Hybrid Ship Pulse Detonation Turbine to DC Electrics

Discussion in 'Propulsion' started by SeaBirdShip, Oct 15, 2006.

  1. SeaBirdShip
    Joined: Oct 2006
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    SeaBirdShip Junior Member

    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
     
  2. Richard Hillsid
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    Richard Hillsid Senior Member

    Where are you going to get the waste oil if you remove the engines, Trol’ing for cod fish and using cod liver oil?
     
  3. SeaBirdShip
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    SeaBirdShip Junior Member

    Hello Richard,

    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.
     
  4. Jimbo1490
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    Jimbo1490 Senior Member

    How about a Stirling engine? They are orders of magnitude more thermodynamically efficient than an IC engine. Only drawback is W/P ratio suffers somewhat compared to IC. But this is not so big an issue for a big steel boat and a marine diesel for comparison. A Stirling engine is closed, so any heat source may be used, including biomass type fuels as well as waste hydrocarbons and oil.

    Stirlings like to run at a constant speed, which is generally considered a drawback for transport use. But this makes them ideal for driving a generator, which is what you want to do.

    There is a wealth of Stirling engine info on the web. The trick will be finding out who makes a suitably sized production engine. This book looks like a nice start:

    http://www.stirlingengine.com/ecommerce/product.tcl?usca_p=t&product_id=28

    Jimbo
     
  5. SeaBirdShip
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    SeaBirdShip Junior Member

    Jimbo,

    Thank you for the information on the Sterling engine, no I had not done any research on this but it definitely looks interesting. There are a great many sites like you had suggested now to find the power efficiency stuff to decide if the Sterling is equivalent to the Pulse Turbine?

    Thank you for your input, SeaBird
     
  6. Jimbo1490
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    Jimbo1490 Senior Member

    Stirling engines are the most efficient engine ever devised. Actual thermal efficiencies exceeding 20% have been acheived, even approaching the theoretical efficiency limits of adiabatic/isothermal expansion. This compares to about 3% for the typical IC engine. Stirling engines have even been devised to run a linear alternator, so that there is no crankshaft or any rotary motion and attendant losses, just reciprocation of a free piston.

    http://www.sbir.nasa.gov/SBIR/successes/ss/3-115text.html

    This effiency and the abitly to use any heat source of sufficient capacity would seem to make them ideal for what you are teying to do. Stirling engines are also virtually silent since the combustion process is continuous and happens outside of the engine.

    The major advantage of the new 'pulse detonation' type engines is relatively high efficiency in a lightweight engine. Basically, they have the potential for near diesel thermal efficiency combined with the very low W/P ratios of typical gas turbines. This is of great value to aerospace, less so for the marine industry.

    If you look at the basics of any 'reaction thrust' type engine, (including turboshaft engines where the reactive thrust gets harnessed as rotary motion rather than reactive thrust) you quickly realize that the charge is not in the engine for very long, only tiny fractions of a second. It makes sense that the typical way of burning fuel in a continuous flame or 'deflagration' is not the best as there will seldom be enough time (or space/distance within the engine) for complete combustion. Therefore getting the fuel to detonate, and thus burn more completely, is a major breakthrough for that type of engine.

    For marine duty, where super low W/P ratio is not of great importance, the Stirling makes more sense. Diesels are already standard in marine use, so 'near diesel' efficiency is not a breakthrough for the marine industry. Typical Aerospace gas turbines are consuming something like .5lb/Hp Hr so to get diesel type efficiency (<.3 lb/Hp Hr)without giving up the low W/P ratio IS a breakthrough for aerospace.


    Jimbo
     
  7. kach22i
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    kach22i Architect

    I just spent about 15 minutes looking up the Tesla turbine, wow. I love that kind of stuff.

    One of the links:
    http://freeenergynews.com/Directory/Devices/TeslaTurbine/index.html
     
  8. SeaBirdShip
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    SeaBirdShip Junior Member

    Jimbo,

    Thanks again for your input, the Stirling engine in now on our list of research to do's thanks for the much need work :)

    I am still a little confused as to the workings and the ability to generate the type of HP that will be needed so we'll have to see.

    Any Ideas on the Pulse Detonation Turbine?

    SeaBird
     
  9. SeaBirdShip
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    SeaBirdShip Junior Member

    Kach22i,

    I love this stuff too.

    Please keep reading the website www.seabirdadventure.com as we are in the process of updating the design documents and research plans for this system.

    The first prototype will be around 150Hp driving a 70KW generator for the SeaBird shore power requirements. Should be fun!

    SeaBird
     
  10. SeaBirdShip
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    SeaBirdShip Junior Member

    More on the Engineering Work for Pulse Turbine

    :idea: Well the plans are being drawn up in CAD now for a Tesla turbine prototype.

    I am planning on using 10 platters of 18" each for the main turbine. This should yield 200hp at full speed and easily produce the wanted 100hp need to drive my shore power generator at 70KW with a little head room. However I may need to use a reduction gear or belt system for this as the turbine will want to run around 10Krpm and so far the fastest AC electric generator is in the 7k range.

    Now comes the tricky part.

    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.

    By building the 1st prototype based on a flash steam burner using a pyrocatalytic converter for the waste oil. The flash burner heat will be used for both steam creation and for waste oil heating thus creating a very clean burn with virtually no emissions.

    Also by using the flash burner system prior to pulse detonation the prototype should be up in running between 60-90 days from now. The pulse detonation will probably take longer by itself.

    Any Comments?

    Sea Bird
     
  11. kach22i
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    kach22i Architect

    I applogize in advance, but I have not had the time to get my mind around the Tesla concept. From what I read, it appears that the plates transfer their energy to a crankshaft which spins. The part I don't understand is the fluid or air going into the system, is it the velocity or pressure coming in that makes it work?

    What source of energy is used to accelerate and pressurize this fluild/air?

    Is it a Ram jet? That is to say once the system gets going it kind of feeds off it's self?

    From what I understand you are going to use the Tesla Turbine to turn a generator which in turn will power electric motors.

    What gets the whole cycle started, a diesel turbo waterjet or something?

    A diagram at this point would be really useful.:)
     
  12. SeaBirdShip
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    SeaBirdShip Junior Member

    Kach22i,

    Thank you for your questions...

    Here is a simple diagram we are working on posting a much better one on the website.

    Waste oils ---> Pyrocatalytic conversion ---> to pre-processed fuel to air mixture under 85psi ---> to injectors --> pulse detonation

    Pulse detonation exhaust is at supersonic speeds and intercepts the tesla turbine across the blade side of the platters and spins the trubine using surface adhesion which then exhusts out the cnter of the turbine.

    Hope this helps,

    Sea Bird.
     
  13. kach22i
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    kach22i Architect

    Well, at least I now understand you are passing air/gases though the platter plates and not steam or water. The rest of that stuff is over my head, I'm not an engineer. I could eventually begin to understand it if given enough time and graphic representations. Thanks for sharring, it sounds like a huge mouthful to bite off - good luck.
     
  14. SeaBirdShip
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    SeaBirdShip Junior Member

    Kach22i,

    Yes a bunch, however the bleeding edge is the pulse detonation everything else is well known so the plan for the 1st prototype will be to replace the pulse detonation part with a flash burner to create steam to drive the turbine instead of the detonation part for now.

    SeaBird
     

  15. SeaBirdShip
    Joined: Oct 2006
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    SeaBirdShip Junior Member

    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.
     
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