9.75" platters this should work well. The reason for the larger platters is RPM I want to have the Tesla turbine spinning at about 6000 rpm fully loaded with 10,000 rpm being near 100% turbine speed. Tesla turbines run best for torque at about 60-75% of full speed. At 6000 rpms I'll need to run a 3.5 to 1 pully ratio for the generator and maintain a fairly tight control of rpms through power ramp up. Should be fun.

I was fortunate enough to find, on the ship, a 3-phase 60hp moter in great shape and not being used as well as a high pressure boiler for steam washing.

With these two parts we should be able to have a test up and running in about three weeks. Please log on to the site www.seabirdadventure.com for the pictures and discussions that will ensue. Also I will try to post the pics here for all the readers here.

SeaBird

PS Wish me luck.

[SeaBirdShip]

:idea: In a few days the website will have the details for what's going on but for now the rundown is as follows;

I have hired an engineering team to re-design the entire propulsion and generation for the Sea Bird.

The 2 550hp D379 will be replaced with 2 600hp DC electric motors on direct drive and the 479hp 12v71 will be replace with a 500hp DC electric motor. This gives the ships propulsion a 1700hp top for power budget. At 1700hp take this times 746 for watts and we get 1.268MW of power with power conversion losses and motor losses we have a required power budget of 1.648MW.

So the generation plan requires that at any one time one of the 3 generators may need to be off line for maintenance leaving us with a 850KW per generator requirement. This gives a 1.7MW per pair and a 2.55MW total power budget for the ship. Now the trick will be if this is to tight to increase to 900KW gens instead, we'll see.

I've decided to go with all digital control surfaces both in engineering and on the bridge for complete on demand managed control of all systems.

Question: Do any of you folks know of a good manufacture for large air scrubbers? I want all air brought into engineering and all other cabin space to be around 30%rh and zero particulates especially salt :)

Thanks,

SeaBird

[tootallsailor]

Have you looked into Gasification?http://www.encomgroup.com/gasification.htm
http://www.inetlink.ca/a31ford/cgcmb/
http://www.cns-snc.ca/Bulletin/plasmagasification.html
Here are some links, I hope it will help.

[charmc]

:
Question: Do any of you folks know of a good manufacture for large air scrubbers? I want all air brought into engineering and all other cabin space to be around 30%rh and zero particulates especially salt :)

Thanks,

SeaBird

Seabird,

If you want to bring low humidity air to living and engineering spaces, you'll need a filtration system and a desiccant dehumidifier with air cooling coils. I don't know of a dry scrubber that would do what you want. A filter with impingement plates to knock down water droplets will start the cleaning process. Rh, relative humidity, is a measure of the water vapor (gaseous phase) in the air, and is partly a function of the air temperature. Simply put, hot air can hold more water vapor than cool air. 40% rh @ 95 deg F is nearly twice as much moisture as 50% rh @ 70 deg F. The simplest way to remove moisture from air is to cool it. The water coming out of the drain of all air conditioning systems is the excess water vapor which has condensed as the air is cooled. This takes energy, of course, and it leaves the air saturated, i.e. it is holding the maximum moisture it can, although that amount is less than if it were warm. To get your 30% rh at a temperature of 70 deg F will require a regenerating desiccant system. Desiccant removes moisture from air by adsorption, and can, theoretically, remove all moisture from the air. But it takes energy to regenerate the desiccant. The best systems use a nonmetallic rotor impregnated with the desiccant and perforated with thousands of tiny honeycomb style pores. The rotor rotates slowly and one side is always removing moisture while the other is being regenerated with hot air.

The system requires energy, but the rotor and circulating fan motors are relatively small electrical loads. The main energy consumer is the regeneration air heater, which can run on turbine waste heat. It would take some application engineering, but it should fit into your plan.

[kach22i]

http://www.seabirdadventure.com/pulse_combustion_turbine
Now I'm working on a new type of turbine design by me; it has only one disk and a pulse combustion boiler, works on steam and hot combustion gases all mixed at conventional time. I have already worked with 20000 rpm , no or few vibrations. The disk or turbine has no blades and works on a similar theory that Teslas do. I use propane or natural gas as fuel; at the exhaust I have condensated water an almost 0 pollution gases

Wow, this project has really progressed.

[Kay9]

So how is this project going????????????

[SeaBirdShip]

Things are progressing well, but slower then I would like. The slowest part is keeping the web site up to date with all that has transpired.

SeaBird is now in dry dock in Seattle WA, we had an aborted attempt here in San Diego due to the dry dock crane only being 650 gross ton rated and the ship being 830 gross tons :) we have this on film both the aborted attempt and the journey to Seattle.

The Turbine is complete however the mechanical engineer who was doing the drafting for me has become a problem child so we are trying to some to a middle ground of understanding to move forward, sigh.

So the PDE part of the project has come to a standstill until I either get this engineer back on track or find a new one that doesn’t have some of the legal troubles this one does.

We will be posting allot of pictures and a fair amount of write ups on all that has gone on. Also I am traveling to the Midwest to look at the G50 Baldor AC motors and drivers that will become the main propulsion for the Seabird.

That’s it for now, thanks for checking up.

SeaBird

[Kay9]

Thanks. I went to the site and didnt see anything so Its great to hear you guys are still working on it. I love the hull, if you find yourself in need of a 1600t Master with Oceans endorsements as well as GMDSS and STCW-95 let me know. In on the Oregon Coast.

[mydauphin]

The Dirtier the fuel, the dirtier the exhaust - unless you clean it via scrubbers. I think your working backwards. Instead of engineering the fuel. Engineer the boat What kind of horsepower, torque, rpms and hours you need the work from there. The only engines that can handle that used oil is something like an old detroit diesel two stroke but filtering is essential. Also get old oil mix it 40/60 with real diesel and then run a scrubber to clean exhaust.

I choose different method. I am going to be using bio-diesel or regular diesel but will be able to produce my own biodiesel on board.

I would not use old oil in diesel it has too much junk it and not worth trouble getting or cleaning. You may save money on fuel but your going to spend it on repairs. Same for gas turbines or any with moving parts. A Stirling is not going to be powerful enough. May be a boiler to burn old oil driving steam turbine.... Sounds like new technology to me... Also those old two 500hp GM Cleveland Division 6-278A 6-cyl V6 diesel engines could probably burn oil better than most new engines can.

Skip the diesel electric. Take two 12-71 diesels with straight out shaft. *By the way, I have couple including tranny for a price if you want.
You wont loss 20 % of your power that way.
Also you can build scrubbers yourself. Actually your definitely have to make then yourself to make them fit around your boat. That is easy, not cheap, the Stainless is going to cost a small fortune. Just figure out how clean is clean enough for you...

[Kay9]

He isnt using Diesels at all. You need to re-read the whole thread,

[StianM]

I think there is one thing about using old gear and motor oil that moust of you did not think about.

What is inside old used oil?

Particles from the engine like iron, aluminium witch are fine, but then you have lead witch is a toxic metal for marine life and other life for that mather and this will be in the exhaust.

And about having almoust zero emisions running propane or natural gas, you get about the same result on a good old diesel.

[Kay9]

I can live with some by products that have to be disposed of if the engine is effective. Burning a waste product to end up with a smaller amount of waste product in a more concentrated form is of. Im not an enviromentalist. I would like to see the engine in operation.