Patent Application
20100314878
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection, there appearing notice herein consistent with the provisions of 17 U.S.C. 401. The copyright owner, herein the First Named Inventor, has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the direct generation of steam as motive flow to drive a turbine-driven, internal combustion, and/or other class of mechanical engine or device. It is useful in applications ranging from driving a turbine-driven electric power generating system, a turbine-driven mechanical drive-train, a piston-driven mechanical drive-train, and/or a turbine-driven reactive or turbojet-type propulsion system. The invention relates more particularly to a system using direct generation of steam motive flow by water-cooled combustion of hydrogen and oxygen gas feed-stocks, as well as using hydrogen and oxygen gas feed-stocks mixed with water to control the heat of combustion in an internal combustion engine environment. In the preferred embodiment, high-pressure hydrogen and high-pressure oxygen are the primary combustion fuels, generating high-energy stream of super-heated steam, into which water is directly injected to absorb heat in the process of vaporization, conditioning the motive flow body in a way that positively contributes to its volume and force.
From a theoretical perspective, using a stoichiometric fuel mixture that yields maximum heat energy release, and then effectively converting virtually all generated exothermic energy into superheated steam energy, highest-possible fuel-to-steam energy efficiencies should be attainable. In fact, integration of the design components inherent to the invention has produced a system capable of generating electricity using conventional steam-turbine technology with the added benefits of zero-wait-state black-start capability, and the potential for zero-level carbon footprint if feed-stocks are generated from surplus energy production as part of a renewable-energy co-generation strategy.
The generation of power via steam production driving the turbine blades of an electric generator in a power plant application is by far the most common method of producing electric power in the United States, as well as the rest of the world. With the relatively sudden awakening of the people of earth to the realities of global warming, and with the major blame for such impending catastrophic events as may result from that global warming being attributed to the burning of carbonaceous fuels, and to the generation of greenhouse gases that are inadvertently produced in the process, critical importance has been attached to the search for practical alternatives to the burning of coal and other fossil fuels in the generation of base-load electricity for public consumption.
Alternative sources of energy production, specifically wind and solar generation technologies, can be deployed in quantities sufficient to replace fossil-fuel fired generation during daylight hours and when the wind blows. However, co-generation must be employed to compensate for the inherently intermittent generational output of wind or solar renewable energy technologies, in order to condition, or “level” the load generated by both. Historically this task has been accomplished with those fossil-fuels that renewable energy technologies seek to replace, thereby inherently creating an unacceptable carbon footprint of its own as conventional co-generation facilities must maintain a constant ready-state of steam, requiring that the fires keep burning even when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining for days at a time. The waste of carbonaceous fuels is staggering.
Fortunately, steam-driven turbines operatively associated with generators to create large-scale electricity production have a very long and impressive track-record; there is no need to reinvent such technology.
There was some early work by researchers involved with the space program several years ago in developing a rudimentary system for generating a motive body directly by vaporizing pre-heated water using hydrogen and oxygen as a fuel source, in order to operate a gas turbine.
Hydrogen contains more energy potential in an oxidation reaction than any other known element. When combined with pure oxygen in stoichiometric proportion, as in the formula:
2H.sub.2+O.sub.2→2H.sub.2O
the water that is formed by the combustion reaction appears in the form of steam at temperatures exceeding 5,000° F.; at such temperatures the blades of a conventional steam turbine would not survive. Under pressures typical of modern turbine technology, stoichiometric hydrogen/oxygen combustion generates in excess of 6,000° F., making it the highest-energy oxidation/combustion reaction known to physical chemistry.
The concept of driving a conventional turbine with these products of combustion historically has been regarded as inefficient at best, and subsequently dismissed as an impractical approach. The heat of combustion of the reaction has always been seen as an undesirable by-product requiring physical dissipation in order to prevent the relatively fragile blades of commercial turbines from melting. Attempts to cool the steam body before entering a turbine inlet for the most part consisted of passing pipes through heat exchangers, imparting the excess heat to circulating water. Ultimately the result was a steam-body cool enough to pass through a turbine, but the amount of energy lost to the cooling process resulted in unacceptably low efficiencies, and the approach was never considered commercially viable.
