That's a worthwhile project too, but can you build it without having any heat wasted to the atmosphere?

Rick

Yes, practically all of the derived heat comes from the energy "stored" in the wood, which is then transfered to the rotor and the steam vessel. I don't believe that you can get any more, or any less, heat extraction from the wood during the friction process than you could from a fast burn in a wood stove or conventional boiler. The difference between the two proccesses, of course, is that in Lloyd's friction method practically all of the derived heat is captured and usable. No device, that actually burns wood, can make that claim, since the greatest part of burned wood heat production is by necessity vented to the atmosphere, either through a smokestack or chimney device. Quite simply, the air intake necessary to maintain a burn must have a means of escape in order to create a continuous draft. If you close the draft control on a wood stove, the fire quickly goes out. Lloyd's device is designed to be fairly airtight, so that any existing draft is minimal. If you use hard green wood in this friction device, the wood will get very hot at the frictional surface. It will get hot enough to char, and it may even glow. It may attempt to ignite occasionally, and when that occurs there may be a small puff of smoke emitted, but without a continuous draft the wood can not ignite and remain burning.

I hope that helps to clarify any possible misconceptions.

Best regards, Rick

Hi there...

In the original video that started this whole thread.. Llyod states on camera.. " with these four pieces of wood, I've got enough to run this for a month"... If you were to burn 4 pieces of oak 4"x4"x24" in one of the best
wood heaters today.. how long would you expect it to last.. maybe just maybe 10 to 12 hours.. and that would be with the air flow cut so low that the wood would just smolder in the furnace.. In the "friction" design, even if the wood pieces last only half of the quoted time...(now its eight pieces for the month) then you're still way ahead of the game..
I for one, am tired of the price of natural gas.. and it's constantly rising price.. it's worse than gasoline.. because it never comes back down.. I have a 2200sq ft house and my bill for gas was over 300.00 last month. It has great insulation, 2x6 stud walls and double paine windows and I keep the thermostat at 68 degrees.. Last month wasn't any where near as cold as this month has been.. I'm probably looking at over 400.00 gas bill this month.
What I'm getting at is this, one could argue the efficency of Tanners boiler and the efficency of Tesla's steam turbine till we're blue in the face.!! Let's say you use Tanner's boiler only as a water heater (forget the steam for a minute), heating water to 150 to 180 degrees and using it (1)in a water to air heat exchanger for heating the house and (2) for domestic hot water, and you can do this with only eight pieces of wood for the whole month..!!
Would that not be a whole lot better than using natural gas..
Now lets add in the fact that Tanner's boiler can create steam using the same eight pieces of wood. Steam to power a generator to produce electricity. Tanners original boiler produced steam at 500 degrees and maintaned 50 to 80 psi.. good heat but not enough pressure. !! So he built a better one.. One that gets up to 700 degrees and maintanes 300 psi.. using 18 pieces of wood.. and lets assume that you would need 36 pieces of wood for an entire month. Which sounds high to me, but for this discussion we are doubling the wood used just for to be overly safe. Now we are producing electricity to power the house and the using the resulting hot water for heating and domestic use too.. Is this not a "Win- Win" situation.. and we're doing it all with a renewable energy source.... WOOD. At a far better price than natuarl gas or even burning the wood in a conventional heater..
So in closing... if the total efficency of the whole system is less than 50%, it's not really that big a problem.. Unless wood goes to 1000.00 a cord.
But even if it were that expensive... add up your gas and electric bills for the whole year and see what that comes to... What's it worth to tell NIPSCO (gas) and I&M (electric) to go jump in the lake...

Thanks for listening...
Paul

Hi all
I decided to give a Tesla turbine a try. I will make a small model turbine to see how it performs and if it truly has a potential. So far I have only the turbine blades cut out in the exact shape as in the patent drawings:



The blades are about the size of a CD. Now I need to make a housing for the blades. I was thinking about something like this:




The housing will be cut out from some sheets of acrylic and glued together. I have yet to draw everythin else in 3d.
Thanks,
Jetijs

Jetijs...
Nice work on the blades or "runners" as Tesla called them.. Is your turbine to be a motor or a pump..?

So far it will be a pump, will see how it performs.

I am also looking on the second Tesla turbie patent. I mean this one:




In the first picture everything is more or less clear to me, but have a look at the second picture. I can't figure out what the purpose of the cicrular grooves (26) and labyrinth packing (27) is. In patent nothing is said about their purpose, just that these things are there. I suppose one of the purposes is to prohibit the air/steam/fluids to go straight from the end blades to the exit without going in circular motion in between blades. Could someone clarify this for me?
Thanks.

