Turbo Barrel V2 Alternator Test 

@@DanBowkley Wood fires have no exhaust compression and cannot function with restricted exhaust.

@@BoostHoundGP but the intake is still pressurized by the main turbo! Hes not telling you to mutilate the one you have, hes saying to add a 2nd, to drive the alternator!! Lean on that large primary compressor wheel (turbo 1) to fuel the fire, expand the air, and push the primary, and secondary turbines with it Use a 2nd turbo, probably one off a full size diesel truck - exhaust less restriction, and simultaneously- more torque for the alternator mounted to the compressor side. That black jet of soot out of the exhaust cone has plenty of energy left in it, even after spinning the main compressor!!

*clarifying- a larger diameter turbine wheel is likely what you need, not necessarily a physically larger turbo, for the second one. also, there may be a need to move the wastegate to the actual exhaust, behind the first turbo, in front of the second one. This may invert throttle control- closed would force ALL exhaust through the alternator turbine, and opening it would take backpressure off of the primary turbo if it starts to bog

as a bonus, You already have an oil pump, which is likely hitting its relief pressure if you have a reducer installed in the turbo... you could maybe add a pressurized oil feed after the primary compressor, and feed the fire with waste oil instead of wood, just add a good filter for the turbo.. it can use shitty oil too, cuz Im almost sure the turbo bearings are going to get smoked, no matter what you do...

This right here, steam power just works. And you can use it to directly drive other machines, pumps, compressors, etc. No need for electric conversions.

Steam engines need oil in the cylinder too, you'd need to separate that out if you want to use the water. But yeah in an apocalyptic scenario i'd rather use a steam engine!

Best that hasn’t been mentioned is hydro-electric use a HE front load clothes washer the drum and motor driven by water is extremely efficient even using a pump to return water to the source of head pressure.

Wood gas. Google it. Easy to produce, and you can drive practically any combustion engine with it. All cars in Northern Europe used it during the WW2 as there were no gas/petrol available.

@@jesperwall839yeah wood/charcoal gasifiers are great. Also if you look into the Syngas Route even more possibilities emerge all that all can get complex real quick.

Yes, I could see that like a gasifier vaporizing the wood gas and burning efficiently at turbine, and I would think a shaft off turbine with small pully and a large pully at the alternator ...

@@PerpetualMan22 It's sort of a fun problem to think of how to cobble stuff together that would work well enough. Assuming I had the same set of stuff as you presented I would try to make it like a smokeless firepit inside, with 90% of the air getting pre-heated and then blown in after the wood. I think making a turbine to alternator that works would be hard, so your air driven scheme seems like something that would be reliable enough to work more than once if you needed to use it long term. Sure, it's still way off on ideal turbine, but would be a nice improvement for the same amount of wood and wouldn't burn up the turbine so it could be used multiple times.

@@captainobvious9188 I wanted to generate more air velocity over the last design. I think it flows too much. I figure larger intake piping will drop the velocity down to a more reasonable amount for a wood fire. On camp fires blowing too much air over it just scatters the ash around so the same concept should carry over to the barrel. I have a tiny fan motor to test all kinds of airflow into the system and it doesnt take much flow to build serious heat as I thought it would. It still blows ash on an electric motor so theres definately airflow. I was going to move away from all the turbine stuff and focus on the pyrolosis part of my barrel. Steam doesnt seem sufficient in this scale or atleast my way wont work good enough. Personally rather refine fuel in the long run. I can run an actual generator off that fuel easier than reinventing something thats already been solved for eons.

Which required a functional air compressor/leaf blower to start, BTW.

Boiler tubes, and a super heater.. It's basically a turbo charged steam engine boiler - you could get some decent output if it boiled water I think!

@@hunnybunnysheavymetalmusic6542 I would have loved to test this out on the previous barrel design. I feel that version was a far better design.

@@A2J_Tim you still need an ignition source and fuel pump for that which uses electricity. I did that on the last one it used too much battery each run and had to be on a charger the whole time. Wood requires no electricity.

​@@BoostHoundGP Fair point. How about using wood to begin the process until the used oil becomes combustible, then attempting to regulate the ignition rate of whatever *concoction* of used oil you currently have in the tank. You said it right. "Scrapyard builds" like yours may likely determine if humans are still around beyond 8 to 10 years from now if the other sources I follow are correct. I *suspect* that if any bicycle survives what is to come they will be used to drive whatever generators we have left to Arc-weld things back together as patchwork for quite some time.

