Wind/diesel installation....

[KenB]

Frot,

Sorry to hear about your non-intentional thermal event. 

"Soft solder" is aptly named because it is the poor, weak and feeble cousin of metal joining techniques.

My mate,  Mike, is soon going to be importing stainless steel heat exchangers from China,  so you will have another option.


Happy New Year BTW


May the Flux be with you   


Ken

[frotter]

Heh - well if we cant braze the great lump together Speccyface did suggest making one out of stainless from scratch.
How much would yon Chinese ones be i wonder...?

X

[frotter]

Hi chaps!
Better have some sort of update i suspose or else you might think i dont wuv you any more....

So, the heat exchanger with blasted solder then (quiet please, Ken) -
We prised it out from its hiding place, here preparing to 'operate'. Homers expression is extremely suitable....
We are going to try brazing the joints at this hottest end so the pesky scorching gases cant eat the solder.





We opened the patient up - and i have to say his insides dont look too nice.
Capstan Full Strenth? 1000 a day i reckon!






Well i would have some pics of the brazing but for the fact that it needed both of us constantly occupied to achieve it. The fat end where the four 15 mm pipes join into the 35mm joint was VERY difficult to get hot enough. Even using 3 torches - one of them burning Mapp gas.
Yikes!! Brazing was fun - never tried it before. Like soldering but everything needed to cherry red hot before the braze would melt. Normal propane torch managed it fine on 10mm joints but the BIG one.......
Here is the 'repaired' thingy being re stuffed.




Thing is though, when we pressure tested the water joints there was a leak! Doh! So ..... it all had to come out again and i discovered one brazed joint with a tiny gap. Grrrrr. 
Its all re - re stuffed now and ready to install back into Chernobyl so we can start going forwards again!

On a general note - we are today celebrating our 45th day 'off-grid'.  We are using on average about 18 litres of the Baby Jesus's Holy Lard each day. Our consumption is 23kwh per day. Ivor (the engine - i know  ) runs automagically most days for between 9 - 12 hours depending on contributions from sun/wind. He is set to produce 2.5 kw at a low rpm. The amount collected from natures bountiful energy is disappointingly small usually. On balance i think summer may be much better as the tubes will make our hot water, saving the beastly immersion heater from doing its thing. Plus a few hours of sun per day at 800watts or more from the PV's may be more reliable than occasion windy days in winter giving us worrying short bursts of power from the whirly bladey thing.
On a typical (grey) winter day the PV's produce about 1amp. (50watts!) In full winter sun about 450watts. The most seen so far was on a bright cool summer day - 1050watts. They really need proper sunshine...

More next time tinkerin' fans!!


 

X

[Ivan]

Come on, you can do better than that! If you've got an engine running a few hours each day, why not get a heat exchanger in the tank (via immersion perhaps?) running from your waste heat - you'll have too much hot water before you know it, and Mrs.Frot can have long hot baths without complaint.

[Paulh_Boats]

Frotter,

A bit late, but I guess you know brazing used tubes is hard. I think brazing needs sparkly clean copper with some fancy flux - I had a devil of a job brazing pipe that I had already soldered.

What flux did you use and what torch? One of those portable oxy-acetylene jobs would be great.

-Paul

[frotter]

Engine heat and exhaust will hopefully be heating Frot Towers soon... watch this space - it'll be ready just in time for July i expect!

I used a handheld torch sold as a brazing torch on mixed gas and a normal blowtorch on super hot Mapp gas. Both of these could get the smaller joints glowing red. The larger ones needed all our torches and considerable use of expletives.... I dont have oxy/acet sadly.  The rods were the Toolstation copper/copper rods. These have flux in them. You are right though - the braze worked better on shiny clean pipes. The inside of the 35mm 'collecter' was anything but shiny but it still stuck on eventually!

XX

[Antman]

July !!! 

Lock Speckybloke out in that there shed tomorrow until he's done the job. Feed him on bread and lard until the jobs done 

Antman

Second thoughts, that's a waste of good fuel 

[frotter]

Whoop de doo!!
Just gone over 10000 views of this thread....

You people got no homes to go to or sumfink??

 

[stephen]

Yes but do you realise that you have to offset the power we all use loggin in to your thread  lol.

Stephen

[Paulh_Boats]

Offset the power to view the thread? 

Let me see, 10000 users browsing for 3 minutes each thats 30000 minutes or 500 hours. Average PC 100 watts so thats 50kWh gone up in smoke!

How much Lard is that? 

[frotter]

Meh, couple o tubs. No probs. Jus tell me where you want it.

X

[KenB]

Paul_h, List,

The same though passed through my mind too.

There has been a major increase in UK electricity consumption in the last decade, mainly down to consumer electronics, IT equipment and gadgets.

Worldwide the PC population is expected to reach 1.8 billion units by 2010.   Server farms are very energy intensive, all the power for those processors and then even more power in the form of refrigeration to keep them cool.


Ken


 

[dan_aka_jack]

Yeah...

The slightly bizzar thing is that - if energy became really expensive - I'd turn off my lights and heating before reducing my computer usage.  What's the use of being indoors and warm if you can't use the web!?

We mustn't be too quick to criticise the Internet and the various components which go into its construction.  For example, I'm pretty sure the UK population would be even less informed about climate change and alternative energy if it wasn't for t'interweb.  Gawd knows the broadcast and print media didn't put much effort into educating people.

(sure, sure - I know none of the above posts criticised t'interweb...)

[djh]

Server farms are very energy intensive, all the power for those processors and then even more power in the form of refrigeration to keep them cool.

There's a little room at work with "my" 'puters in. I suggested that to keep them cool,  they should knock a hole in the wall and perhaps add an extractor fan but those in charge called in the air-con specialists who put a noisy machine, taller than I am, that recirculates the air and sends the heat to another machine on the roof. Why, fer ...

Cheers, Dave

PS Don't begrudge the power for the processors themselves. It's a lot like how many humans does it take to do the work of one barrel of oil. Without the processors, and the rest of the science/engineering, we're not going to have solar cells at a sensible price etc etc. That's not to say the efficiency can't be improved though.

[frotter]

I luv 'puters, me...