If I'm not mistaken (and I very well could be), TECs' power output is directly related to the thermal gradient across the cell. The larger the temperature difference, the greater the power. So, it doesn't matter how hot the interior of the inner chamber is if the exterior is also heating up. 400 on the 'hot' side vs. 200 on the 'cold' side produces less power than '300' on the hot side vs. '50' on the cold side.
I think that the temperature difference is related to the voltage, which the current is linearly proportional to (and the power quadraticly proportional)
Yes, and they often have different efficiencies depending on the actual temperature. They tend to be much more efficient when the cold side is at room temperature than when the cold side is closer to 100C, even for the same delta T across them.
if he's using a TEC that's one mistake right there. he needs modules designed for generation efficiency aka TEG. they look the same and are easily confused for one another. the model names for them tell you what they are, like a TEC1-12706 or TEG1-199-1.4-0.5 SP modules are also TEGs
@@darkshadowsx5949 ahh! My mistake. I didn't realize there was a difference. I believe he says TEG in the video, so I'll assume he was correct and is using TEGs. Would I still be correct in the statement that TEGs' voltage output is directly proportional to the thermal gradient/difference in temps across the device?
@@danyg4063 I am pretty sure Paradieshenne is still correct and power output is quadraticly proportional to the temperature gradient. Technically it is a modified logistic curve, with the power being almost proportional to the square of the temperature gradient in the generator's peak operating ranges.
You definitely need insulation and even flow of air across the whole heatsink. TEC's really hate uneven heating and cooling, if even just a small part of a TEC is hotter then the rest it eats in to your power output!
@@krokozorarmoar1891 I don't think that would be needed, the big issue is how even the heating and dissipation are, not the rate. Plus, if the generator has to power itself and the cart a pump will be counterproductive to those aims.
@@shadowtheimpure well probably. but liquid bath with little circulation for sure will redistribute heat more evenly and have enough thermal mass to work for some time. at least temperature inside one TEC will be more even for sure. though only on cooling side.
I actually quite like the current finish of the Furnace. Reminds me of the early Minecraft modded furnace generators. A metal-looking furnace is basically exactly what they looked like, and a furnace that produced electricity instead of cooking things is basically exactly how they worked, so I think this actually works perfectly! :D
one big efficiency loss is in the exhaust of the furnace, which is literally just venting an immense amount of thermal energy to the atmosphere in steam engine boilers, the exhaust of the firebox runs through a set of tubes running down the entire length of the boiler, the goal being to extract as much energy as possible from the hot exhaust, and i would actually say that the exhaust is probably where the majority of the energy is going, and it should maybe be the focus of your attention, placing several heatsinks directly in the exhaust flow to gather energy from it before it is discarded
Joel, have you tried characterising the TEGs you're using in a single-TEG, no regulator scenario? It sounds very much like you might need to back to basics in order to reduce the number of variables you're working with. Maybe make a miniature proof of concept model for your heater/TEG/cooler sandwich and take it from there. Your electrical insulation between hot and cold is the only obvious issue as far as i can tell, but it would help to be able to prove this in isolation.
Wanted to write something like this and then read it. I think with tweaking and further investigation you may be able to build something pretty cool (but maybe not moving a mine cart cool). Mount the heat sinks outside the whole thing. Right now your TEG's are heating up but since the heatsinks are still monted inside the outer shell you're just not getting the best temperature differential. Try also to provide air to the coal fire from below into the fire grate and let normal convection remove the exhaus instead of trying to pull the exhaust through. Don't know if you added a motor speed controller (try a simple PWM and mosfet setup with low-ish frequency) to controll the fan speed motor. Keep in min that your TEG capabilities are limited so try the get most out of a smaller fire instead of cranking up the heat and getting terrible efficiëncy. And while TEG's are cool, they are still know to be very fussy. Nasa may use these to good effect but do radiate their heat out into a very cold outer space. I do believe though that TEG's have a future of development aheaad of them. Where PV-panels were once (not-so-secretly) laughed at as a niche application in space. I believe TEG's have future potential. Keep up the hun and development. Do not rush it and take one step at a time so that you have a good grasp on everyting you do. Consider aiming for a minimal TEG voltage output so that you can pump it into an accumulator (battery) and regulate the system off of that battery voltage. But I admire the gritt and the learning journey. I've been there as well. Still am
Thank you for the honest video. I often see flawless videos from other creators which lowers my self-esteem. In almost all my projects I face unexpected problems and seeing other people are struggling too helps to keep track of reality. Thank you 🙏
Oh so goooood! I love the effort, and now I can look forward to 5X the electrical output. I KNOW you'll do it... SOMEHOW! You pay so much attention to details I don't even notice until the 3rd or 5th viewing! You should make full length movies! Congrats!
