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Forum Index : Other Stuff : Capricorn Power and Barton Heat Engines
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| rogerdw Guru  Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 794 |
I dunno if anyone else has come across Capricorn Power in Melbourne. It's a startup that claims to be able to use a 'Barton' heat engine to turn waste heat into electricity. The Barton engine is based on an Ericsson Cycle engine .... ... It can supposedly generate up to three times the energy of any other type of heat engine using the same source. It got my attention when I saw the part ... about using waste heat to generate electricity. I wondered if I could put my evac tube solar air heater to work during summer ... but turns out they need about 400 degrees to run this thing. One of the claims is that they can power about 100 households from their device built into a shipping container ... using only waste heat as the source ... and can produce power for down to < 5 cents/kWhr. They take up only 1% of the area needed for PV power, for the same output ... and they are, to industrial businesses and councils, what PV solar power is to residential homes. Waste heat can be utilised from green waste, industrial processes, flares from landfill or wastewater treatment, furnace waste heat ... even solar thermal heat. At present they are building a plant in a factory at North Geelong to use green waste from the council ... turn it into biochar using pyrolysis ... whatever that is ... and use the heat from that process to generate electricity for the factory. Check out some of their videos ... ... And this one gives some history of the Barton engine ... and how he started off using converted Commodore engines to experiment with ... more videos Cheers, Roger |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
If anyone has a whole bunch of 450 Celsius waste heat, what would be wrong with a closed system steam piston engine ? That would scale up or down very easily. The steam could be condensed within an internal heat exchanger, so there would be zero emissions of highly toxic water vapor. And zero consumption of expensive water. That should really please the greenies. Highly efficient multi expansion marine steam piston engines fitted with condensers have been around for well over a century. The only real problem with that is stoking the boiler with coal. If you go to an oil fired boiler, might as well fit a diesel engine, which was the way things eventually went. Zero delays in initially raising steam or, changing power levels with diesel. Nothing wrong with the steam engine itself, all the limitations were caused by the boiler. It was only boiler limitations that eventually killed mass use of steam engines off. Even nuclear submarines and power plants use closed cycle steam turbine engines. If you have continuous 450 Celsius bulk waste heat available, that solves the boiler problem. Cheers, Tony. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1577 |
Forgive me if I am cynical, but having an interest in this stuff since a Kid Reading Popular Mechanics in the Library, I have seen more of these " Change the world, break though" engines than I can poke a stick at and I don't remember ANY of them ever making it into production. There have been a million " Size and weight of a sewing machine, 1000Hp, 150 Mpg " engines over the years and not one of them has gone anywhere. I remember the Sarich engine that was so Hyped and went on for years and that didn't amount to anything although I think he sold/ leased the fuel Injection Idea to OMC for a while but that was short lived in production too if I remember correct. Was pretty much an old air blast Diesel design where the fuel was injected and atomised with Compressed air to get better mixing. The idea of using Municipal waste to fire Boilers in far from new. It's very Popular in a lot of European Countries that don't have any space for landfill so they Burn or Cook it and use the low grade waste heat for building heating and the Primary heat for Driving a Turbine to generate power of the Pyro gas for running an engine where they can get the heat and power. There are also Landfill gas plants here in oz, I saw the one at Lucas heights many years ago and was amazingly simple and straightforward. They covered an Old Tip where I used to hoon around on Dirt bikes as a Kid with a Plastic/ Rubber sheet. Had ports every so far which tapped off the Methane leaching out from the ground from the decomposing waste. That went to some big industrial engines that Burnt it to make power. No co gen I remember there. When the Tip was closed there was bugger all around it apart from the ANSTO Nuke facility ( Affectionately called the Bomb Factory) across the road but now it's very built out up to a KM or so from both facilities and then its nothing but Bush for many miles. I looked at several vids on this idea and they were very lean on details although not so much on Hype. Far as I can tell and VERY little was mentioned about it, the barton engine is a glorified Double acting Stirling engine of which there are a couple of variations already. They show some Re purposed V8 Car engines in their Vids, Could be LS Chevs, but not sure how they come into play and if they are burning anything or running somehow on the waste heat. They seem to be turning pretty slow. Similar to Tony I thought the temp of waste heat was well above Low Grade although I think a lot of Turbines run up around 600oC, The phase change from water to steam or water vapour would hold a lot of energy in itself. Might even be possible To draw the hot air in a conventional engine and use a fuel Injector to push water into the engine and use the thermal expansion of the water to provide the energy. As Tony Says, Triple expansion engines have been round over 100 years and I'm sure could be made more efficient with modern Tech if the desire was there. The thing with these setups is also that unless one is an engineer in this field, there are a Myriad of considerations the average person is clueless about. It could very well that the cost of a setup like this would make other conventional systems more economical and a better ROI over all. I am also left wondering, how many industrial processes have 400o waste Heat and how practical is it to capture that heat and transport it or locate these engines to be able to use this heat? Also, The question arises if you have this amount of waste heat, what is your total power consumption over all, what are you paying for it per