My Titan / Hua Sheng heating system

chrisnbush

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Joined
Apr 9, 2008
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133
Location
Richmond, NH
It is cold up here in NH and my goal is to ride all year, ice and snow permitting (I have studs but not real confident on them yet).

I developed a heater using a piece of copper pipe, a faucet, a couple of hose barbs and 1/2 " ID silicone and nylon tubing (pics attached).

The 1/2 copper pipe is just elbowed up against the muffler port, held in place with hose clamps, nothing is glued or welded, at least not yet.

I put the faucet on the end of the pipe, the exhaust is fed into the tubing from a hose barb on a copper T before the faucet. I went to this arrangement after my tubing (250 deg max working F deg) was melting. I have the faucet cranked wide open, and still enough exhaust gets routed thru the tubing to keep me toasty. And if it gets REAL cold I could crank down the faucet a little to route more exhaust thru the tubing.

I have a one piece thinsulate jump / worksuit that I route the tubing thru - in on the right side thru the leg zipper left open just a little, up and down over my legs and chest, and out the left side which becomes my exhaust hose.

Amazing how much heat this little motor wastes. Note that I reinforced the end of the tubing that attaches to the pipe with fiberglass screen, then just wrapped twine, and on the very end put furnace rated foil tape - high temp stuff. And since the silicone tubing is expensive (like 3 bucks a foot), I used a 1/2" dual barb splice to continue to the end with nylon tubing which is not heat resistant. I have high temp silicone tubing coming from McMaster Carr - GREAT supply house - check them out.

The only issue I have been having is if I don't make big loops inside the suit I can crimp the hose, which greatly shifts the exhaust to go out the faucet, and I get no heat. Also there is a lot of water in exhaust, after about an hour running (how long it takes me to get to work) the hose is half constricted at the low point in my suit.

Thinking of building a rubber vest out of EDPM with an inlet and outlet port. Also thinking about routing the exhaust first thru the handlebars and putting in hose barbs (3) in the handle bars. One for the suit, and two for my hands - the handlebar metal should heat up enough maybe to keep my hands warm, so I would need only one barb.

Future plans are to get pelletier junctions to mount directly to engine muffler and block, well, maybe on a heat sink first to see how much electricity I can get off this sucker. Also I want to finish the exhaust hose out thru a tub of calcium hydroxide, to make calcium carbonate (i.e. lime) from the CO2 in the exhaust - throw it on my garden.

What a blast - no more accidents PLEASE

PS - By the way, on the hose pic, I wrapped the hose barb splice joint with duct tape. The reason I did this is the brass hose barb connection gets HOT and it was burning my leg a little. Gives you an idea of how much heat "goes out the window"


:devilish:
 

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MMM !!! Good.
Whats fer dinner.
Roast bicyclist!
You are far braver than I am and quite possibly Delicious.
 
Like the way you think....using waste energy to solve another problem. These little engines don't usually have enough power to begin with. I've been thinking about using the waste heat to run some thermocouples to recharge a battery for lights etc myself. Good to see some one with the same line of thought. Have you made any progress on that end of things? Running a small generator-alternator setup saps the already minimal power plus inefficiency losses. This might be the answer we have been looking for all along. :geek:
 
I have looked briefly at thermocouples (pelltier thermal electrogenerators). I guess some auto companies have / had developed some prototypes to generate electricity for cars, the highest output I have seen so far is 35 watts.

So I am thinking the max you might get out of this somehow, would be down in like the 3 watt range, I pick this number because it conveniently is the power needed for a halogen bike lamp, the common one. About the same for more powerful LED lamps I think.

I don't understand it as much as I need to, but from what I have read, the pelletier generators have a high impedance (resistance). As much as I know about this, I believe that this means they need to be coupled to a load with equivalent impedance. I don't know at this point what the relative impedances are for things like halogen lamps, battery charging. If you know something about this, please chime in.

I also suspect that electricity generation will require good heat dissipation, probably not a problem on a bike (!). I think that you put the cold side in (on a heat sink) leave the hot side out as, in this case, the movement of heat (cold to hot) is what is "pumping" the electricity - at least this is my guess.

