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Super Expansion Steam Engine
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Engineered to achieve unprecedented efficiency using low temperature steam.
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Built of super low thermal conductivity PEI plastic, steam is able to expand virtually 100% down to 0 psi, extracting every ounce of power. No power is lost in heating metal cylinders and pistons as in conventional steam engines.
Microcomputer controlled steam admission valves provide precise rpm regulation through continuously variable per-stroke cutoff point.
Enables any heating system, whether oil, wood, or solar to generate electricity at temperatures as low as 230 °F!
Add power generation without investing in solar PV (PhotoVoltaic) panels.
Turns 15% of your heating system's energy into electricity leaving 85% to be used as before. A small 50,000 BTU furnace generates 2 KWatts of electricity.
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Located in Maine, High Latitude Solar was founded in 2009 to develop residential / small commercial sized solar thermal collectors designed for efficient high temperature output in colder climates. Higher temperatures allow water heat storage systems to be smaller or to hold a larger amount of heat to carry through on cloudy days.
Following the successful development of our parabolic concentrator, the next logical step was to use the high temperatures to generate steam to run a steam engine and in turn a generator. Experiments with a small steam engine at the lower pressures more practically achievable by solar collectors revealed the exceptionally low efficiency of traditional engines. This led us to investigate why the generator's output power was so much less than what would be expected by a given quantity of steam at a given pressure input to the engine. Measurements showed that all the mechanical elements, i.e. piston seals, crosshead bearings, crank and crankshaft were nearly perfect at transferring the pressure of the steam on the piston to the output shaft. The only thing left was the steam itself. Use compressed air to run any steam engine and you'll notice the exhaust is ice cold. This chills the metal cylinder which in turn cools the incoming air causing it to reduce it's pressure. We utilized low thermal conductivity plastic to realize an engine tailored specifically for the lower temperature steam encountered by residential solar collectors and more practical for conventional furnaces.
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