You bring up some good points and it makes you wonder "why does green wood work better than dry if it must boil off the water"

My understanding is that a 3HP steam engine puts off 100K BTU of exhaust heat. Which means you may have a point about 125K BTU being barely enough to power a 3HP steam engine particularly if the 125K BTU must be used for the heat of vaporization.

So perhaps I am getting my numbers confused by mixing specs from an early machine with results from a newer machine. Are you saying that the 125K BTU machine required a 3-4HP engine? If this information is correct then this heater is worthless for producing electrical power from wood without a 40%+ eff tesla turbine and even then the surplus energy would be small compared to the effort required to get it.

So perhaps we can lay out the input/output specs for each version of Lloyds heaters.

If there is not enough heat to produce a self-runner then this device is little more than an efficient air/water heater.

I need 150 psi to power a 3 HP steam engine.

Jetijs...
In the second drawing from the patent.. I see nothing about the horizontal shaft that would keep it from moving in and out.. Maybe the grooves and the packing are just the way he stablize the blade assembly within the housing.. the friction area between the blades and the case is at a minimum because the grooves come to almost a point. Just a thought..

Paul

Hi Jetijs,

Maybe these will help dring the process of construction:

Jeffery Hayes - Tesla Engine, a new dimension for power.pdf

W.M.J. Cairns - The Tesla Disc Turbine.pdf

Thanks amigo
I got it now. The labyrinth seal does exactly what I thought it will do, it seals the the space between the outer blades and turbine casing so that no air/steam/fluid can go directly from the input to the output without traveling in between the blades in circular motion. Here is an example of such seal:


But I still don't get what those circular grooves are for

Hi Jetijs,

Thanks for the excellent photos and diagrams. Your Tesla pump should be able to move a lot of water very quickly.

You are quite right about the purpose of the labyrinth seals in the old Tesla turbine patent. The only thing which seems to make sense to me about the circular grooves is that they may act as either an air or water cushion which helps to add stability to the end discs and also make the seals more effective by doing that.

You say your discs are approximately CD diameter, so I'm guessing they are roughly about 4.7 inches, or 118 mm - somewhere in that range. What is the material and thickness of the discs?

You may also find Tesla's latest improvement to his turbine design to be of interest, as it appears to offer greatly enhanced stability. Here is a diagram view from that British patent:


You can see that the discs at each end of the disc assembly are considerably thicker than the inner ones, and that they taper progressively thinner - to about double the thickness of the inner discs - at their outer edge. Regarding this change in design, Tesla wrote:
You can read more about this improved design by going here:
Nikola Tesla: Disk Turbine/Pump, part 2

It would be great if you can incorporate these improvements.

Thanks again, and keep up the good work.

Best regards to you,

Rick

L.O.L
The 4 hp I quoted Rick on should have been 9 hp!(post #183) And I completely agree with that based on my lathe using a .75 hp motor and barely keeping up!


That's a worthwhile project too, but can you build it without having any heat wasted to the atmosphere?

No. But at least the concepts and ideas do work and it works better than most wood stoves!

In the original video that started this whole thread.. Llyod states on camera.. " with these four pieces of wood, I've got enough to run this for a month"... If you were to burn 4 pieces of oak 4"x4"x24" in one of the best
wood heaters today.. how long would you expect it to last.. maybe just maybe 10 to 12 hours.. and that would be with the air flow cut so low that the wood would just smolder in the furnace.. In the "friction" design, even if the wood pieces last only half of the quoted time...(now its eight pieces for the month) then you're still way ahead of the game.

He also said that a pair of blocks lasted about 3 days. That equals 20 for the month on the original. The new design has twice the surface speed so twice the blocks!? Thats 9 pair x 40=360 blocks. A cord of wood with air space is 4x4x8=126 cu ft. The blocks without spaces stack 12x3.3x2=79 cu ft. 79/126=62% of a cord and if you figure in the air space its closer to 75%. I figure a decent wood boiler in the 120,000btu range for my house would use close to a cord a month. And that much resawed oak would not be as cheap as you think unless DIY.


What I'm getting at is this, one could argue the efficency of Tanners boiler and the efficency of Tesla's steam turbine till we're blue in the face.!! Let's say you use Tanner's boiler only as a water heater (forget the steam for a minute), heating water to 150 to 180 degrees and using it (1)in a water to air heat exchanger for heating the house and (2) for domestic hot water, and you can do this with only eight pieces of wood for the whole month..!!

