RainsFire Posted October 28, 2007 Share Posted October 28, 2007 So, I live far off enough that it is difficult for me to get coal, so I have resorted to using charcoal and gas.. Although a fun and interesting process, I don't fully enjoy making charcoal a whole lot. So, there is my little problem.. I could buy charcoal, but that seems almost stupid knowing I can make it, so I do not.. but then it hits.. I could use residue heat from my gas forge to make small amounts of charcoal with every use. With my tube forge I simply placed a coffee can with as much oak scrap as I could fit in it on the back, instead of one of the bricks I usually use. and with my stacked brick forge I simply sat it on top leaving a small crack in between two bricks. So far it has been working wonderfully, propetual fuel. obviously I am not using the furnace right now (because I am typing) but my charcoal is still cooking away. anyway, just thought it was a good idea.. mabey I get scientific and pipe off some of the heated air to blast into a steel drum cooking charcoal that way, more efficient more charcoal. anybuddy else try this ever? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Martin Posted October 28, 2007 Share Posted October 28, 2007 No, I never thought of that, but that's a cool idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimbob Posted October 28, 2007 Share Posted October 28, 2007 check this site out Charcoal Retort also Making Charcoal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RainsFire Posted October 29, 2007 Author Share Posted October 29, 2007 I've read em both, but thanks for the links! my first crop of charcoal came out pretty well. mostly all charcoal with a few non cooked peices on top.. coffee can is destroyed though.. I guess I need something tougher. my blade I'm working on came out awesome also Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam Salvati Posted October 29, 2007 Share Posted October 29, 2007 The heat from a coal forge or gas forge could also be used to boil water in a boiler, for steam heat for the shop, or immediate area by the forge and anvil, perhaps a steam hose with a valve for preheating the anvil face safely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
easilyconfused Posted October 29, 2007 Share Posted October 29, 2007 Piping steam through an old radiator would be a good idea. Car or house would likely work and there are plenty around if you look. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RainsFire Posted October 29, 2007 Author Share Posted October 29, 2007 any buddy have a good idea of how to trap this residual heat? I was thinking some sort of steel sheilding or something, but I dont really know. Its always nice to kill an extra objective or two with a single stone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RainsFire Posted October 29, 2007 Author Share Posted October 29, 2007 I was just looking at that indirect method in link 2, and that is really cool.. I think I'll try that this weekend.. Is there much of a market for good charcoal? I guess I had never really thought about it. hahah, I just thought of something else.. If you read the 2nd charcoal link posted above by jimbob, it shows how you can use the "passed" gasses to heat the barrel. what if you pumped those back into the forge? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mithral Posted October 29, 2007 Share Posted October 29, 2007 I was just looking at that indirect method in link 2, and that is really cool.. I think I'll try that this weekend.. Is there much of a market for good charcoal? I guess I had never really thought about it. hahah, I just thought of something else.. If you read the 2nd charcoal link posted above by jimbob, it shows how you can use the "passed" gasses to heat the barrel. what if you pumped those back into the forge? I've heard of coal forges that are set up to do just that to help eliminate some of the more noxious compounds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted October 29, 2007 Share Posted October 29, 2007 With a propane forge running the exhaust back into the forge really really REALLY helps out it's Carbon Monoxide production! (as in "you're dead Jim!") Now using the exhaust to preheat the incoming combustion air---but never the twain shall meet---is a great idea and one that is in use in recuperative forges like the Sandia Forge---cuts down on fuel use, gets higher temps, etc, look at "hot Blast" for blast furnaces as an example. I sift the ashes from our woodstove for charcoal. In general there is no small market that pays for small batch charcoal; except perhaps making artists charcoal from grape vines, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt87 Posted October 29, 2007 Share Posted October 29, 2007 I've been toying with this idea for a while: using the residual heat from my forge to make steam, to power a forge blower! Not something practical right now, since my forge has to be fairly portable or disposable right now (rented house). Also it would need a semi-complex throttle/injector system. If I were to use a flash boiler (say, buried just under the surface of the refractory) it would work almost as soon as I lit it. Throttling could be incorporated into the injector mechanism too with a flash boiler. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glenn Posted October 29, 2007 Share Posted October 29, 2007 And the down side of all this steam condensing on all the cold metal in the shop during the winter months would be ........rust? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted October 29, 2007 Share Posted October 29, 2007 I have to say this is a really good idea; recuping waste heat to make charcoal, making steam to power anything is not only dangerous but highly regulated. First though the idea of making a flash boiler, see fed, state and local regulations first or your insurance co. is likely to skin you alive while the sheriff puts you away. This seems very doable though. Find yourself an old turbocharger and pipe the steam into the exhaust leg. A waste gate will deal with any excess air you generate. Both links are the same site. O'Conner has had this site up for a number of years but it's got the basics right. Don't use cinderblock for containing the fire around the retort chamber, it'll spall away from the heat very quickly. Enclosing the retort chamber is a good idea, anything that helps contain the heat where you want it is a good idea, anytime you're generating heat on purpose. This is why we insulate our homes and wear coats. Find a steel bucket with removeable lid to contain your coffee cans. Better yet, use SS stove pipe to contain the 5gl. steel bucket. SS reflects heat well and once you get a reaction going you can burn the volatile fumes from the wood. Not in the forge though, they won't generate high enough temperatures outside a very oxidizing atmosphere, this is one reason you're not burning wood. The other being the adverse effects of the volatiles on your steel. I'll be trying this method of generating charcoal for sure. Thanks for the idea. Storing heat, especially waste heat from the forge is a good idea, here's how I'm doing it. I installed a sub-floor exhaust system under the shop's slab, there are 2" sq. tube sockets (gozintas) to the surface on a 4' grid. The gas forge will get a hood that plumbs to the exhaust system through the 2" sq. legs it sits on. Waste heat and fumes will be drawn away from the forge and down under the floor. (The final exhaust is above the surface outside the shop of course) I also laid hydronic heat transfer tubing in the floor and will make a water heat exchanger for the wood stove for infloor radiant heat. It's just hot water so no need for the extremely hard to aquire permits for a steam plant. The pic shows the Pex tubing and Gozintas before I poured the slab. An alternate plan I'm working on for making charcoal is building an air tight stove for the shop. Not what passes for air tight in commercial stoves but one that will smother the fire if I shut the draft off completely. I'll load it with wood, get it roaring and shut it off. Later, after it cools, I'll shovel out the charcoal. Frosty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt87 Posted October 29, 2007 Share Posted October 29, 2007 To clarify a little, I live in the UK, not the US. Thanks for your advice Frosty, especially the safety aspect; I was aware of the possible dangers, but many people read this site. I was brainstorming, for want of a better word. Perhaps a safer idea would be a thermopile. Build enough junctions and you might be able to run a forge blower, or maybe some lights or somesuch. Don't know how much power might be available, but the Russians made kerosene lamp powered valve radios post WW2. A Stirling engine might be another possibility. Throttling would not be all that easy I think (or likely very fast response time), so using it to run a dynamo powering an electric forge blower (via a regulator perhaps). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RainsFire Posted October 29, 2007 Author Share Posted October 29, 2007 wow, so you could almost make a self building fire, piping off the extra gasses from the burning coal (assuming you are using coal) and blasting them back in as you would with a propane venturi blower, thus sucking in the oxy you would need. I'll have to experiement with this. It'd be cool to have a totally efficient self sustaining shop where you make your own charcoal, and use the excess gasses to fuel it. Then you use the residue heat, or excess gasses from the charcoal (if they exist.. I think it is pretty much pure carbon at that point) to power a blower for your forge. Ha, Im going to have to draft some of this up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted October 29, 2007 Share Posted October 29, 2007 May I commend to your attention the three laws of Thermodynamics that say basically: 1 You can't win---you can't get more energy out of a system than you put into it. 2: you can't break even ---you can't get as much energy out of a system than you put into it. and 3: You gotta play the game---you can't get around the other two laws. You can make you system *more* efficient; but it will never be a closed loop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RainsFire Posted October 30, 2007 Author Share Posted October 30, 2007 well ya, I know that.. energy cant be destroyed or created, it is only transfered into different forms. strike a hammer on a steel beam, and the energy transformation will become very much evident in the broken brick beneath the beam. It is certainly always easier to loose something than to find/create something, and I don't really agree that you cant break even. Although you cant literally turn 2 into 4 of the same energy unit, you can trigger an energy release in something else. Look at nuclear energy, atom's would normally not put out large amounts of energy, but in a certain enviorment they can be forced to transform their energy into something huge and harness-able by us. But ya, that is not the case here.. what I'm bankin for is that the amount of energy I can harrness will be enough to power a blower. Minimizing the amount of energy neccessary to power something has the same effect as increasing the output of the energy created.. make sense? im sure it does.. my wording is probably just a bit off.. to late for real scientific terms.. but ya, I spent most of my spanish class today sketching up a simple steam powered forge blower that's heated up by the forge. should be interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted