Hydro Possibilities?

[Next X]

Hi, Wondering if it is possible to power an electric stove via Hydro power. I know most micro hydro setups are limited and that an electric stove requires a substantial load. (about 2.5k to 3k watts per heating element or 10-12kw for the whole stove).

Here's a little back ground: I want to use a stove (or several) to boil down sap for maple syrup. I do have a stream about 6 ft wide out back that has an incredible amount of flow coinciding with taping season. (i'm guessing that one thousand gallons per minute during this time would be an would be an understatement). I know most diesel generators run in the neighborhood of 1800 - 2000 rpm and can put out several thousand Kw.

Would I be too far off the mark if I assumed I could hook a turbine/wheel to a generator via pulley and spin it the requisite rpm and get that kind of output, or is that over simpifying things too much?

Thanks

[ghurd]

Sugaring uses an astronomical amount of power / watts.

We used several boys, in shifts, feeding wood to the fire to keep up for 14 hours.

Maybe a better question would be how much water can you boil out in a given time at those watts.

Not much.

The sap needs to get from 40'F to 220'F?  ~Ish.  That is a lot of watts per gallon, given a 55:1 ratio.

G-

[powerbuoy]

He He ... would be nice to have a 6 foot wide stream that can produce several thousand KW. I am not a hydro guy, but have seen several posts on flowrate/drop vs. power feasability on this site. Therefore, I do recommend to do some reading first. You might be more in the (one)1KW range ... , having said that I'll leave the field to the hydro experts ...

Good luck,

Powerbuoy

[Nando]

What is your name ?.

By the "definitions" you have written down I see that you are not familiar, AT ALL with hydro electric generation.

1000. gallon/minute = 63 liter/sec = just about 1 CFS (Cubic Feet Second). will produce 1 KW if the head is 2.64 meter = 8.67 feet head
      
6. feet wide stream does not say anything worthwhile because at 1000 feet/minute = 63 liter/sec and the water moving at 1 meter/sec = 3.28 feet/sec, the water height in the stream would be 3.44 cm = 1.35 inch water stream height .
   
   

In Hydro electric systems Height (head) of the water is first, water volume is second to produce hydro energy.

If you are boiling down Sap, have you tried partial vacuum to make the boiling at lower temperature like 60 to 70 Degrees C, you will as well need a refrigerator to condensate the water vapor if you have large bats.

You may save more than 30 % in energy use.

If one could do thousand of kilowatts the way you talk, electricity would be almost free to use.

Diesel putting several thousand kilowatts will be a humongous size diesel with a HP capacity of 1.6 * ( several thousand kilowatts).

Nando

[oregoncreek]

At the powerpal site they have a  PowerPal Mill Series.

http://www.powerpal.com/Millseries.html

I bet this is $2000 plus price.

Naodo idea is an interesting one, why not use the Mill Series to ran a vucum pump

for bioling to sap

[WizKid666]

If there is a water source, you could divert some of the flow for what you need, and then just run the water back to the stream so you don't get flooded. You could use a decent sized waterwheel to power a generator that runs to the stove. A little bit more work than most Ideas, but continuous energy as long as the water is flowing can't be beat.

[Tallwind82]

I hate to burst your bubble but that's a pretty high expectation for a micro-hydro system.

12. kw comes out to about 16 Hp.
    
33000. lb 1 foot drop = 1hp
       
       

water 8.345lb/gal

1000. gal = 8345lb
      
33000. / 8345 = 3.95ft drop per Hp X 16 hp = 63 foot drop
       
       

As you can see even if you could harvest every available watt in the stream and had no inefficiencies you would need a tremendous drop to get the power you want.

Just had a thought.

It wouldn't be practical for your application but would be fun to try. Rather than try to produce the power as you need it, produce power over time to use all at once.

Battery storage would be completely out of the question, I imagine you need quite a few hours of heat to get the job done, but if you used the electricity from the stream to produce hydrogen from water, and stored it up, you could burn it for heat. For instance say you could harvest the power of 1/4 of the stream and had a drop of 10 feet 33000/10/(250gal*8.345lb/gal)1180 watts * 70%(efficiency estimate) 826 watts. So for every 15 hours of hydrogen production you would get one hour of heat. 8 days would give you 12 hours. It might also give you a reenactment of the Hindenburg

Note: Due to ignorance I have not included the efficiency losses involved in producing hydrogen from water.

Hope you aren't too disappointed

Robert G

[Tallwind82]

That's interesting, my "1000"'s turned into "000"'s and my "=" dissappeared from the second half, hope you can still follow it.

I guess that's why we have the "preview option"

Robert G