These generators are available on ebay, efficiencies are low, like in the 10 - 15% range

Later

PS By the way, I upgraded my silicone tubing to high temperature tubing as described and it is behaving much better in the heat. I know a guy in plastics, and he says the "red" in the high temp silicone stuff is actually iron, which has something to do with giving it heat stability. Guessing that is why the high temp gasket compound you get from autoshops is also red. Cripes if I did as much stuff as I found out about, I would maybe actually have something ;-)
 
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You probably shouldn't try to remove too much heat at the head or cylinder itself, as this could impact burn rate inside the cylinder. If you routed the exhaust through an insulated aluminum block, with a pelltier unit attached to the block, though, you may have something...
 
You probably shouldn't try to remove too much heat at the head or cylinder itself, as this could impact burn rate inside the cylinder. If you routed the exhaust through an insulated aluminum block, with a pelltier unit attached to the block, though, you may have something...

You're right....in more ways than one. For one thing, the cylinder would have to have the fins removed, silicone grease applied to the heat sink, then the modules, and then fins added to the outside to get much of anything. Also, with the modules I have been playing with, the temp differential should be in the 250-300 degree F range to get close to optimum output. Using exhaust, the modules could be made as kind of a premuffler which would cool the gases, aiding in the muffler effect.

My findings so far say that it would work, but it would be a very expensive way to generate power. My module was about $70.00. I would need 4 of them in a series parallel arrangement to deliver 6 amps at 15.2 volts. And that is the optimul result.....toss in a little reality and it would be marginal as the old Lucas system on my old Beezer. I don't miss those banzai runs through the gears and at about 70+....+........+ :devilish: the zener goes out along with the lights. :poop:
 
...I would need 4 of them in a series parallel arrangement to deliver 6 amps at 15.2 volts. And that is the optimul result.....toss in a little reality and it would be marginal as the old Lucas system on my old Beezer. I don't miss those banzai runs through the gears and at about 70+....+........+ :devilish: the zener goes out along with the lights. :poop:

****, all I am looking for is a couple of watts to run the LED lights - your talking 60 watts there, right ? I can find solar battery charges that are like 5 watts for 12 volt batteries, so that is more like 500ma current. Thats a trickle charge, but again LED lights, REAL bright ones, are 4 watts - these are 300 lumens - with a 12 volt source, so thats only 300+ ma

As for pelltier units on Ebay (chinese ****, but maybe they work for prototyping ?) you can get them for like $20 - here are some specs ->

Specifications

40mm x 40mm x 3.3mm
Operates from 0-16 volts DC and 0-10.5 amps
Operates from -60 deg C to +180 deg C
Each device is fully inspected and tested
Fitted with 6-inch insulated leads
Perimeter sealed for moisture protection

I am guessing the specs indicate how much you can pump INTO them for the thermal effect, not how much they kick out. 180 deg C is 356 degrees Fahrenheit. I will get a non contact thermometer to see what we pull at the muffler.

Back to current reality for a minute. I smoked my motor racing a bicyclist :-( Same guy who beat me before on my other bike. Insert Wil E. Coyote here. I was WOT for about a mile. The only reason I mention it here is that I had my heating attachment on the bike while racing, I am concerned that overstressing may have overheated, and that this might not have occurred had I not been running my heater also. In case anyone else is thinking about trying it - no racing...

I take the opportunity to get the Super Titan motor, but have to wait a month or so for funding.

I am going to follow up on the pelletier's in the mean time. Good idea to make a seperate heating block. I KNOW that copper pipe a foot long, the hose barb at the end of THAT gets up to over 250. At least my first silicone tubing that was good to 250 as printed on the tubing started to melt - not blow thru, but the tubing perimeter where it sat on the hose barb.

Thinking I can get two thin sections of aluminum block milled with maze like 1/2 inch channel, then screw together, tap inlet and outlet with 1/2 inch for hose barbs. Half inch is sufficient flow to keep the motor happy (see above though). Then I could use HT engine clamps to attach the whole thing to my front frame tube as close to exhaust as possible, connect via first short piece of copper tube, then maybe high temp silicone

I will keep you posted
 
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