The thermal electric cells are probably rated at peak efficiency, meaning extremes on both ends, you would need liquid nitrogen on the cooling side to get anywhere near peak wattage, but if the goal is to run on only combustibles, two ideas come to mind. 1. There is more room for thermal electric cells with some space optimization. Just avoid stacking them. A furnace with less width, more hight and depth, with heat sinks parallel to airflow should increase thermal capture and release while adding more room for cells and cooling heatsinks. 2. Optimizing the use of exhaust could get you very far. (exhausting out the front is a bad idea as wind will oppose the exhaust when the furnace-minecart is in motion, make that port aesthetic and move all exhaust to the top back, the wind will then feed the furnace so fans don't waste your power. Also, a tall chimney will utilize your exhaust through convection to generate more free airflow without much need for fans.
It's highly unlikely that they'd have spec'd those parts at cryogenic absolute temps. These have real applications and any part trying to pad its numbers that hard would never survive outside the lab. The datasheet would specify the ambient temp and the delta for their maximum output/efficiency points.
@@dustinbrueggemann1875 TECs work on temperature differential, the greater the difference the more power they put out and are used in places where you need low but constant power... Like in the arctic or space where you can have a large differential.
@@SilvaDreams No, Dustin's right. To get the power output as specced, look at the datasheet. It would be straight up dishonest if they were specified to have the cold side be cryogenic. Besides, just saying "mOrE TeMpeErAtUrE DifFeReNtIaL!!!1" has uh, limitations. The materials can't survive arbitrary temperatures.
Idea for the pixels: if you use the CNC for drawing, you could use dithering, i.e. have differently spaced dot grids inside each pixel to represent darker and lighter shades when viewed from a distance. The farther the dots are spaced apart, the lighter the shade. Should work great here 👍🏻
You need to put the air hole lower in the coal chamber, roughly at the same level with the burning coals. Cause you are not only fueling air to the coals, you are taking away hot air.
I really like the unique approach to powering the cart, it's awesome to see the effort you're putting into it. I also really appreciate that you include the parts that didn't go to plan, the solutions to those problems are really interesting.
You could water cool the cold sides and then run the cooling water through a radiator on the front of the minecart. Together with better insulation that should improve performance quite a bit.
@@squishmellow3 Microsoft bought the game company mojang and the games IP, so essentially mojang is sub company of Microsoft. its not one company building a game for another company as your comment might suggest.
@@darkshadowsx5949 mojang are the developers, Microsoft owns the company which houses the developers. Microsoft can say what to add and mojang will have to listen, but the developers have not changed
Great project. Few thoughts: - Cuts aluminum sheet with a CNC? Lol. You can use standard woodworking tools to cut aluminum. A jigsaw, a circular saw, a table saw, just fine. But it's loud. - Titanium screws and plates? Ugh. Makes almost zero difference. The thermal mass combined with the difference between that and steel, yields probably less than 1% difference from using steel. - Cabinet hinges was a great idea. Really slick and clever application. - Your heatsink fins are horizontal, that jams up airflow. You have to pull air sideways rather than just let it rise. - All those insulator plates are too much thermal mass and too much thermal conduction, I bet you're losing most of your energy though that. - TEMs require a thermal difference obviously, and the bigger the thermal difference the more power you can pull from them. So, more aggressive cooling on the coolsinks would make them work a lot better. Even bonding them to the outside of the case, you have that massive aluminum sheet as a potential heatsink. Likewise for thermal mass inside, a copper plate or even just a big slab of steel to soak up energy in the combustion chamber would help keep the hot side hot. - Clamping load on heatsinks is often underestimated for efficient thermal transfer. It wouldn't surprise me if you needed several tons of clamping force to keep those surfaces in contact. The thermal compound is still a terrible heat conductor compared to metal, it's only there to fill in the microscopic surface features between the metal plates. You want the metal touching metal as much as possible, the thinnest lay possible (with excess squished out with clamping pressure) can make a 300% difference.
nice work, i did something similar with peltier modules to add a fan to a central heating radiator ran off the radiators heat. 1. if you mount the larger outer heatsinks with the fins orientated vertically you can make use of convection currents to aid airflow. 2. you could repurpose/reuse the expelled (cell cooling) air into the exhaust using a manifold to make it suck air through the exhaust. this would delete the wasted energy on the exhaust fan your currently using. 2a. you could also repurpose this hotter heatsink air into the fire/furnace intake aswell....recycle some more heat. 3. its possible your exhaust fan is also cooling the internal furnace heatsinks with too much airflow. 4. you already mention insulation, it will definately help. (edit) point 1 will also address your modules being at a uneven distance from your heatsource. the top ones will be cooler and therfore flow less electricity, actually being slightly restrictive in energy output to the other two hotter cells.
I am glad you did not make any complicated steam boiler. I wonder though if a flash boiler would have been a safer alternative if it were only driving a turbine for electricity. As for a stirling motor good luck getting any meaningful power without a high pressure atmosphere in it. I guess an alternative you could have done was like gasification to power an engine. Either way I support the route you have chosen and I am hoping to see your success.
nice job on the project! keep at it, I'm sure it will get there eventually. After you get the furnace cart fully functioning, perhaps make another minecart with no power, just a box on wheels to make a minecart train.