There appears to have been little subsequent interest from those researchers within the steam turbine and power generation industries, as coal was plentiful and cheap in a time when greenhouse gases were the stuff of a radical fringe of doom-and-gloom proponents, and in a time when the concept of “carbon footprint” did not yet exist.
The work of Edward V. Somers, an engineer for Westinghouse Electric Corporation, was based on original design concepts proposed by Escher Technology Associates in a study done for Rocketdyne, a division of North American Rockwell, and was the basis for a 1979 patent given to a rudimentary version of the process described below, in which a pre-heated water stream substrate was heated to a conditioned-steam state using hydrogen and oxygen combustion in a closed chamber. Pressure was presumably regulated by regulating the flow of heated water into the chamber. Although there was no feedback or control associated with the system, it did acknowledge that the water-steam substrate flow entering the combustion chamber would absorb significant heat when hydrogen and oxygen were ignited in a manner similar to work being done in rocket engine research at Rocketdyne's location in southern California at the time.
Somers' invention specified the use of a gas turbine, which would normally burn natural gas and air to drive the turbine, rather than steam generated by any source; the high-humidity environment characteristic of a body of steam as motive flow, would not normally be compatible with gas turbine systems. Intermediate-pressure and low-pressure turbine stages were envisioned along with re-heating provisions, although water supplies to the combustion chambers generating motive fluid for them were not included in the Somers patent. The process was never adopted commercially, and the patent granted it has subsequently expired.
With the rise in the development of renewable energy technologies and the subsequent deployment of those technologies throughout the world, the need for co-generation of intermittent load power production came into being. Conventional fossil fuel generation was the only available source for this co-generation, the waste and environmental liabilities of this source of co-generated power considered acceptable liabilities inherent to the process. Only recently has fossil-fuel co-generation been recognized as a significant contributor to global warming and the proliferation of greenhouse gases. The present invention in the preferred embodiment represents the first availability of local storage of intermittent renewable energy generation, and subsequent retrieval using readily-available existing technology, resulting in pre-conditioned, 100% renewable balanced load capable of being used by commercial utilities without co-generation on their part.
Hydrogen and oxygen can be produced on a commercial scale using readily-available existing technology from electric power generated from a variety of renewable sources. Using an algorithm in which a wind-generated load can be analyzed and divided between above-median output and below-median output, the former being diverted into hydrogen production and storage while the latter is loaded onto the grid for consumption, co-generation can be accomplished with a zero-level carbon-emissions footprint. Perhaps most importantly, the present invention in one embodiment provides that co-generation capacity utilizing a zero-wait-state system, capable of bringing a turbine up to full operating capacity with immediately-available and optimally-conditioned steam motive flow.
The present invention is generally related to the early work of Escher and his associates, and of Somers at Westinghouse, in that it provides in one embodiment a turbine-driven power generation plant, using steam as the motive fluid necessary to produce electric power output. In subsequent embodiments the present invention is only tangentially-related to the prior art.
The present invention also uses a fuel mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, “with the combustion process cooled by the introduction of water or steam” as Mr. Somers states in his patent summary. However, in this invention, the generation of steam at the first stage combustion chamber does not rely on the preheating of water prior to cooling the products of primary fuel combustion. The system relies on the combustion of hydrogen and oxygen for the primary motive fluid source, the sole product of that combustion being superheated steam, the heat of which is absorbed by the process of vaporizing a supplemental injection of water into the motive body of superheated steam, thereby conditioning the motive body by reducing its temperature to one optimum for the specific application for which the motive body is generated. In contrast, the prior art relied on a pressurized, pre-heated water substrate flow as the primary source of steam production, using a hydrogen/oxygen gas flow of unspecified quantity, with an unspecified control or regulatory mechanism, and then subsequent combustion of that gas-mixture to heat the water-flow substrate to sufficient levels to operate a gas turbine.
In the present invention, the combustion of hydrogen and oxygen within the combustion chamber creates a motive fluid body of supercritical, or superheated steam in a temperature range approaching 6,000° F., far in excess of the melting point of the most durable turbine-blade component materials. The system is designed to accept a high-pressure injection of water into the body of the superheated motive body stream downstream of the point of combustion, instantly vaporizing the water and absorbing heat in proportion to the volume of water and the latent heat of vaporization, and adding substantive contributory volume to the total motive fluid body in the process.