@@richardalexander7089 My previous barrel used a fuel pressure regulator referenced to boost. I started it on wood then switched over. Having no ignitors besides the wood after the wood was gone it would load up and backfire bad. The regulator worked perfect but would spike psi each time you dumped the wastegate causing even worse load ups. It wasnt very fun being point blank for those. At this point I'll stick to wood burning.

@@BoostHoundGP yes but once your wood is burned up your unit comes to a stop, you need continual fuel delivery. You could build a fuel tank that you fill and cap off, then pressurize it with boost then drip feed the barrel, that way it will drip feed because the barrel pressure and the fuel tank pressure will be equalized allowing for a dripper feed.

@@A2J_Tim it still needs ignitors for oil burning. Tank temp alone isnt reliable enough.

I’ve seen tons of these with oil feeds

Would two large ball valves and gravity work ? Think air lock 🤔

@@jimmykreutz6087 Coal still has heavy particulates like wood. The wheel will still fail. Coal also has been used in another turbo barrel already.

@@ur_quainmaster7901 I was leaning towards a steam turbine when I built this one. Had to see what would happen anyway.

I mean in the event of end of world times I think any power is going to be praised like gold

Dont they use turbos on steam engines? I would try to insulate and contain that heat, add a screw conveyor and a hopper for the wood, use waste heat to preheat and boil the hopper wood, and just use the turbine to make power. Kinda depends on whether you want to make a woodgas turbine engine or a wood burning steam engine.

The main issue that people have with these are power recovery. THE best place to have power take off is a free power turbine, like what the real ones use. I gave up trying to get a homemade turboshaft to work bc I still can’t find anything that will live in the 800+ degree exhaust that doesn’t cost a fortune. Sure, building a gasifier will net more power and better efficiency but it’s nowhere near as cool lol

no. steam has this inherent loss of 80%, unavoidable... latent heat of phase change. the energy you used in turning water to steam is unrecoverable. you can use some of it to preheat feed water and air for the furnace, but you still barely get any of it back. all this stuff was figured out well over a century ago. why does the human race now insist on going BACKWARDS? we use steam because when we start getting to the scale of a powerstation, its just... easier. steam has a higher thermal mass than air or most other gases. meaning the turbines are relatively compact for the power outputs. to run them on hot air alone would require they be roughly twice the size... we gave up on reciprocating steam engines as they simply cannot compete in size and power and efficiency. for the equivalent power, a reciprocating steam engine is MASSIVE. it spins slowly. it can only make so much torque per revolution. it cant even maintain a constant rotational velocity during one rotation... inherent fault of cranks and conrods and constantly varying pressure in the cylinder translating to varying force on the piston and crank... then you get into condensors... if you cant pull a vacuum of at least 26 inches on a turbine, then about 90% of the energy that you did get from the boiler as steam, simply goes out the exhaust. the majority of the power a steam turbine generates is in that low pressure side of the turbine. once its dropped below atmospheric pressure. a steam turbine with no condensor is next to useless. on a piston engine, the condensor actually reduces performance for various reasons. one being that if theres a vacuum in the cylinder... whats on the other side of the piston, and what produces more force upon it? another one being that when the piston returns on the exhaust stroke, the remaining gas has to be re-compressed to close to the supply pressure. at that point, you arent wasting steam unnecesaarily filling the clearance space, as its already full... if you suck it out before the exhaust stroke has even started, then theres nothing to re-compress and you have to refill that clearance volume on every cycle... and the steam in that space does NO WORK. unless you want to return to newcommen and watts "atmospheric" steam engines... that are definitely not efficient. the best youll ever achieve, approximately 14psi acting on the piston... thats why we used high pressures once reliable boilers and piping could be manufactured. 200psi+ produces far more effort than a mere 14. in the early days, boilers tended to explode if they were pressurised to any degree. the best approach for small scales is to go back in history, but not so far back. the ericsson cycle. can also be the brayton, the differences are subtle and unimportant... before they had the materials to make internal combustion turbines, they already had the concept. charles parsons outlines the idea in his steam turbine patent... (in fact, before anyone actually made one, their biggest concern was that they would also need some form of condensor! that proved to be a non-issue... nevertheless, an ICE turbine would work BETTER if it exhausted into a vacuum...) and they had a "running example"... it just used pistons instead. "cayley furnace gas engine".and the ericsson engine. one runs the combustion products through the cylinders, with combustion taking place in a pressurised furnace. one uses a heat exchanger and a "naturally aspirated" fire... both are still technically "external combustion engines" as the fire is burning outside of the cylinder. in some ways, its similar to the stirling, except its "open cycle", rather than "closed cycle". a stirling has to heat the air in the cylinder in the time available during a full cycle. and it only has so much surface area to transfer that heat through. the brayton/ericsson can have a large amount of air heating at any rate desired and only uses the amount of air it needs for the cycle. meaning its no issue dealing with the inherent surface area to volume issue, and thermal transfer rates that stirling suffers from. and then, finally... its next to impossible to couple onto a turbine shaft, dealing with balancing, high speed bearings, thermal expansion, and critical shaft speeds... and a turbo charger is a single stage turbine... extremely inefficient unless run at ridiculously high speeds... go look up "gustav delaval"... at this point, the nozzle is the important part, converging diverging delaval nozzles... a "slow running" piston based approach is far easier to extract useful power from for a backyard rig. get out of the rut, stop limiting your thinking to one or two options. go back in history and reconsider some of the ideas they had back then. and arm yourself with the knowledge of how steam engines and turbines in general actually work.