I really appreciate seeing you grow. You are really pushing yourself but you're pulling it off. I love to see you just doing it and doing it well. The quality on your recent projects is incredible.
You are such a Geek and I freakin lovin' it my friend 😎 though I dunno a crap bout minecraft... This is def one of the coolest projects yet, rly love the details and solutions you have made. 🤓 Just awesome!
Great video! I love your Minecraft inspired creations. At 12:20 it was literally my boyfriend on our last vacation, trying to get a coal fire going so I could get s’mores. I love him haha. Your reaction was so relatable.
This is awesome 😊 a really interesting sophisticated project. Thanks for the insights, describing the struggles and challenges you have had. Your project is so slick and well thought out. I struggle with getting knocked down by the details and hardships of a project. Seeing you produce a slick project but letting us know it's hard behind the scenes and how persevered helps me feel better when I stumble in a project, to try and push through thanks.
when he explained that liking and subscribing actually gives him the budget he need, i subscribed for two reasons, to not miss out on what other stuff like this he has, but for the reason he explained.
Thoughts. Insulate the core so the hot and cold parts are more separate. Maby direct the airflow more efficent trough the cold side heatsink. This would make a huge diffrence. If I understand those plates you are using, the bigger diffrence between hot and cold make bigger voltage. For fun, try cooling the cold side with ice and look if you can gain bigger out put.
Dude fantastic project and video! Very excited to see how you come up how to make it run the cart. I’m 3/4 of the way finishing a furnace build of my own that will smelt down metal like in the game.
Amazing! The creativity that Minecraft inspires within the game and outside of it, the things people learn, do and create thanks to MC is just mind blowing. I myself got into metal casting and ended up on YT because of a MC modpack called Feed the Beast. I have learned so much because of MC, and now I have learned about thermoelectric generator systems. Thanks Joel!!! This is some A Grade content! Keep these awesome projects going, you have more than earned my subscription 👍👊
I think you're going to need a big redesign here unfortunately to get the efficiency you need. Combine the airflow systems so you can get more airflow with the same power draw. Intake> cooling> furnace> exhaust. I'm thinking the fins of a large heatsink could be used as an exhaust path, putting a flat sheet over the top and blocking alternate fins for exhaust gas to snake through like a radiator, and using exhaust port heatsinks like this for each TEC. I'm assuming a lot of JB weld and cut a bit out of alternating fins for the airflow so its something like this _________________________________________l Or if it needs more airflow then double up on the fins like this ____________________________________________ ____________________________________l l ^ ________________________________< l l____________________________________< l >______________________________________ ^ l >________________________________________l Hopefully the format isn't changed so the diagrams look like they do for me
2:45 this moment right here gave me flashbacks to ElectroBOOM's video "Making Cooler/Generator with Thermoelectric Device" and got excited because I was like "Oh! I've seen this before". Amazing work, keep it up!
Just a stupid thought, but I feel it is an interesting concept: If you had like a big heatsink sticking out the top of the furnace or something along the lines of that, the wind, from the minecart moving, would cool the heatsinks, in turn making the Peltier modules more efficient, thus generating more electricity for the minecart to move faster, generating more wind, etc...
another problem that's relatively obvious to me is the fact that the hottest air from the coals are immediately "sucked" out via the central pipe, having little to no chance to warm the plates... a problem Benjamin Franklin faced when he tried to remake the household furnace
One problem with normal buck converters is they don't track the maximum power point of the input, meaning that if you draw a bit too much current, the input voltage will crash as it tries to draw too much current from the supply to keep the output voltage up. What you want is to have an MPPT-based buck converter feeding your load. Unfortunately I don't know of any efficient ones that work at low currents and voltages. You might get away with a circuit like William Fraser's "Solar MPPO" where you set the desired input voltage with a potentiometer and it bucks to whatever voltage it can reach at that input voltage.
*@Joel Creates* 7:40 You could "recycle" the air for an even more efficient burn. Not sure how exactly, but the principle is like this: Take cold air from the outside & let it pass over the heat-sink while it's as cool as possible, (then maybe let the air go up in the upper compartment?) Then use those fans to push the now pre-heated air into the coal burning box, to create a more oxygen saturated flame that is hotter, and only THEN let air exit the furnace, but preferably draw the air an extra round past the hot side of the heat-sink-area to really push in the last heat into them (like how Tiled Stoves rout their hot air to get out as much heat as possible). Good luck.
Very respectable video. Not many people are willing to show the part of the creative process where things don't work and having to do major redesigns. Good on you man
For the finish, I would suggest electrical etching. It is fairly safe to do on aluminum, and pretty easy too! Depending on how long you do it, the finish can be different.