Regulatory control of water-flow and gaseous feed-stock flow is provided by a computerized central control system, based on data transmitted to it by a thermocouple sensor array subsystem that transmits temperature information to said central control system, and by a pressure-transducer sensor array subsystem that transmits pressure information to said central control system. Each sensor array subsystem is located in the immediate proximity of the steam intake port of the specific application, connected in motive flow communication with the steam-generating engine.
The computerized central control system regulates individual hydrogen and oxygen gas flow-rates, water injectate flow-rate, and overall system efficiency of one or a plurality of steam-generating engine systems, producing optimally-conditioned steam motive bodies in the preferred embodiment, by actuating servo-driven automated flow-regulating valves for each of the three fluid components deployed in the system.
In one embodiment as represented in
Power is thus produced with virtually no startup delay, as steam is generated on demand. Deployment of the invention in a co-generation strategy in which surplus renewable energy production is converted to hydrogen and oxygen feed-stocks for storage, and subsequently used to generate steam using the present invention to drive a conventional steam turbine-generator system, and thereby regenerating electricity on demand marks the first system for immediately-available, on-demand retrieval of stored energy derived 100% from a renewable energy generation source to reach the utility industry and the consumer marketplace.
In another embodiment not represented by a Drawing, the system is used for driving a steam-turbine to generate rotational force imparted to a flywheel or driveshaft by way of a clutch-control mechanism, for further impartation to motive or other power applications.
In another embodiment not represented by a Drawing, the system is used for driving a piston-type mechanical steam engine of the type that arguably started the industrial revolution, as exemplified by, though not limited to, the steam locomotive or myriad rotating-wheel engines of the last two-hundred or more years.
In another embodiment not represented by a Drawing, the system is used for driving a steam-turbine to generate turbojet-type Newtonian reactive forces imparted to a motive vector for a variety of uses including but not limited to aviation or extra-atmospheric, and/or land and/or rail vehicular applications.
The system in the preferred embodiment, when deployed in an electric power generation application using steam-driven turbines, is closed with respect to net water consumption by the system; the system generates primary fuel by consuming electricity and water, and then the system returns virtually all the water, condensing exhaust steam at the completion of the power cycle to return that water via the condensate pump system to its place of origin within the system.
In other embodiments in which exhaust must necessarily discharge into the atmosphere because of the inherent design of the application, water will neither be consumed nor destroyed, consistent with principles of Conservation of Matter. Discharged vapor will simply enter the normal cycle of atmospheric and meteorological events and systems within which water is continuously recycled by nature.
In another embodiment not represented by a Drawing, the system is used for driving a mobile-type railroad locomotive electricity generator, for the purpose of creating motive force to the locomotive, thereby moving a train of railroad cars. The railroad industry potential of the invention is dramatic, as by its very nature a locomotive is inherently capable of pulling large bulk stores of water and fuel feed-stocks over long geographic distances, enabling it to travel from coast-to-coast without refueling.
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an oxygen gas storage system B, supplying pressurized primary-fuel-oxidizer oxygen gas under pressure imparted to the oxygen gas supply by oxygen gas feed pump T, such that oxygen gas fuel (oxidizer) stock is supplied under pressure greater than that pressure found within the combustion chamber and the communicating application inlet, said oxygen gas feed pump T thereby supplying oxygen gas to a primary oxygen gas supply valve, which in the preferred embodiment is represented by automated servo-controlled valving comprising the oxygen flow-control subsystem M, through which the oxygen gas supply must flow en route to the combustion chamber E; and,
a water supply storage system H, supplying water to a deaerator system Q that removes corrosive gases and other components from the water supply, and thence to a boiler feed pump R to impart pressure in excess of combustion chamber pressure and corresponding turbine inlet pressure, the flow of water then regulated by automated servo-controlled valving comprising the water flow-control subsystem K through which it must flow en route to the combustion chamber E; and,
a water recovery subsystem comprised of exhaust steam extracted from turbine F, from which that exhaust steam is: (a) either ported to compressor J before being ported to the multi-stage reheat process functions of a given specific application; or alternately (b) exhaust steam is ported to a condenser unit subsystem I, from which condensate is subsequently recovered and thence is ported via condensate pump P, to the main holding reservoir of water supply system H for recirculation through the system.
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For purposes of analyzing the system of the present invention, it can be assumed to conform to the following conditions:
