A buddy heats his house with a wood stove and was tinkering with the idea of a turbine powered generator/alternator to convert some of that heat going out of the chiminey into energy.

Any thoughts or ideas?

 

How would you get pressure?

 

I have been looking into something like this for awhile. Using a small creek you can hardly run a 12 volt alternator. So I don't think that a chimeny would work probably have a lot of smoke in the house. I know I am sick of paying to these power and gas corporations. Honda is coming out with a hydrogen generator to heat and power your house, oh and the car they will be coming up with in the next few years.Maybe this is the start of the end of the oil dynasty.

 

Dunno. Just throwing this out there to see if the idea is plausible

 

How about coils in the stove to make steam?
Not hot enough? Just a thought, I really know nothing about steam

 

How about a turbo powered woodstove???
well this fellow has already set it up and has plans to boot....
http://www.gas-turbines.com/nt6/index.html


Edit: if you get a chance check out his "jet" boat. There's just something about as turbine engine starting up....

 

You could probably make some power but you'd need to use a low temp working fluid like alcohol or freon. You'd need to capture it of course in a closed system so a big condenser would be necessary. Sort of like an AC in reverse with the gas pushing the turbine instead of the other way round.

You could also use a thermocouple stack to directly convert the waste heat to DC power and hook it to an inverter. Probably a lot simpler and thermocouple stacks can be easily homemade.

Edwin

 

So you can't just stick a low pressure turbine in the chiminy and hook it up to an alternator. I'm thinking it'd be simular to the wind farmers.

 

You'd be relying on the natural convection (hot air rises) to power the turbine which isn't much at all. You need to scavenge the waste heat and make power with that.

The turbos in our trucks work on the heat more than the pressure. They take the heat out of the exhaust which is why you'll see 200-400 degrees temp difference in pre-v-post turbo pyro probe placement.

If you could get the right sized turbo that would do that then you'd have something but I don't know what size that would be. It's better to use a lower temp working fluid which phase changes at a lower temp and will scavenge more of the heat that way.

Edwin

 

So what's a thermocouple stack??

 

How about coupling this to a Stirling engine?