@@bens8696 Already tried that it doesnt work. Wood fire has no exhaust pressure to turn anything else. The intake side is where the power is to a point. Ive tried running a turbo off the vacuum of the primary it restricts the air intake too much snuffing the fire. Even compounded the intake which only worked if the 2nd turbo was plumbed into the primary turbo. The game changes when you oil burn however that has exhaust pressure so that route is probably the only way for power generation. Wood fire seems too sensitive to air changes and just refuses to operate properly. I was going to just focus on fuel refining with the barrel since its super efficient at creating heat.

@@TauCu Its not the heat thats failing the turbo its the particulates from the wood.

Also to add, the primary problem with burn barrels is that turbos are made to operate by drive pressure to reduce turbine speed otherwise just bleeding off boost will cause the turbo to overspin and that’s what’s eating your bearings

@@rokuplayz464 Im using a wastegate not a bov. The pump is driven off the waste of the gate with the ball valve before the wastegate. The pump is a restriction so it builds enough pressure to still operate partially on wastegate which is how I can still spool the turbo up with the valve open. The bearings actually survived, it was the wheel that blew apart. Its not overspeeding at 25 psi Ive had this turbo to 40 psi and held it for over a minute on the last barrel design. The particulates from the wood kick up in the air stream and eat the wheel. Slowing the intake air velocity down with larger intake piping will probably fix most of that issue. Even running some form of expansion chamber pre turbo so the fire isnt directly on the turbine may also fix alot. Less heat on the turbine may make it less prone to failing from particulates. I have another method that I doubt has been tried, its almost a freak of physics if it works.

@@JETHO321 Tried it after this video. Its even worse tbh. It did make enough steam to turn the pump but I couldnt build enough heat without failing the turbo. The other issue is the smog pump doesnt like steam. The pressure loss at the smog pump was pretty bad, its not sealed very tightly so theres alot of blow by if you will with the vanes to housing. I first need to fix the failing turbo deal before I can push for power generation. Ill probably go back to the lay down tank with the v8 header. That thing was reliable. Pyrolosis or gasification seems a better route to focus on. The heat this thing can generate in a short period should be taken advantage of. Ive made burnable gasses in less than 5 minutes with it. Even the smoke from the oil tank is burnable.

@@doesentmatter Attempted that awhile back. It doesnt seem to work well with wood burning. Wood doesnt have exhaust pressure like oil burning does there actually isnt power on the exhaust side in this case.

@@tamasmoldvay2621 Theres no possible way to avoid the particulates on high boost. You cant run filters or a catylitic converter they will melt from the heat and restrict the exhaust gasses from escaping efficiently causing the system to not even run. The only way I see it possible to lower the particulates is to lower air velocity into the tank so it doesnt kick up the ash. Larger diameter intake pipes with a less efficient port into the tank may drop velocity enough to keep the turbo for longer. My previous barrel design had the turbo last over 40 runs at around 13 minutes each. This new design I think flows too much air and speed isnt what you want, its volume.

The turbo spins too fast (50-100K rpm), where an automotive alternator only spins 5-8K rpm. It would blow the rotor apart, if the turbo actually did manage to spin up with that much load on it.

@@danw1955 That's what a reduction gear would be used for.

@@brianmurphy8790 I get ya, but where do you find a reduction box that wouldn't put too much side load on the turbo bearings? 🤷‍♂ I wonder if some sort of Pelton wheel turbine (like they use for small scale hydro generators) would work on the pressure side of the turbine? I don't know what kind of water pressure they use, but a guy could play around with different size nozzles to maybe get to a reasonable power level?