Basically a fancy Peltier unit. Your thermal inefficiencies because of heat. Current is generated by a differentiation in temperature. The temperature on the outer plate is too hot. Liquid cool it. Isolate the heat sinks and add a liquid coolant to it and a reservoir. These work so well for satalites because space is pretty cold, and thin.
The highest temperature observed during the tests was 1921 F. A rocket stove was constructed of sheet metal using a 5”diameter by 12”tall ceramic fiber “riser sleeve” for an insulated chimney. The feed magazine was 3” high by 4 ½” wide with an adjustable flap at the top to control the free air entering above the level of the feed shelf.
Few points for improvements. Most have been mentioned by others. 1) The greater the difference between your heating and your heat sinks cooling the more power you will get out of your TEG. 2) Quality of your thermal grease/paste will affect your transfer rate. 3) Insulation will also help. To ensure that all the heat is going through your heat sinks and your TEG rather then going into the air around it. 4) While moving the smoke away via a pipe is good. You are losing heat. So rooting that with some heat pipes to your TEG would give you more power.
as a blacksmith it made me chuckle to see you try to light up coal with a blowtorch, it reminded me of when i was a beginner. Yeah you have to put the coal in an already red hot fire... And good idea having a good air flow in the chamber, coal doesnt burn well, you need constant oxygen supply. Charcoal will burn without additional air flow , and will give off a lot of heat quickly. wood will just gunk up everything, except if the whole contraption becomes hot enough to burn the tar off
for the body of the furnace. I wonder if you could find some sort of stain or chemical that reacts with the aluminum, to form a darker part of the plates.
7:00 I would have intervals of color per pixel from the top left part of each, this is because there is less black per pixel yet it still looks somewhat decent.
Here’s an idea… Make a second cart, use the furnace to hide everything inside, and hook the crankshaft of the steam engine to an alternator, keep the battery as a backup power source, but the alternator will do all the heavy lifting whilst the cart is in motion, much like a car, a voltage regulator to regulate the motor speed, and a coupling between the two carts
It'll run slower even at the cells full capacity, and it might need gearing to get it rolling, but it'll work if you optimise it some more! Honestly I'd be really interested in seeing the optimisation process itself, data and all! Throw in some charts and I'll watch even an hour long video from you Though as for alternative ideas.. there would be the option to go halfway steam powered. As in, you keep the Peltier modules, but use water to cool them down If they manage to get so hot as to make the water boil enough, you could use that steam for some extra power by either running a turbine, or connecting it directly to the driveshaft somehow
I missed this video when it came out, but this is VERY cool. One thought is that you want to pass oxygen through the coal. To do this on a steam locomotive, oxygen comes from under the firebox, then is exhausted through the stack. That airflow through the grates and coal itself is critical to full even combustion. Might be worth looking at an old furnace motor, as they can handle the heat during fire up. That's what I used on my old steam engine. Also may be worth trying a fan outside the airflow to create a vacuum in the firebox.
Joel, the exhaust from the coal burning carries most of the heat energy from the fire. If you want to significantly improve your efficiency, I suggest directing the exhaust near the thermocouples as well. Also, you should be able to copy alot of ideas from boiler design. That said, 200 years of research has gone into developing practices for safe boiler building and operation. In addition, a watertube boiler should contain shrapnel in the extremely unlikely event of an explosion. Just follow engineering best practices and you'll be fine.
Maybe mask off some of the squares, and sand them in the other direction The different direction of the scratches might give a different shade of aluminium
Also your technique for lighting coal is exactly how we do it on real steam locomotives. Usually we'll start the fire on wooden pallets or something else the burns easily, then transition the fire over to coal.
i personally absolutely love steam power, but this is also VERY cool! I think in general, insulating the main chamber from the airflow which cools the heatsinks is one of the major improvements which could be done. what could also be done to increase effiiciency, is use a smaller combustion chamber, and have the exhaust pipe route through where the hot side of the thermoelectric elements are. you get roughly the same power output but for less coal. the idea is it removes more energy from the coal, since currently all the hot air just quickly moves out of the way and wastes heat. this is why in steam trains, the exhaust from the boiler is what runs through the water tank and thus heats the water.
With the current finish and with the way it generates electricity instead of cooking materials REALLY reminds me of the generator from Industrial Craft 2
F1 also does this, it takes (excess) energy from the turbo and turns it into electricity to charge it's hybrid battery. Also the battery can power the turbo at low engine RPMs
You've basically made the furnace generators you start out with to get power in some tech mods. They actually look more metal like that rather than a vanilla furnace.
This sounds like it could be turned into a grill that both cooks your food and charges your phone or even powers a TV depending on how much power it makes. Imagine this as camping gear where you can power your stuff with the excess heat while you cook your food.