Now we are talking my language. I've been advocating a hot water system the whole time I've been here. (post #167) Lets reduce the size of the heater to 5 pairs of blocks and get 65,000 btu and mount the roller assembly under a 100 gal(800 lbs) water tank. That could heat the tank from 140F to 180F about twice an hour running 24 hrs/day with a 5 hp motor. At $.063/KWH it would cost us $5.67/day or $170 a month plus costs of wood and cut about $40 from electric water heater! Compare that to my expected $2000 fuel oil bill even with the price decline so far! Now we have something and it would be much cheaper to set up using off the shelf controls, pumps, aquastats, etc.


Now lets add in the fact that Tanner's boiler can create steam using the same eight pieces of wood. Steam to power a generator to produce electricity. Tanners original boiler produced steam at 500 degrees and maintaned 50 to 80 psi.. good heat but not enough pressure. !! So he built a better one.. One that gets up to 700 degrees and maintanes 300 psi.. using 18 pieces of wood.. and lets assume that you would need 36 pieces of wood for an entire month. Which sounds high to me, but for this discussion we are doubling the wood used just for to be overly safe. Now we are producing electricity to power the house and the using the resulting hot water for heating and domestic use too.. Is this not a "Win- Win" situation.. and we're doing it all with a renewable energy source.... WOOD. At a far better price than natuarl gas or even burning the wood in a conventional heater..

Again, why pay for upwards 9 hp worth of electric and get MAYBE 3 hp worth of steam to generate 1/3 the electric!

Jetijs:
Looks good. And you didn't make the common mistake of making the intake/exhaust ports on the disks too small. Will be interesting!

You bring up some good points and it makes you wonder "why does green wood work better than dry if it must boil off the water"

I think the moisture keeps the fibers soft enough so that the friction can actually produce heat. When I used dry oak, the rubbed surface would carbon up a lot and the heat output would decline with it. As someone previously mentioned, carbon is extremly hard i.e. brushes on an electric motor. Friction creates heat better when one surface is softer than another. The green oak is just some cheap, disposable brushes. We could build a friction heater using disposed tires!

Its not letting me edit the post above so.....

EDIT: I forgot that the new design use a roller twice as big! So will a 5 hp pull a 5 pair heater? If we used 10 hp, the electric bill would be $338! Now my fuel oil is not looking as bad.

Rick,
thank you for the improved patent. I did not know about such patent
My blades are 1mm thick. Do you perhaps now where I could get a suitable labyrinth seal? I searched all around the web, but could not find anything good.
As always, your posts are worth a million
Thank you!

Jetijs...

The turbine may require the seal, but if I'm correct, I don't think the pump
will require it. The air or fluid enters from the center and is directed to circumferance of the housing.. so all sides of the discs act on the fluid.

You could make a seal by cutting a groove in the housing just above the center inlet, wide enough to install a flat circular piece of felt, coated with lithium grease. It should be thick enough to touch the blade, but not allow to much pressure on the blade. Just an Idea.
I was thinking of an O-ring, but that might be to much resistance against the blade.

Paul

Jetijs...
Sorry for any confussion... I mean a circular groove with a larger dia than the center opening..
Paul

something like this..

Attached Images

seals.jpg (42.0 KB, 45 views)

Paul, I have thought about this and this is exactly what I also came up with. Rubber O rings would act as a brake even if oiled. Felt rings is the way to go. Of course industrial labyrinth seals would be better, but for a small experimental model this will do just great. Thank you for idea and the picture
Jetijs

Well if the latest calculations are accurate then this device is little more than a home heater/water heater. Even if we can improve the efficiency of the steam generation by 2x using oils instead of air to conduct heat into the water then this device will still not produce enough surplus energy to power a steam engine to run itself.

My goal is to be able to generate electricity without using gasoline, oil, propane, or natural gas. Solar and wind would cost $100K+ to setup enough to generate 30 KWH per day.

A 3HP motor with a traditional boiler will require about 20lbs of wood/hr or 500 lbs per day or about 3 cords per month. At $100-$125/cord this kind of power costs $300-$400/month at todays wood prices (or free if you have 80 acres of wood in your back yard and a strong back), or about 3-4x the cost of todays grid power. It would take 30 years at $300 to $400 per month to make solar a better alternative than wood + boiler + steam engine. Even longer if you factor in that the surplus heat can be used to give you hot water and heat your home (6 months per year). The months spent heating your home are essentially free electricity if you consider my normal heating bill is $300 per month.

