Green Steam Engine
 

Anyone here familiar with this?
Green Steam Engine Home Page

http://www.greensteamengine.com/Z8%20eng%201.gif

It's been done to death. A new twist on the famous steam engine. Speaking as an old tool maker. Its all been done before!!

Randen

But is this guys version worth the money spent on the plans?

iamgeo

Google the stirling engine. There is a lot of machining art work in those machines. But still we have to look at the process, energy in and out.

I had seen a while back a stirling engine (heat engine) that doubled as a furnace and provider of electricity for a small home in a compact little machine. It ran on natural gas as the heat source but very low temps. The machine was commercially avalible.

I would suspect the inertia of traditional furnaces and grid power forced this neat device into a commercial failure.

Randen

Apparently, there actually has been at least one patent granted for this design.

But that doesn't mean that the drawings that are being sold are useful, and would enable you to build this device in your own machine shop. You do have a machine shop, right?

If the drawings were useful and did enable you to successfully build this device in your machine shop, there is still no guarantee that it would work, or that its efficiency would be any higher than other steam engines.

As randen indicated, all machines have loss, and you will get less energy out of any machine, than you put in. All machines are that way. This machine will be no different.

But the EcoRenovator Forum may not be the best Forum to conduct a conversation about constructing this particular engine design, the interest here tends to be more down to earth. We tend to focus on practical ways of reducing energy use... thrifty light bulbs, better insulation, washing dishes by hand, turning down the thermostat, learning how to use low-density energy sources, taking advantage of the energy from the sun, converting discarded air conditioners into a high-efficiency heating devices, that sort of thing.

There are more appropriate forums, though. I would suggest THIS ONE, as they are interested in constructing working model steam engines.

Their interest is usually focused on building working models of historical designs, but they may be interested in this design.

Give them a try.

Good luck,

-AC