October 30, 2007 Share Posted October 30, 2007 If you look at the energy balance on a nuclear power plant you will find that the energy in is WAY less than the usable energy out---just look at all that steam coming from the cooling tower that is "wasted" energy; losses due to friction in the turbines, etc. You may not agree but some of the brightest people for several centuries have tried to get a system that broke even---it's called perpetual motion---and have never got it to work. The Nobel prize has your name on it when you manage to get it to work! Of course the best way to win such honours is to take on the job that everyone says is impossible and do it; but until you manage to do it you usually get laughed at a whole lot. BTW, have you had a thermodynamics class yet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RainsFire Posted October 30, 2007 Author Share Posted October 30, 2007 ^^ did you say that right? your first sentence agrees with me.. I think you meant to say energy in is way more than energy out right? yep.. cuzz you're totally right. Im just saying that mabey you take massive amounts of un-usable energy, and make it usable.. I think in the proper enviorment, you could make propetual motion work.. Like what if you were in a vaccume, and spun a top? would it go for ever? there are no other forces to act upon it, so I think it would. so that initial amount of energy invested in spinning the top would never be lost through heat or another force. nope, I have not taken thermodynamics yet.. and don't really plan on it. I'm in physics right now though, and I have a basic level of understanding from my Highschool science class. I've done some extra curricular activities also involving physic's related stuffs.. Robotics ect. (I was the fabricator and drafter). anyway, you probably know better.. I just think this would work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted October 30, 2007 Share Posted October 30, 2007 Perpetual motion only works in the theoretical universe. No such thing as a perfect vacuum to spin your top in and anything less than perfect wouldn't work. Even if you could get perpetual motion to work, what good would it be? As soon as you tapped it for work of any kind it'd grind to a stop. At best it'd be a very long lived storage device. The best you can do is make the energy you collect and use do as much as possible for you before you let it go. It's fun to play mental games with though. Frosty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RainsFire Posted October 30, 2007 Author Share Posted October 30, 2007 yes it is.. something else I like to think about is where does space end? is there really a such thing as infinity? and if it does stop, whats after that? it hurts.. would space stretching on in infinity be considered propetual motion? do atom's die? I had always learned that space was a perfect vacuum.. I guess mabey I just assumed it though. cuzz I know propetual motion doesn't truly exist..to our knowledge anyway.. science is all based on theories. even laws of gravity could be changed by something devious.. but that's another story entirely back to subject.. anybuddy have a good design for a recirculating steam generator? is it like a water wheel where you fill one end (metaphorically) and the other goes up, only to have gravity pull it back down? I was thinking you could blast a jet of steam around a waterwheel in a closed unit, and have a belt attached to the wheel powering a fan which heats your forge.. you'd use more coal or charcoal, but not a whole lot and it'd be kinda cool. just need to figure out the mathematics to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted October 31, 2007 Share Posted October 31, 2007 Deep space is not a perfect vacuum; just close. Your spinning top has a friction point where the base meets the surface it's spinning on---vacuum does not affect this. If you spun it in free fall in a perfect vacuum there are still gravitational effects to consider---assuming it's not metallic and so eddy current breaking is not a factor. Now to run a blower why not plumb a pressure cooker's outlet through a smog pump to run a pully? Knew a fellow who like to rusticate in the deep woods who used that trick to charge up his car battery so when he finally did go back to civilization the car would start. Now if you have any questions about the great beyond---well there are a dozen folks with doctorates in astrophysics on my hall at work that might be able to field them. Me I'm just a bitherder with a BS for either foot... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RainsFire Posted October 31, 2007 Author Share Posted October 31, 2007 thought someone would bring up the top's point of friction.. I meant free spinning.. but ya ya got me.. pressure cooker? thats a good idea, I was thinking along the same lines.. but your way would be a bit simpler to make. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted October 31, 2007 Share Posted October 31, 2007 Even free spinning, precession will slow it down. You also can't ignore the effects of brownian movement. forever is a long time. Also, by definition a "perfect" vacuum would be ruined by a top or anything else in it. Forget steam power for your blower. Rig a turbine in the stack and use the rising smoke to power your blower. This is proven technology though not widely used. Frosty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RainsFire Posted October 31, 2007 Author Share Posted October 31, 2007 ^^that makes a xxxx of a-lot more sense doesn't it.. The smoke has enough power? I was thinking rising heat would be usable, but I didn't know if it'd be quite that powerful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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