Generator Run Electric Hot Water Heater?

[peakbagger]

It would be interesting to rig up a hot water heat exchanger on the generator exhaust and use that to heat the hot water. A big portion of the fuel BTU content to generator is exhausted as heat. I work on combined heat and power systems for industry and institutions and we can recover about 50% of the heat input of the engine. We have two of these sitting in warehouse right now waiting to be installed https://powergen.gepower.com/conten... 6/jenbacher-type-6-fs-en-non-metric-2016.pdf which will produce chilled water with a hot water absorption chiller and plenty of hot water. Unfortunately these systems don't scale well but I have seen folks home build heat exchangers or use a water cooled exhaust from the small boat industry.

 

[blades]

Number of years ago ( 70's) , designed exhust + eng coolant using exchangers to heat carpet cleaning solution set up as a package unit with a small diesel eng. - refined further dropped out small eng hooked up to transport power plant. Had to set up a thermal bypass to stay under 212 deg F, both of these designs are still in use- likely with some changes , Oh and the pumps for solution injection/extraction were also driven by same power plants.

 

[Retired Guy]

Number of years ago ( 70's) , designed exhust + eng coolant using exchangers to heat carpet cleaning solution set up as a package unit with a small diesel eng. - refined further dropped out small eng hooked up to transport power plant. Had to set up a thermal bypass to stay under 212 deg F, both of these designs are still in use- likely with some changes , Oh and the pumps for solution injection/extraction were also driven by same power plants.

I remember about the same time Fiat was looking into residential co-generation systems (heat and electricity) from their engines installed in homes.