@@olgacoupal-bergeron7633 It didnt burn completely the wheel failed from the particulates in the exhaust stream. The triple intake flows too much air velocity causing it to kick too much ash up. The last design didnt do that as much on high boost. I cant even get to full boost on this new one without failure.

@BoostHoundGP wow that's amazing. I was scare that not much energy was inside a bottle . How much psi do you have to your turbo journal bearing ?

@@olgacoupal-bergeron7633 cold oil sits around 80 psi, hot drops to about 30 psi. Running it up on boost drops it a few psi.

@BoostHoundGP 80 psi that's a lot . It dsnt toutch. Maybe it blows the seal because too much pressure ? I think 50 psi is a lot for a conventional turbo

@@olgacoupal-bergeron7633 If the turbo isnt moving the oil will blow past the seal. As long as its turning it seems completely fine.

@@iloverush123 I found the bearings were ok. The wheel blew apart. I use the wastegate air to cool the turbine housing. The egts are fine Ive ran these turbos pretty hot before. I think the issue is the air velocity from the triple intake is too high. The large amount of black smoke when spooling is the coals and ash being kicked up and put through the turbine wheel. I feel if I increased intake piping diameter it will drop velocity it will clean up the soot and save the turbo. I dont think I need to move the air that fast through the system.

@@BoostHoundGP Could you use some kind of cyclone separator and mesh for the feed to the turbo?

@@zcomputerwiz If you mean in before the turbine to prevent the ash then no, the heat is too great overtime any mesh or screen will melt and fail. Slowing the air speed in general is the only way I see that happening. Ash and coals are extremely light and take little air speed to blow away.

@@BoostHoundGP Right, the cyclone separator relies on the speed of the air and rotation to throw the particles out of the air stream - the faster the air the better. I think I saw that they work well for particles 5 microns or larger. I'm assuming smaller than that really shouldn't be an issue for the turbo? They do sell models that are solid aluminum, idk what temps you're reaching though you could easily build your own out of steel. They don't have to be perfect. Ah, I didn't realize it was still that hot right at the turbine inlet - wouldn't want molten metal ingestion lol

​@@BoostHoundGPI can only speak for the way turbos have been used in automotive applications in Asia and Europe, but it seems like you US guys try to control turbo boost like you're working with a supercharger. If you have a wastegate on the cold side it will open up, unload the compressor without a reduction in turbine gas flow, and the turbo will overspeed... while the turbine wheel is crazy hot. Japanese and European approach has been to wastegate the hot side instead, bypass some of the exhaust stream straight out of the exhaust stack, away from the turbine wheel completely. Boost is controlled by varying the flow to the turbine wheel without unloading the compressor, so the turbo rpm doesn't go to the moon. That, combined with a turbo that has both oil and coolant circuits in the core could give you something reliable.

@@lesslisilverman Its my channel I act as I feel. Theres no shortage of the main character syndrome today nobody cares if a big channel acts this way.

@@SlowPythonV1 I figured if you tightened the clearences on the housing it would hold more pressure and have more torque.

​@@BoostHoundGPtime for another round of belt sander head shaving eh? 😂

@@hunnybunnysheavymetalmusic6542 Ive had the car for 5 or so years. Its been on the channel multiple times.

@@PerpetualMan22 the turbo bearings are too delicate at these temps and the alignment needs to be exact to stay intact for any length of time.

@@hapanjuuri Thought about that at one point. You need some heavy duty valves to isolate the empty tank though. Any leak in the fire chamber tends to blow torch through.

@@eby6114 no, the thumping sound when it was running was the smog pumps compression.

@@danieldimitri6133 with a good system it dont take long to reload and refire if the coal bed isnt blown away. Wood fire has no exhaust pressure so turning things with the turbine wont work efficiently. Oil injection is a different story. With the turbo barrel they love to generate heat more than anything. I was going to use that heat for pyrolosis. To cook down plastics into liquid fuel to burn in piston engines. Basically gasification but with plastics.

@@ZachSwena Tried that in previous attempts. Wood doesnt produce exhaust pressure so powering things via exhaust wont work. The intake is where the power is atleast for wood. The smog pump seemed slow as it was hard to hear how fast it was turning. The turbo failed before I could spin the alternator up faster to really see if it could produce voltage. Other issue is the smog pump doesnt have tight enough clearences to hold the boost to spin more efficiently. Probably 70% loss just in that. Its all bunk if the turbo cant survive testing. I believe this design causes horrible internal turbulence because of how directed the air is towards the fire. My last setup was a lay down tank with an indirect placement of the turbo. That seemed to work better for keeping them together longer. Less turbulence less ash less failures.

