Solar Driven low Resource Consuption Steam Engine Materials

[dbmorpher]

Hi I'm dbmorpher
For my local History fair I am basing my report on the Indutrial Evolution and it's Inventions namely the Steam Engine.
I wanted to know if there was an easy way to make a steam engine that was or had...

• Low cost parts
• No fuel such as coal or wood
• No need for complicated tools
• A small design (at most 2 and a half feet)

I was thinking about an engine that used the sun to heat the water but I am not familiar with any solar panel providers and do not know how to efficiently transfer heat. Any help would be appreciated.
Thank You.

 

[berkeman]

Hi I'm dbmorpher
For my local History fair I am basing my report on the Indutrial Evolution and it's Inventions namely the Steam Engine.
I wanted to know if there was an easy way to make a steam engine that was or had...

• Low cost parts
• No fuel such as coal or wood
• No need for complicated tools
• A small design (at most 2 and a half feet)

I was thinking about an engine that used the sun to heat the water but I am not familiar with any solar panel providers and do not know how to efficiently transfer heat. Any help would be appreciated.
Thank You.

It takes a fair amount of power to make steam (even a little of it), so using the sun or solar panels may not be practical for a small steam engine for a science fair.

I think the easiest way to do this is to make a small pot that sits on top of a standard hot plate (that you plug into the wall for power), and build your steam piston engine on top of the pot. You could have a single cylinder turn a flywheel with steam power, for example. The hardest part would be fitting the piston into the cylinder, because you need fairly good tolerances for that. But you might be able to adapt an old radio-controlled airplane engine to steam power (I'm not sure how hard that might be), or figure out some other simple way to get a piston fitted well into a cylinder (for low friction movement back and forth).

 

[berkeman]

BTW, I googled Science Fair Steam Engine and got a lot of hits:

http://www.google.com/webhp?sourcei...f.&fp=cc847418ca37430c&ion=1&biw=1234&bih=865

Maybe check out some of the hits to see how they did the piston/cylinder part...

 

[AlephZero]

I think the easiest way to do this is to make a small pot that sits on top of a standard hot plate (that you plug into the wall for power), and build your steam piston engine on top of the pot.

Don't try to make it too small. The power loss caused by badly fitting pistons etc will be proporionally worse for a small engine than a big one. Low pressure steam acting on a big piston area will generate as much force as higher pressure on a small area, but with a lot less leakage.

 

[dbmorpher]

Than You all for your help
I have an idea of what I am going to do now

 

[Bobbywhy]

You do NOT need to make a piston-cylinder mechanism to demonstrate steam power! You may start here to find the Greek inventor named Hero, who figured this out over two thousand years ago!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_of_Alexandria

Here, be sure to see the classroom models:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile

For hundreds of images of simple steam engines have a look here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=her...AHdg4GIAg&sqi=2&ved=0CDQQsAQ&biw=1333&bih=652

Cheers,
Bobbywhy

 

[ChaseRLewis73]

Solar driven for steam means Parabolic dishes. So you'll have to do something like a solar oven to boil it. Possibly even a cheap half-ball lens ($10-20) with the focal point on a heat exchanger section of your pipe. Large parabolic dish focused on a mirror directing to your ball lens should let you get a few hundred degrees if you have good summer quality sun. Parabolic dises alone can hit 300 or so degrees.

 

[dbmorpher]

Oh I had seen that image in a book I had read "A History of the Growth of the Steam Engine" I thought it to be theoretical not plausible