I've realised, what you should try to do is to make "I" shaped coal buring areas, so it can maximize surface now only that, but make sure they're ways for the air to scape, so it the diference bewteen the outer and inner temperature is higher, that would help on creating a higher voltage
I would try a vinyl print for the outside, but if you wanted to do it the fun way you could try 3d printing a super thin lithograph to glue on the metal to increase the color gradient and even texture
Lots of good info about TECs here. One small suggestion about your fasteners, iirc you can shave down the bolts at the air gap to reduce the amount of cross-sectional area that heat can conduct through. I wonder if welding up a double wall vacuum insulated box for the “hot” box would net enough extra insulation for the amount of headache?
I think for a redesign of the furnace first you would need to chop down a tree, and you have some logs, now you need to open your inventory and put the logs in the crafting menu to make planks. Then with those planks place one piece of wood in each slot and then you have a crafting table. So with the crafting table place it down and craft some planks into sticks and make a wooden pickaxe, then mine some stone to get cobblestone and craft a furnace! Also get some coal to fuel it, next step for the minecraft is to make a cobblestone pickaxe and then mine 5 pieces of iron, smelt it and then place the iron in the crafting tables three bottom slots and left spot middle rowand right spot middle row and boom you have a minecart, now place your minecart and furnace in the crafting table and you're done you have yourself a furnace minecart
Biolite campstove is a great example of a TEG for a practical use being a wood burning, fan forced camp cooker and due to it being fan forced combustion is 100% so no smoke.
Looks great! I have a few recommendations to get it working to it’s fullest. To get enough power from the TEGs to power the motor and increase efficiency, I would recommend putting heat pipes into the hot side of the TEGs that would distribute the heat more evenly to from the coal to the TEGs, because if they are not heated evenly they produce a lot less electricity. If you buy heat pipes you absolutely NEED to get high temperature heat pipes that can withstand high temperatures where normal ones would explode. If you don’t have the money for the high temp heat pipes I would just recommend to put copper slabs to distribute the heat. Another thing I would do is to maybe put more thermal grease on the TEGs so that it would fill all the gaps, but this isn’t that necessary if you don’t want. The last thing I would do is to put some fans directly on the heat sinks for the cool side of the TEGs because the more the temperature difference between the sides, the more electricity it produces. You could either use the vent holes you already have for the fans or you could just make some vent holes. I hope this may help! ps. this was copy and pasted from my community post comment
![Tesla Turbine [Smoke Flow Slow Mo]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qL3kCawHMqk/mqdefault.jpg)
If I'm not mistaken (and I very well could be), TECs' power output is directly related to the thermal gradient across the cell. The larger the temperature difference, the greater the power. So, it doesn't matter how hot the interior of the inner chamber is if the exterior is also heating up. 400 on the 'hot' side vs. 200 on the 'cold' side produces less power than '300' on the hot side vs. '50' on the cold side.
I think that the temperature difference is related to the voltage, which the current is linearly proportional to (and the power quadraticly proportional)
Yes, and they often have different efficiencies depending on the actual temperature. They tend to be much more efficient when the cold side is at room temperature than when the cold side is closer to 100C, even for the same delta T across them.
if he's using a TEC that's one mistake right there. he needs modules designed for generation efficiency aka TEG.
they look the same and are easily confused for one another.
the model names for them tell you what they are, like a TEC1-12706 or TEG1-199-1.4-0.5
SP modules are also TEGs
@@darkshadowsx5949 ahh! My mistake. I didn't realize there was a difference. I believe he says TEG in the video, so I'll assume he was correct and is using TEGs. Would I still be correct in the statement that TEGs' voltage output is directly proportional to the thermal gradient/difference in temps across the device?
@@danyg4063 I am pretty sure Paradieshenne is still correct and power output is quadraticly proportional to the temperature gradient. Technically it is a modified logistic curve, with the power being almost proportional to the square of the temperature gradient in the generator's peak operating ranges.
wow at this rate we wont need mc vr we have joel 😂
True
We'll have Minecraft RR (real reality)
Life is Minecraft
@@JoelCreates minecraft is life
Vivecraff
You definitely need insulation and even flow of air across the whole heatsink.
TEC's really hate uneven heating and cooling, if even just a small part of a TEC is hotter then the rest it eats in to your power output!
probably liquid cooling then?
@@krokozorarmoar1891 I don't think that would be needed, the big issue is how even the heating and dissipation are, not the rate. Plus, if the generator has to power itself and the cart a pump will be counterproductive to those aims.
sounds like a solar grid without micro inverters. if one panel gets shaded the entire systems efficiency drops.
@@shadowtheimpure well probably. but liquid bath with little circulation for sure will redistribute heat more evenly and have enough thermal mass to work for some time. at least temperature inside one TEC will be more even for sure.
though only on cooling side.
I actually quite like the current finish of the Furnace. Reminds me of the early Minecraft modded furnace generators. A metal-looking furnace is basically exactly what they looked like, and a furnace that produced electricity instead of cooking things is basically exactly how they worked, so I think this actually works perfectly! :D
Came here looking for this comment. It looks like and works just like an IC2 generator!
