Welcome to my DIY Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) home page.
The end goal of this project is to build several working turbine powered electric generators using different heat sources and of different output capacities. The purpose of these web pages are to chronicle the progress (or lack of) and to allow my friends, old and new, to follow along. I've heard it said that, "everyone needs a hobby",... this one is mine.
The first unit will be solar powered, using solar heat pipes to boil an organic working fluid, ideally generating 20 KW or more; however a unit of this size will require a very large solar collector area and may be outside my budget.
The second unit will be powered by a forced air vegetable oil burner heating a monotube boiler and will most likely use Toluene as the working fluid. This unit will be compact and mobile and as lightweight as possible with the goal of powering a car.
Pictured below is a very simple system configuration consisting of 4 major components, which are all composed of multiple sub-components.
The first unit will be solar powered, using solar heat pipes to boil an organic working fluid, ideally generating 20 KW or more; however a unit of this size will require a very large solar collector area and may be outside my budget.
The second unit will be powered by a forced air vegetable oil burner heating a monotube boiler and will most likely use Toluene as the working fluid. This unit will be compact and mobile and as lightweight as possible with the goal of powering a car.
Pictured below is a very simple system configuration consisting of 4 major components, which are all composed of multiple sub-components.
In time, this web site will contain one or more pages for each of these components and some of the specialized tools needed to fabricate them.