Has anyone considered using a different boiler design than the "drip system" to see if we can get more steam out of this device? How much heat is radiating into the air instead of into water?

Labyrinth seals are typically used to allow ventilation while preventing oil/water vapor and/or sloshed-around (like oiling systems that use a slinger disk) fluids from migrating out of whatever device they're used in. To my knowledge, they are not meant for pressurized systems without additional seals. By themselves, they do leak if used in pressurized systems.

The drip system is brilliant because there is no water in the steam chamber to flash to steam.(safer)

If the original used 1 hp for 2 blocks, then the new design with a roller twice as large with 18 blocks would need 18 hp to run!!! This is why I had been pushing for a hot water system but have pretty much shelved that idea also. The 5 hp/5 pair design I talked about above would only put out about 32,500 btu. with a 5' roller. But it would give a 40F rise in a 100 gal per hour. Its a start but still borderline depending on the heat loss of your house. And just like the very expensive "green" cars they have been selling, the return on your money would be years and probably longer than the life of the equipment. Hence the term "boat anchor". Which is why I'll concentrate on a wood boiler. I can burn scraps, large chunks, pallets, straw bales, yard waste, chips, corn, used oil, fuel oil, and coal. It will completely gasify those things and burn clean. Maybe I should start a new thread!

PS: We are still waiting for the actual hp info on Lloyd's new design. He's turning it with something, what is he using?

You are quite right, everwiser but pressure will not be a problem in a Tesla turbine or pump. In either case, pressure remains low at the central portion of the discs. For example, a Tesla pump would be used to pump unpressurized water (or any other fluid, or air) from a reservoir by drawing the fluid in at the center of the discs. The high pressure of the outflow in a Tesla pump is caused by the centrifugal force of the rotating discs, which continually flings the liquid outward at high speed. In a Tesla prime mover turbine, pressurized air, gas, steam, or liquid is fed in at the outer periphery of the discs, and the pressure drops as it nears the center of the discs where it is then exhausted. You may remember that the 200 hp Tesla turbine used a feed of 125 psi saturated steam, and that the exhaust fell to 2 or 3 psi.

What in the world are you talking about? Lloyd Tanner gave us his test results in post #181, and I crunched the numbers in post #184 to prove that a 10 hp Green Steam Engine could in fact be operated continuously with 600 degree superheated steam at a pressure of 50 psi, and with a reserve capacity of 38.81 liters per minute. You really need to go back and read the facts, instead of posting disinformation based upon what may seem logical to you. Furthermore, the Green Steam Machine was used only as an example, because I knew the displacement and operating characteristics, and could therefore compute the volume of steam required to operate it at 1800 rpm. And still further, your assumption that Lloyd's original rotor design could not possibly produce enough steam pressure to operate a steam engine is fatally flawed. Lloyd tested his original design at 565F degrees with an operating pressure of more than 200 psi.

Also, all this talk of using 20 lbs of wood per hour to run a boiler has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this thread, other than to show how superbly effective Lloyd's device is when compared to a wood fired boiler. Why would anyone in their right mind opt to use 20 lbs of wood per hour when the same amount, when used in Lloyd's device, could last 36 times longer? And suggesting that we should look for a better way to create steam than with Lloyd's drip system is pure nonsense. Even nonubbins can appreciate the brilliance of Lloyd's drip system, although many of his other conclusions are incorrect. Regarding some of those incorrect conclusions:

Total rubbish. It may seem logical to you that if 1 hp was needed for the 5" rotor design with 2 blocks, that 9 hp might be needed for a 5" roller using 18 blocks, and 18 hp if the roller diameter is increased to 10". This is not necessarily the case, however. Lloyd chose to use a 1 hp motor to drive the 5" friction rotor because it did the job quite nicely with no overheating. The actual power required to turn the shaft is probably half that amount, and is the power factor we should be more concerned with when considering how much steam engine power might be required to turn the friction roller. Also, what makes you think that a roller of twice the diameter will require twice the power to rotate it? Are you figuring that it will be twice as heavy as a 5" diameter roller? It certainly doesn't need to be. It should be remembered that the 5" diameter material that Lloyd used for his original rotor, and first roller design, was very heavy and quite thick walled, having a center bore of just 1.625 inches. Lloyd used this because it was some material that he scavenged inexpensively at a local scrapyard. The 10" x 36" roller now being used does not need to weigh more than the same length of the nearly solid material used previously, so there is absolutely no reason to assume that it will require twice the horsepower to rotate it. One thing that you did correctly mention is that the surface speed of the 10" diameter roller will be effectively doubled from that of a 5" roller, and this is important to remember, because it means that without the need of increasing drive horsepower, we could cut the drive engine speed in half (900 rpm) and obtain the same frictional heat that was available with a 5" roller at 1800 rpm. And by cutting the drive speed in half, we cut steam consumption in half, which makes a self-runner all the more possible.