@@BoostHoundGP try putting the turbo in series with the main turbo, the main exhaust turbo makes enough power to run the compressor, just needs a lot of speed reduction to run slower loads. Multi turbo setups are usually run in series not parallel. Also make sure you have a cool oil supply for that turbo, your oil is boiling hot.

@@ZachSwena you dont get it there is not enough exhaust on WOOD to power anything efficiently no matter where the turbos end up. Tried every configuration from triple compound to twin compound to divided twins. Nothing works as wood doesnt have exhaust expansion. Oil fuels have the required expansion to overcome the backpressures created from blocking the exhaust with a turbo. Most woodstoves run a massive free flowing exhaust with a damper to scavenge the gasses as wood naturally cant exhaust properly once enclosed in a chamber.

​@@BoostHoundGPthere is something wrong with your setup or understanding of it if that is what you have observed... You need either a high mass flow rate over a small pressure differential or a small mass flow rate over a larger pressure differential to make power. A burn barrel like this offers the opportunity for both of the restrictions and power generation is placed in the correct locations. Look up how a turboprop engine works, the only difference with wood will be the need for ember/particulate arrestors and more volume for the combustion chamber. As the boost goes up, the mass flow rate required to do work will decrease. Once the energy becomes mechanical it will need to be transformed to the correct rpm and torque required by your load. Even if enough power is available you won't see it if you connect a low speed high torque load to a high speed low torque but high power supply.

@@ZachSwena I know how the pto junk works. The issue with all that is as you increase mass flow or whatever the particulates in the exhaust exponentially grows with it. Meaning even if you throttle up to overcome backpressure to turn anything the particulates destroy the wheel well before you can actually use the energy produced. Coal and wood turbines have been attempted in large scale with the same problem with particulates as rpm and flow increase. Flow rates aside if the turbo cant withstand the particulates no power generation can be attempted period. Turboprops and any liquid fuel turbine dont have particulates in the fuel so more air in will work without risking the turbine. Heat and overspeed still play a role but theres less chance of failures on oil. Oil fuels also remove the exhaust on thier own with the expansion they produce once ignited. Wood simply dont work like that. Yes it requires the same variables for combustion but it doesnt produce the same effects. So its either lower the air flow down substantially to avoid kicking particulates or build an indirect burn chamber so the ash has time to settle out and possibly drop from the exhaust stream before the turbo. Injecting water pre turbo may dampen the ash too. The other way is to run an extremely large turbine with a small compressor so the system cant produce much backpressure but still is within the compressors map for usable boost to provide just enough air for the fire. Wood doesnt need much air flow to get roaring, you need to look at this from a wood burn perspective not oil burn. Ive run this on oil and it can withstand full boost more reliably because theres no particulates. Oil is also always the same each run unlike wood which can drastically change from tree to tree and each time you load it. Bugs, dirt, grain, rot it all plays a vital role in how much junk burns off the wood into the exhaust each pass so one run may work flawless the next run blows apart for no observable reason. Theres no point chasing power with wood, atleast directly. My next goal is to focus fully on gasification/pyrolosis to power a more reliable form of generator. I have actual tons of plastic to refine into burnable liquids. Its hard to run a 350 chevy on a 2x4 and gasifying wood with wood seems redundant so using wood to refine plastic seems a really good route. Im not trying to piss anybody off honestly I simply come up with this based on what I witness physically. If it doesnt align fully with whats known thats fine, thats how things were originally discovered anyway.

@@Modestas19920 Since its not specifically built around recouperation the heat transfer into the top tank isnt good enough for steam. I did test after with steam I only got 25 psi tank pressure before the turbo failed. Instead of directly using the barrel as a generator Im going to modify it into a gasifier for plastic refining. The heat transfer isnt as important (still is for good refining) since it doesnt need to turn anything just let it cook. Then condense the vapors to burn in a piston engine to turn a motor for electricity. The first barrel I built produced a burnable gas in 5 minutes so I know its possible.

@@mightyfinejonboy some marine oil transfer pump. It has 80 psi oil cold, drops to about 30 hot. Ive used it since I originally built my first barrel years ago.

@@ardennielsen3761 Ive had a lot of luck with these turbos. Pretty much all I use. When it comes to the barrel no turbo is safe no matter how much it costs.