Saw this video being mentioned on Hackaday and I immediately thought about the IC2 Generator.
one big efficiency loss is in the exhaust of the furnace, which is literally just venting an immense amount of thermal energy to the atmosphere
in steam engine boilers, the exhaust of the firebox runs through a set of tubes running down the entire length of the boiler, the goal being to extract as much energy as possible from the hot exhaust, and i would actually say that the exhaust is probably where the majority of the energy is going, and it should maybe be the focus of your attention, placing several heatsinks directly in the exhaust flow to gather energy from it before it is discarded
Everybody chilling untill this person creates a fully functional command block
/kill @e
/give @s usa_franklyn_dollar 999999
Everybody chilling untill this person creates the wither storm
@@GameGearActerinaLet it loose in Florida and no one will know the difference
Everyone’s chilling until they use /kill all
Joel, have you tried characterising the TEGs you're using in a single-TEG, no regulator scenario? It sounds very much like you might need to back to basics in order to reduce the number of variables you're working with. Maybe make a miniature proof of concept model for your heater/TEG/cooler sandwich and take it from there. Your electrical insulation between hot and cold is the only obvious issue as far as i can tell, but it would help to be able to prove this in isolation.
Wanted to write something like this and then read it. I think with tweaking and further investigation you may be able to build something pretty cool (but maybe not moving a mine cart cool). Mount the heat sinks outside the whole thing. Right now your TEG's are heating up but since the heatsinks are still monted inside the outer shell you're just not getting the best temperature differential. Try also to provide air to the coal fire from below into the fire grate and let normal convection remove the exhaus instead of trying to pull the exhaust through. Don't know if you added a motor speed controller (try a simple PWM and mosfet setup with low-ish frequency) to controll the fan speed motor. Keep in min that your TEG capabilities are limited so try the get most out of a smaller fire instead of cranking up the heat and getting terrible efficiëncy. And while TEG's are cool, they are still know to be very fussy. Nasa may use these to good effect but do radiate their heat out into a very cold outer space. I do believe though that TEG's have a future of development aheaad of them. Where PV-panels were once (not-so-secretly) laughed at as a niche application in space. I believe TEG's have future potential. Keep up the hun and development. Do not rush it and take one step at a time so that you have a good grasp on everyting you do. Consider aiming for a minimal TEG voltage output so that you can pump it into an accumulator (battery) and regulate the system off of that battery voltage. But I admire the gritt and the learning journey. I've been there as well. Still am
Thank you for the honest video. I often see flawless videos from other creators which lowers my self-esteem. In almost all my projects I face unexpected problems and seeing other people are struggling too helps to keep track of reality. Thank you 🙏
So cool to see all the copper heatsinks you picked up working for what you needed them for.
Oh so goooood! I love the effort, and now I can look forward to 5X the electrical output. I KNOW you'll do it... SOMEHOW! You pay so much attention to details I don't even notice until the 3rd or 5th viewing! You should make full length movies! Congrats!
That's kind of you to say :)
The thermal electric cells are probably rated at peak efficiency, meaning extremes on both ends, you would need liquid nitrogen on the cooling side to get anywhere near peak wattage, but if the goal is to run on only combustibles, two ideas come to mind.
1. There is more room for thermal electric cells with some space optimization. Just avoid stacking them. A furnace with less width, more hight and depth, with heat sinks parallel to airflow should increase thermal capture and release while adding more room for cells and cooling heatsinks.
2. Optimizing the use of exhaust could get you very far. (exhausting out the front is a bad idea as wind will oppose the exhaust when the furnace-minecart is in motion, make that port aesthetic and move all exhaust to the top back, the wind will then feed the furnace so fans don't waste your power. Also, a tall chimney will utilize your exhaust through convection to generate more free airflow without much need for fans.
It's highly unlikely that they'd have spec'd those parts at cryogenic absolute temps. These have real applications and any part trying to pad its numbers that hard would never survive outside the lab. The datasheet would specify the ambient temp and the delta for their maximum output/efficiency points.
@@dustinbrueggemann1875 TECs work on temperature differential, the greater the difference the more power they put out and are used in places where you need low but constant power... Like in the arctic or space where you can have a large differential.
@@SilvaDreams No, Dustin's right. To get the power output as specced, look at the datasheet. It would be straight up dishonest if they were specified to have the cold side be cryogenic. Besides, just saying "mOrE TeMpeErAtUrE DifFeReNtIaL!!!1" has uh, limitations. The materials can't survive arbitrary temperatures.
Idea for the pixels: if you use the CNC for drawing, you could use dithering, i.e. have differently spaced dot grids inside each pixel to represent darker and lighter shades when viewed from a distance. The farther the dots are spaced apart, the lighter the shade. Should work great here 👍🏻
exactly what i wanted to suggest. It seemed the logical next step to me since everything hardware was already set up for it
I was thinking something similar, engraved crosshatching possibly with color fill or just drawn on/over with ink
You need to put the air hole lower in the coal chamber, roughly at the same level with the burning coals. Cause you are not only fueling air to the coals, you are taking away hot air.
