Wood Burning Whale Fin Drive Houseboat

It seems my fan boat even with Aluminum/Sulfur batteries was not well received.
“Wind Powered Houseboat”
So how about this one.
The top drawing is a layout of the drive system.
A low output pressure boiler (wood/coal/chip oil/spent nuclear fuel rods powered) supplies steam pressure to valve 1.
The condenser supplies cooled water to valve 3.
In operation valve 1 opens at the top of the piston/piston array/diaphragm stroke driving the rod down.
Near the bottom of the stroke valve 1 closes and valve 2 momentarily opens and sprays a fine mist of cooled water into the piston/piston array/diaphragm.
The steam condenses and draws piston/piston array/diaphragm up due to vacuum pressure.
Near the top of the stroke valve 2 momentarily opens and discharges heated water back to the boiler and condenser etc.

This slow cycle power supply is connected to a whale tail drive as seen in the lower drawing.

?

Colin
http://www.ww.xbug.ca

 

PW, don't stop thinking just because there are doubters here. You may recall that people thought that Tom Edison was "daft" and Galileo was heretical.

 

I vaguely recall some theory that prop/engine noise in water was

killing some wild life.

Maybe use it sensitive areas.

 

There's a reason why boats generally use propellors and it's not because alternatives haven't been explored. I used to have 2 work boats with jet drives because they were better for the intended use, for example.

There's also a reason why IC engines dominate mechanical drive systems (as opposed to sail, for example). Best efficiency with state of the art engineering.

Just precisely what problems are you trying to solve, or is it that you just want to do something different regardless of the practicality? Because if this is the case, go & build whatever you want without looking for affirmation from others.

PDW

 

At least a two page hijack argument in this one You should add 'as long as you have fuel'. IC engines are like 20% efficient, I'm sure sails are better (if there's wind). Engines are a lot more comfortable steering (and noisy) though

 

Ok. I should have qualified the comment with 'for distances greater than 20 nm and less than 50,000 nm'.

Short distances, as long as your extension cable reaches, electric drive is fine.

Really long distances and very large displacement, nuclear power plants.

Other than those quibbles I stand by my statement. If there was a better known way of propelling a boat, we'd be doing it.

I'm building a sailing boat but I'm also fitting a diesel engine.

PDW

 

I use these forums as relaxation as my hobby is to think of new things that haven't been tried before.
As far as this latest post (and please correct me if I'm wrong because most ideas have a history). This is a double stroke motor using 14 p.s.i. of steam and 14 p.s.i. of vacuum. Is it a bad idea? I think of it as a sterling engine / steam engine hybrid?
It does not eject live steam back into the condenser it uses the 2nd stroke to draw the piston/pistons/diaphragm up with equal force and uses a third valve to discharge the resulting hot water at the top of the stroke.
The cooling water is all around you for the 2nd part of this cycle.
And gears are not required.

If you asked a whale
if it would trade it's tail
for a propeller (not to mention all the other parts involved) it would probably say no.

Colin
http://www.ww.xbug.ca

 

Motor sailors are best. Two half efficient propulsion systems must be 100%

The problem with those electric powered motors is to find the exact same route back beween all the boats you weaved through..

Sorry I know this os off topic, but check this out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TSrlMoyUGw&feature=player_embedded

I feel a bit intimidated...

 

LOL, but if it does it would be fast !

You have to keep in mind that all over the world there are people always on the outlook for something, anything that would give them an edge over someone else.

 

Look up this guy for reasoning on Paddle Wheels, Steam, and most of all..Props!

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

 

Have you built one? What torque did you get out of it for what energy input?

If you haven't built one, has anyone else?

If nobody ever has built one, do you have a machine shop and the ability to use it? If so, please build a prototype and show it to us.

Otherwise it's akin to discussing the use of dilithium crystals to drive my sailboat..... I'm on another machinists' forum and the number of inventors with ideas for a new power plant seems endless. Unlike their personal abilities to either make such a device or fund it....

Cute. However, as a marine biologist in a former life, I can tell you with total certainty that a flat horizontal paddle waving up & down bears as much resemblance to a whale's tail as I do to a billionaire. The differences far outweigh the similarities.

As I said, if you just want to build something weird & wacky for the sake of it, more power to you. If you want to build something that uses the minimal amount of energy to move something floating from A to B, that is another thing altogether.

PDW

 

I want anti-matter universe folding engine to power my boat. You imagine, I can get to my destination a day before I left to make arrangements for dockage. What the heck I could just hover above it all.

 

Forget the 14PSI vacuum. You and everybody else has very little ability to quickly create that level of vacuum. Just go ahead and look at the steam drive for an old locomotive.
I'll ignore the joke about spent fuel rods.

It would be interesting to see your efficiency for the whale tail, either vertical or horizontal orientation. Once you get the motion down that works, who actually cares what the propulsive power is. Scuba fins work well but I have no idea if there is a better way - limited human power- and I have never seen an efficiency factor.

Thought experiments are interesting, but I would rather see something work. There was a kayak or canoe in the pedal power thread that used a vertical axis whale tail - worked.

 

You should collaborate with planing wheel on development of a 105% efficient propulsion system. Should sell well and the extra 5% can be used to cool marguritas.

 

That's funny, no matter who you are.

We look at motives, please. There are dreamers and thinkers that do so equipped with the resources to do little else. Ideas are cheap. Cutting, bending and welding steel require the dream and the where-with-all.

At the end of the day we (those that do) acomplish tasks that are, at the very least, possible.

How many brilliant engineers design things that can not be built? They would be better served by the educational institutions if required to intern in welding, machining, and fabrication shots.

I see geeks on this site and others that have a motive to impress (perhaps themselves). In the real world of boat building, others may provide better interaction where the motive is to solve problems and develope things that float.

This is true with machine gun, aircraft building and other forums.

Maybe they should find a dream forum.

But what you wrote was high quality humor with an edgy truth. Well done!

Ryland