Your remark that the discussion concerning the use of a Tesla turbine with Lloyd's device was seemingly brought in "to save the day" has no merit and was offensive to me, as I am sure it was to others here. As I noted above, in response to "littleoldlady," we already proved that operating a 10 hp Green Steam Engine was theoretically quite possible. But the Green Steam Engine was never suggested as being the ultimate steam powered prime mover for Lloyd's device. It is only natural that we should discuss other options, such as the Tesla Turbine, that may work out even better. I believe that the Tesla Turbine will in fact provide results that are far superior to the Green Steam Engine. I will demonstrate the mathematics of a direct comparison in my next post.

I really didn't appreciate your assertion that Lloyd's friction device should be relegated to use as a boat anchor. You are overstepping the boundaries of both common sense and decency in making such statements, and are therefore skating on very thin ice here. I, and a great many others here, are very grateful that Lloyd Tanner has been willing to freely share his knowledge and experience with us, and will not tolerate attempts to sabotage this thread by those who would slander the inventor or the invention, and offer little but disinformation to confuse readers. Keep in mind that the purpose of this thread is to provide good information to persons interested in replicating and utilizing Lloyd's device. Any posts not conforming to those factors is neither appreciated nor welcomed here. You obviously have no interest in pursuing a replication of this device, so it makes no sense that you keep coming back unless your intention is to be disruptive, and I do suspect that this is your motivation. I would highly recommend to you that you either delete your offending posts, or at least edit out the offensive and disinformative parts from them. If you disregard what I am saying, or reply in such a way that further offends me, or any other of this thread's participants, I will not hesitate to demand that Energetic Forum admin bar you from any further participation. I suggest that you move on to subjects and threads that you genuinely are interested in, if in fact there really are any. And by the way - you don't need to start a wood gassification thread, as you have suggested that you might do. There are already two threads here devoted to that subject, and they can be found here:
Wood Gasification
Coast to coast in a woodgas truck.


To anyone considering participation and posting in this thread: Please keep in mind the purpose and subject matter of this thread, and keep your posts on track, courteous, and respectful. We will do our best to keep you well informed, and to answer all genuine inquiries.

Thank you,

Rick

Rick....
Way to go... I like your style... I doubt whether I could have been so tolerant... Believe me.. you are not the only one who saw a hidden agenda in their posts... Maybe now we can get on with the work at hand..!!!!

Paul...

Hi guys,
I found this video very interesting. Its about a friction welder. Amazing how much heat friction can make
YouTube - Handmade Friction Welder

No problem Rick. My main point was that a labyrinth won't stop pressurized systems from leaking.

Being that efficiency is the name of the game, any loss of heat, pressure, or fluid is a loss that will have a negative impact on the overall efficiency rating. Of course, depending on the application it may be negligible or maybe it will be less than the drag of a lip seal on a shaft but, either way, it needs to be taken into consideration.

I decided better to make the motor version of the turbine rather than pump.
The turbine casing is ready and I got the felt. Now I only need to machine the shaft and two bearing holders and we are done




Thanks,
Jetijs

Jetijs....
Nice.. very nice... should give you some very good result... let us know..

Paul

Hi everyone ...
A question... Measuring RPM'S loaded and unloaded, intake and exhaust pressures is fairly easy.. but how would one go about establishing a HP rating for Tesla's motor.. As a somewhat educated guess, I chose to use a 12" turbine to use with my self-runner design. I chose that size based on the 200hp working model. But truthfully, I don't know.. I really think Tanner's Boiler
will supply more than enough heat and pressure to make it turn, even shortened to the 18" roller that I planned. I was thinking pressure some where around 80-100 psi ( can be regulated to increase or decrease the rpms) If I were to use an electric motor to turn the 8" by 18" roller, I'm pretty sure 2hp would work. The self runner idea also turns a 48vdc, 6Hp motor/gennerator.. to utilies the whole potential of Tanner's Design.. My question is this.. am I over powered or under powered?? Any thoughts, suggestion?? any Calculation?? Or is this gonna be a build it and see.. project... which in itself will be interesting and fun..

Thanks...
Paul