I really like the unique approach to powering the cart, it's awesome to see the effort you're putting into it. I also really appreciate that you include the parts that didn't go to plan, the solutions to those problems are really interesting.
That's not a furnace it's the generator from Industrialcraft 2! Then there wouldn't be any problems with the design :D Really cool what you've done!
I thought about this too when I seen the video title
Nah, It's more like the thermoelectric generator from Immersive Engineering. That needs both hot and cool blocks to work, like with Joel's furnace
You could water cool the cold sides and then run the cooling water through a radiator on the front of the minecart. Together with better insulation that should improve performance quite a bit.
Joel is on a journey to get Mojang to finally update the minecart, we all know it needs a buff!!! #Mojang #BuffMinecart #FurnaceCart4Bedrock
Isn't it Microsoft ....
@@bigsteve6729 mojang makes the game, microsoft owns the game, theres a difference.
@@squishmellow3 Microsoft bought the game company mojang and the games IP, so essentially mojang is sub company of Microsoft.
its not one company building a game for another company as your comment might suggest.
@@darkshadowsx5949 mojang are the developers, Microsoft owns the company which houses the developers. Microsoft can say what to add and mojang will have to listen, but the developers have not changed
@@bigsteve6729 mojang can do a decision and microsoft has to follow, can't deny that decision
Great project. Few thoughts:
- Cuts aluminum sheet with a CNC? Lol. You can use standard woodworking tools to cut aluminum. A jigsaw, a circular saw, a table saw, just fine. But it's loud.
- Titanium screws and plates? Ugh. Makes almost zero difference. The thermal mass combined with the difference between that and steel, yields probably less than 1% difference from using steel.
- Cabinet hinges was a great idea. Really slick and clever application.
- Your heatsink fins are horizontal, that jams up airflow. You have to pull air sideways rather than just let it rise.
- All those insulator plates are too much thermal mass and too much thermal conduction, I bet you're losing most of your energy though that.
- TEMs require a thermal difference obviously, and the bigger the thermal difference the more power you can pull from them. So, more aggressive cooling on the coolsinks would make them work a lot better. Even bonding them to the outside of the case, you have that massive aluminum sheet as a potential heatsink. Likewise for thermal mass inside, a copper plate or even just a big slab of steel to soak up energy in the combustion chamber would help keep the hot side hot.
- Clamping load on heatsinks is often underestimated for efficient thermal transfer. It wouldn't surprise me if you needed several tons of clamping force to keep those surfaces in contact. The thermal compound is still a terrible heat conductor compared to metal, it's only there to fill in the microscopic surface features between the metal plates. You want the metal touching metal as much as possible, the thinnest lay possible (with excess squished out with clamping pressure) can make a 300% difference.
Watching you charge your phone with burning coal was so sick! Really hope you manage to get the furnace working to its fullest.
nice work, i did something similar with peltier modules to add a fan to a central heating radiator ran off the radiators heat.
1. if you mount the larger outer heatsinks with the fins orientated vertically you can make use of convection currents to aid airflow.
2. you could repurpose/reuse the expelled (cell cooling) air into the exhaust using a manifold to make it suck air through the exhaust.
this would delete the wasted energy on the exhaust fan your currently using.
2a. you could also repurpose this hotter heatsink air into the fire/furnace intake aswell....recycle some more heat.
3. its possible your exhaust fan is also cooling the internal furnace heatsinks with too much airflow.
4. you already mention insulation, it will definately help.
(edit) point 1 will also address your modules being at a uneven distance from your heatsource. the top ones will be cooler and therfore flow less electricity, actually being slightly restrictive in energy output to the other two hotter cells.
To get a more detailed finish, you could try sanding the "pixels" to different grits, i.e. lower grit for darker grey, higher grit for lighter grey
There are sanding heads for CNC machines 🤷♂️
I am glad you did not make any complicated steam boiler. I wonder though if a flash boiler would have been a safer alternative if it were only driving a turbine for electricity. As for a stirling motor good luck getting any meaningful power without a high pressure atmosphere in it.
I guess an alternative you could have done was like gasification to power an engine.
Either way I support the route you have chosen and I am hoping to see your success.
nice job on the project! keep at it, I'm sure it will get there eventually. After you get the furnace cart fully functioning, perhaps make another minecart with no power, just a box on wheels to make a minecart train.
I really appreciate seeing you grow. You are really pushing yourself but you're pulling it off. I love to see you just doing it and doing it well. The quality on your recent projects is incredible.
You are such a Geek and I freakin lovin' it my friend 😎 though I dunno a crap bout minecraft... This is def one of the coolest projects yet, rly love the details and solutions you have made. 🤓 Just awesome!
🤓🤓🤓🤓
cant wait for coal powers minecart
I think your definitely going about the problem in the right way.
when the FTB modpack has "iron furnaces" mod installed
this is the most badass build i've seen in a while, your channel just keeps getting cooler!