Khw and is -say, 3-500KW worth worrying about and will it generate a return worth the investment, planning and maintence costs the first place? They don't seem to give any application that I saw in the vids of where this would be practical and useful. I also get wary when people make claims like " Power 100 Homes" instead of give a straight out Number. Last time I saw that they were working on every home needing 1200W. Total farce! Sounds like a way to sound more impressive to the electrically clueless ( investors) than just saying 300 or 500KW.... Which getting out of a shipping container size package is pretty weak in reality. Plenty of packaged Gennys you can hire built into containers that will leave that for dead. A lot of these ideas are really designed to just make money though investors and Gubbermint grants and I get the distinct feeling this one is no different. If a group can set up an R&D company and work on something for 5-10 years and pay themselves well, get some PR , further their resumes etc and have fun going to shindigs to drum up investor $$, then all good and well and the product working or being practical and Viable is a very secondary Consideration. I take all these Ideas with a Big bag of salt after seeing so much PR but never the things going into use, widespread or otherwise. When I can see them installed around the place, then I'll be convinced of their value and Tech but until such time, Just another just another concept that " COULD " do something but probably won't other than fill pages in special interest magazines and websites and drum up investor $$. If it does get sold and is put into use, Terrific but I'll reserve my excitement until such time I see that happen. |
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| Solar Mike Guru Joined: 08/02/2015 Location: New ZealandPosts: 1123 |
I'm with Davo on this one, its all an attempt to gain investors. Here's the latest useless idea I saw recently here in NZ Wireless Power Transmission , that's an over-hyped scheme to suck up investors cash. God help anything that flies through the energy beams; this must be one of the most inefficient methods possible to transport power from A to B. Our local tip has a maze of buried pipes sucking out methane gas, but I'm unable to find out any details on what they do with it.. Mike |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
I have been on both sides of that particular fence myself, and have been appalled at some of the things I have seen happen. Once worked as a Technical Officer at the Victorian Solar Energy Council that regularly doled out huge state government grants for experimental solar/wind projects that looked to me, to be pretty Micky Mouse, and eventually turned into expensive embarrassing white elephants. Some of it was actually funny. I could tell you how I flooded the offices of a suburban swimming pool when a flow meter I fitted to a ten inch pipe had one of the plastic pipe flanges separate from the pipe after I solvent glued it. There was furniture floating around in the offices, hysterical women running around up to their knees in water, it was hilarious. Fortunately the pool manager was a good bloke and took it all in his stride. Also went to a job interview once and was shown around their ongoing R&D project of which I was expected to be responsible. I could see from the start the whole thing was a total scam to just suck on the teat of continuing government grants while spending nothing and achieving nothing, except for writing glowing progress reports. Looking at the files and previous reports, I would have been just one more in a whole succession of people that had previously resigned. I asked a few rather pointed questions, and did not get that job... It would be a great life for someone that had absolutely no integrity or morality, or any kind of creativity. Cheers, Tony. |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 794 |
Haha, tough crowd. Lots of good points though and I have to admit it did bring to mind all the other inventions that were going to set the world on fire ... yet fizzled out and disappeared. Especially all the stuff I've seen over the years in Popular Mechanics as you mentioned Dave. I spent many of my lunch hours at school poring over them and dreaming of what was 'supposed' to be coming. In fact, I went to a school fair or similar after I had left school and they were getting rid of all those magazines ... so I bought them all. Must drag them out on a rainy day to reminisce and see if anything much did actually come to fruition. And still waiting for a flying car! Maybe I'll leave a heap of them lying around ... and if the batteries on our young fella's ipad were to go flat ... maybe he might have a chance to get hooked like I was. One thing that did ring alarm bells was the physical address. On their website the address is shown, so I had a look on google street view ... and the property looks like some run down or even closed down dumpy shop in the back blocks of nowhere. And the signage is for another business entirely ... though still energy related. Certainly not enough room for all the people shown in their marketing material to congregate and work from. Having said all this, I'm the eternal optomist ... and if what they claim about their Barton engine being three times more efficient than other heat engines ... well then they may be in with a chance. And besides, we will know fairly soon because if the plant they are building in Geelong works as well as they claim it's supposed to ... it will be there for all to see ... and if it doesn't ... things will go very quiet until the next round of fund raising is required. Cheers, Roger |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1577 |
