Off-Grid Living Group
Freesteading group focused on the discussion of off grid living.
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Thermoelectric power
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Thermoelectric power
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Ended up getting the stove a little hotter than I meant to tonight but it gave me some good test numbers. Stove top got nearly to 200c the 1 inch thick steel got to 110c. The stove is headed back down it’s at 165c now but the steel is still holding better at 107c. Looks like the steel plate is doing exactly what I need it to do. But that doesn’t mean that’s the route I’m going to go. I have another idea or three to try, that was just the first shot in the dark.
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The new stove fan came in today I got another one from Amazon but this one oscillates and the fan blade appears to turn a lot faster than the other one. Curiosity made look to see if had a larger power module and it does. I am robbing the other one to put on the radiator going in my daughters room.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KN2QXJH?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
I think these things are to cool producing their own power from heat! Seeing as a larger module makes them turn faster and since I have a couple spare 40x40mm modules for my project the old one may get a larger module before I mount it upstairs.
I think the last of the parts will be here this week to get this project moving.
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Got the old fan modified to be powered via hot water last night. I put a 40x40mm water cooling block over a thin piece of insulation foam on top of the fans base piece then put a TEC1-12706 with thermal paste on both sides on top of the block and used longer screws to mount the fans top half back over it. The hot water will go through the fan first then go through the radiator. Hopefully that will allow the fan to come on anytime it has hot water going through the system. The fan will be positioned to blow air through the radiator cooling it while heating the room.
The TEC1-12706 is also a lower temperature module then the one that came on the fan so it should work better with the fan now being in a much colder area.
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Hopefully the rest of my project parts will arrive this week. I think I just about have a solution to the heating / overheating of the modules but I need to run a bunch of tests and to do that I need the parts I’m still waiting on.
All this fooling with heat and power made me dust off some older ideas I had for a horizontal burn rocket mass heater. I got that all worked out on paper last night. Who knows if I’ll actually build it. But just to let y’all in on the details this would be a relatively small footprint for a mass type heater being 12 to 18 inches wide and 52 inches long and tall. Which I know doesn’t sound small at all but believe me for a mass type heater it’s practically tiny!
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Yet another shift in plans. Now I’m glad I had to wait on parts. lol Going to go ahead and finish routing heat through a couple rooms from the woodstove but now I’m NOT going to put the modules on that stove in the house. I came up with a safer way to do it without chancing burning the modules out by overheating them. Also going to kill two birds with one stone if things workout like they should. Going to require a couple days fabricating things BUT this will work out MUCH better in the long run! Plus it will put some heat and power in one of the out buildings.
Oh and for those who like repurposing things this entire project NOT counting the electrical parts is coming from my junk piles!
Did you know 200 gallons of water heated to 190f with a mean temperature of 70f holds around 60kwh of energy. If I can remove just 10% of that for electrical power I will call that a HUGE win!
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Getting lined up to run a simple test to see which of these three modules make the most power at the same relative temperatures. This test is between a TEC1-12706 a SP1848-27145 and a Kyocera #12016896A. Anybody got odds on which one will perform the best?
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So far the tests I’ve run have been inconclusive. I have another problem to solve before I get back to that.
I’m currently working on a way to lift the modules up when the stove gets to hot. What I’d like to create is something that will let the modules start lifting about 275f and to keep the lift height close enough to the stove top to maintain 250 or 260f on the module mounting plate. So a real thermal balancing act!
If anyone has any ideas I’m all ears! Please try and keep in mind I am striving to make a design most anyone can copy cheaply with basic tools.
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Sometimes being lucky is better than being good. Case in point when I ordered aluminum plate to mount all my modules on I ordered 6061 aluminum not knowing at the time that is one of the best alloys to use for heat sinks and thermal transfer.
Rain day today has me stopped from being out working on this project. What a bummer! At least I did make a little progress for an hour or two late afternoon yesterday. One more day of cutting internal pieces and I should be ready to start fitting that part together. New metal to work with would sure be faster and nicer but all the steel I’m working with came from the scrap piles and was at one time other items / products that are now just scrap waiting to be repurposed or recycled. Personally I like repurposing things since we get more use out of them that way.
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Realized yesterday I’m out of a very important item that I have to have before I can put this all together. So unfortunately I’ll have to wait till payday next month before I can order that. In the mean time I’ll keep working on what I can but this is going to add another couple weeks to the building process.
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Back to the house all 5 batteries are DEAD! Weather guessers could NOT have been more wrong about today’s weather. First it didn’t rain at all after daybreak second the sunny blue sky showed up about 1:30pm and the rest of the day was perfect work outdoors in short sleeves weather. It’s 58f as I type. I went and cut the last of the useful bit’s of frame away from the rest and got it back to the work area. That was after I got a few more pieces welded together and a few others cut. That’s when I realized I needed more material. Thank the lord I had the junk to play with otherwise it would have been no go for this project, I can’t even imagine the cost of getting that much new metal out there these days.
I suddenly started second guessing my design last night for whatever reason. I guess I’m thinking someone would have already done it if it would actually work. IDK! But I’m going to complete it regardless….. Lord knows I’ve wasted more time and money in worse pursuits! lol
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Considering I haven’t even tested the others yet I just did a dumb thing and ordered 20 more of these. https://www.ebay.com/itm/325443696959
I “think” they should perform better than the generic Tec1-12706. Hope I’m not wrong, but I’ve always had exceptional service from Kyocera products.
I decided to hold off on the high temp insulation for now after finding out it only has an insulation rating of R5. I’m more worried about the seller running out of those high end modules than I am about getting insulation inside the box. lol Then after I ordered I found out he has a few hundred more. Hopefully by next month I’ll have these up and running and know if I want to try and get more or not…
I’m shooting for 300 watts peak power. If and I know that’s a big if this thing works like I want it to then it should give us the ability to live a lot more normal life power wise and take the constant worry of do we have enough power off my mind. It will be especially nice if it actually will power through the night being burned only once in the evenings.
Looks like I might get to work on this project for an hour or so this afternoon if the wind slows down a little and the temperature holds decent.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipm77mhiwSg
I think you would be interesting in this protection system for the pelters.
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Pretty much the same way I made my lifter for the module plate. I took the center (copper & wax plug) completely out of the body and pressed it in a 3/4 copper pipe. Which I am going to fit in my plate all the modules will be mounted on.
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Alright I think I can see the end of the stove build itself slowly crawling in sight. Once I finish it then I start building the outer case or box whatever you want to call it where all the mass gets held. I can’t wait to see how much heat this thing can pull out of the fire before the gasses reach the chimney or how much heat it can hold for how long. I just hope to heck I haven’t been wrong in my thinking. In all my searching I can’t find where anyone has built anything like this design, maybe because it’s so labor intensive or maybe just because it’s stupid and won’t work! Be my luck. lol
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OH CHIT ! My daughter and I fouled up bigtime. I kept bugging her to clean up all her wrappers off the table so she grabbed the bag my high dollar modules were in and filled it full of trash. I took it and burned it not realizing until after the fact. So now I have toasted modules and am going to have to wait to replace them. This puts a huge crimp in my plans! Needless to say they did not withstand a trip through the burn barrel! I found what was left of them….
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