And I'm talking a new way here, not the old stuff. Got this from another board I frequent. General Motors has come up with a way to produce electrical power from the vehicle's exhaust. The idea is to replace the alternator with a heat generator mounted on the vehicle's exhaust. We'll need more details, but if they are successful then this will be something we can use to generate house power. I know this isn't a new technology, what is new here is the ability to generate a considerable amount of power from a fairly small device, like 1000 watts instead of 20 watts.
A typical mid-sized sedan has anywhere from a 100 to a 140 amp alternator, meaning they will have to cough up 1000 to 1700 watts from one of these devices. These devices must also be small enough to be mounted to a vehicle. So, if we were to take 10 of these and wire them correctly, we should be able to see as much as 140 amps at 120V. As most houses today have 100 amp service, or 200 amp if they are heated with electricity, this means that a bunch of these heat based electrical generators could power a house. The only problem is, how to get the heat into the device. It's designed to be wrapped around an exhaust pipe, and draw the heat from exhaust. I'm thinking that the same effect could be had by setting up a wood stove to heat a heat transfer oil, which would then be pumped through a pipe that has these devices strapped to it. You'd likely need to daisy chain the pipes together so as to have the oil run through a short section, then go back into the stove to pick up more heat, then on to the next set. Size everything right, and you could likely power the whole house from a single log.
So, if you had ten of these devices, how would you go about getting them heated up to the same temps as a typical automotive exhaust? You'd need as much as 500 degrees inside the pipe.
A typical mid-sized sedan has anywhere from a 100 to a 140 amp alternator, meaning they will have to cough up 1000 to 1700 watts from one of these devices. These devices must also be small enough to be mounted to a vehicle. So, if we were to take 10 of these and wire them correctly, we should be able to see as much as 140 amps at 120V. As most houses today have 100 amp service, or 200 amp if they are heated with electricity, this means that a bunch of these heat based electrical generators could power a house. The only problem is, how to get the heat into the device. It's designed to be wrapped around an exhaust pipe, and draw the heat from exhaust. I'm thinking that the same effect could be had by setting up a wood stove to heat a heat transfer oil, which would then be pumped through a pipe that has these devices strapped to it. You'd likely need to daisy chain the pipes together so as to have the oil run through a short section, then go back into the stove to pick up more heat, then on to the next set. Size everything right, and you could likely power the whole house from a single log.
So, if you had ten of these devices, how would you go about getting them heated up to the same temps as a typical automotive exhaust? You'd need as much as 500 degrees inside the pipe.