Whinge as I do about these things, I still do enjoy looking at them if only to pick them apart. It keeps the brain ticking over and makes one think outside the box if nothing else. Sometimes looking at reasons something won't work is as educational as why it will. I am all for progress and technology and new ideas, I'm just dead against bullchit and pulling the wool over peoples eyes especially when the ultimate objective is to separate them from their money under false pretences. Often these things are much like Tony said, anyone educated in the particular field can see if it will work or not, no need for loads of money and testing to prove it. They can build airliners and rockets and know they are going to work before the first flight with computer modelling. Something like this could probably be worked out in a day or less if all the relevant parameters were taken into account. A lot like a lot of these solar and RE ideals. No need to spend millions of bucks and thousands of tons of resources, you can model them and look at what's been done before to have a 99% idea before it leaves the paper or the computer. I did some Promo work for a research company years ago. One of the guys I got friendly there with told me straight out even he had been conned. He worked hard to make some of these things work and when they were perfected they got shelved because there was more money for the company in getting R&D grants and donations and more security than putting money into getting a product to market and having to promote and sell it and all the expenses with that. He said other things got to the finish line but they were canned before they could get across it because doing so would mean they had to go to the next phase which was marketing the product which the company board were not interested in doing. A lot of these "NEW" technologies are nothing new at all and just adaptations of old designs. The other thing is practical application. I have seen some really laughable ideas get millions in crowd funding and Gubbermint grants and even international awards. Spin the right story and Ideal and people will pony up the cash... lots of it. I was reading a bit about windmills the other day, the old fashioned kind you used to see in paddocks everywhere. They work as we all know, trouble now is they are at least 10X the price of a solar pump which can move more water and is more constant than the wind. I think a lot of these ideas are the same. Not a matter of whether they work but if they are practical, viable and cost effective. This idea has every chance of doing all they claim however, these other issues including other products or methods of achieving the same result or a more cost effective one come into play. Yeah, this thing may utilise the waste heat but is it worth the cost, complexity and added maintence say of doing that as against letting the heat go and just buying more power? Bit like the solar thing of being far cheaper and more effective to just add more panels than to put less onto tilt frames or trackers. Not a matter of if it works but if it's worth doing. I don't even think the test plant will be particularly relevant for this reason. The idea working is one thing, selling the product and recoupling the investment and paying dividend's on the shares bought is quite another. |
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| noneyabussiness Guru Joined: 31/07/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 506 |
Just 2 add my 2c.... Was up at aims ( Australian Institute of marine science) on a " tour " .. got yakkin to a researcher about what they produce.... he squarely said they produce heaps of idea's that actually work, the biggest challenge is getting it past the bean counters. The example he used was a coral they were studying that while all the other coral around was bleaching this one was thriving, turned out it had some chemical ( which could be reproduced in a lab) that was eventually used as a incredibly long lasting and strong sunscreen, but was rejected by the bean counters because it " wasn't financially viable ", turned out they were told they make more out of people having to re-apply every 2 hours than the 8-10 hours this one does.. and that got all the way to human trials, he said so many don't get to that stage because of money.. Kinda sad if you ask me... oh and this one ended up " sold " to the german government of all places.. I think it works !! |
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| rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 794 |
Yeah, it's bad enough when it's a whole heap of money wasted on something that could never work ... but if it's an idea that does work and it gets canned, or sold off ... that's a crying shame. Even worse when it's simply stolen and then sold back to us later on, which seems to be happening regularly. On a lighter note, after talking about Popular Mechanics I dragged out a handful of issues and showed our 7y/o. One from 1957 showed a concept nuclear powered plane on the front cover. After flicking through it for a while, he said "you know, that front cover's a bit 'click baity' ... there's nothing in here about it". We did find the article ... but not quite as impressive in black and white. Funnier still ... this morning he was telling my wife about it ... and she asked "what's click bait?" Cheers, Roger |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1577 |
Same as I have a big thing against all the " Save the Planet" Idealism. So many practical and effective things that could be done to archive the goal but the only ones that are ever mentioned or allowed are the ones that come with a price tag and make Big Biz more money. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1577 |
Years since I read a Popular mechanics, I have one from the '50s somewhere here although It may be Popular science but now you mention it, I distinctly remember the same thing. Really exciting and interesting stories on the cover but when you read the article, left one feeling rather underwhelmed and disappointed. Never seemed as exciting or as round the corner as the blurb on the cover created the impression of. Still waiting for just one of those Miracle, change the world, 150MPG engines to land in the showroom..... or the car that runs on water or the Robot that cleans the house mows the lawn and cooks the Dinner. Only robot we have can't even sweep the floor without getting stuck some where and when you free the thing up, 5 min later has jammed itself in the same spot again. It would be interesting to know what things they really are working on. As a Kid I was hanging for them to invent Teleportation so I didn't have to walk the couple of KM to the bus for a 45 Min ride to school in the middle of winter. In summer I was hanging for them to invent teleportation even more so I didn't have to bake on the bus and then walk the couple of KM home in the stifling heat. I wonder if there are any people trying to develop that? I'll bet if there are, it's for a Military Purpose. Would never let it out to the public and kill the automotive, fuel and transport industries. Imagine ordering that component from China and getting it 2 Minutes after you ordered it! Imagine their Consternation after it was returned 2 Minutes after they sent it because It was a fake or didn't work! |
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