Thanks Matthew!
So you've had both a functional minecart and furnace for over 7 months now, what's holding you back from putting the two together?
2years now
I khink he did it
10:21 "Why are you so wildly inefficient?" Me to myself when doing anything.
Always blown away with what you make
Thanks Joe!
Great video! I love your Minecraft inspired creations. At 12:20 it was literally my boyfriend on our last vacation, trying to get a coal fire going so I could get s’mores. I love him haha. Your reaction was so relatable.
This is awesome 😊 a really interesting sophisticated project. Thanks for the insights, describing the struggles and challenges you have had. Your project is so slick and well thought out. I struggle with getting knocked down by the details and hardships of a project. Seeing you produce a slick project but letting us know it's hard behind the scenes and how persevered helps me feel better when I stumble in a project, to try and push through thanks.
when he explained that liking and subscribing actually gives him the budget he need, i subscribed for two reasons, to not miss out on what other stuff like this he has, but for the reason he explained.
Dude this is incredible!!! I could not imagine doing something as complicated as this
no one gonna mention the cat at 12:00 carrying a dead mouse LMAO
i was looking for someone who saw that too
Thoughts. Insulate the core so the hot and cold parts are more separate. Maby direct the airflow more efficent trough the cold side heatsink. This would make a huge diffrence. If I understand those plates you are using, the bigger diffrence between hot and cold make bigger voltage.
For fun, try cooling the cold side with ice and look if you can gain bigger out put.
I love how the cat is like, "You're waaaay too close to my snack."
That is a far more interesting take on a furnace cart than anything else I've seen
Dude fantastic project and video! Very excited to see how you come up how to make it run the cart. I’m 3/4 of the way finishing a furnace build of my own that will smelt down metal like in the game.
Thank you! I look forward to seeing that, also I want your Aliens welder
@@JoelCreates Thanks man! And the files are on thingeverse for the hand welder, super easy project to put together.
Amazing! The creativity that Minecraft inspires within the game and outside of it, the things people learn, do and create thanks to MC is just mind blowing.
I myself got into metal casting and ended up on YT because of a MC modpack called Feed the Beast. I have learned so much because of MC, and now I have learned about thermoelectric generator systems.
Thanks Joel!!! This is some A Grade content! Keep these awesome projects going, you have more than earned my subscription 👍👊
11:44 MY FRIEND QUINCY MADE THE BIG LEAGUES LET'S GOOO
I think you're going to need a big redesign here unfortunately to get the efficiency you need. Combine the airflow systems so you can get more airflow with the same power draw. Intake> cooling> furnace> exhaust.
I'm thinking the fins of a large heatsink could be used as an exhaust path, putting a flat sheet over the top and blocking alternate fins for exhaust gas to snake through like a radiator, and using exhaust port heatsinks like this for each TEC. I'm assuming a lot of JB weld and cut a bit out of alternating fins for the airflow so its something like this
_________________________________________l
Or if it needs more airflow then double up on the fins like this
____________________________________________
____________________________________l
l ^ ________________________________< l
l____________________________________< l
>______________________________________ ^ l
>________________________________________l
Hopefully the format isn't changed so the diagrams look like they do for me
This is some next level engineering my friend
IC2 Generator lol
Could up efficiency by removing some layers and build the heat transfering walls out of heatsinks and mount the teg directly to that
2:45 this moment right here gave me flashbacks to ElectroBOOM's video "Making Cooler/Generator with Thermoelectric Device" and got excited because I was like "Oh! I've seen this before".
Amazing work, keep it up!
Looking really interesting mane, hope to see more soon
Just a stupid thought, but I feel it is an interesting concept: If you had like a big heatsink sticking out the top of the furnace or something along the lines of that, the wind, from the minecart moving, would cool the heatsinks, in turn making the Peltier modules more efficient, thus generating more electricity for the minecart to move faster, generating more wind, etc...
Nice build man!! Would putting the cells on the roof of the inner furnace be more efficient since hot air rises? Keep up the greatness bro!!!
another problem that's relatively obvious to me is the fact that the hottest air from the coals are immediately "sucked" out via the central pipe, having little to no chance to warm the plates... a problem Benjamin Franklin faced when he tried to remake the household furnace
I love how you used the scene of the bridge breaking from The General.
I gave up on making content for a long time.... and its videos like this that inspire me to try again. Thank you for all the amazing work you do.
One problem with normal buck converters is they don't track the maximum power point of the input, meaning that if you draw a bit too much current, the input voltage will crash as it tries to draw too much current from the supply to keep the output voltage up.
What you want is to have an MPPT-based buck converter feeding your load. Unfortunately I don't know of any efficient ones that work at low currents and voltages. You might get away with a circuit like William Fraser's "Solar MPPO" where you set the desired input voltage with a potentiometer and it bucks to whatever voltage it can reach at that input voltage.
This is the most convoluted coal generator ever
I love it
So freaking good! Love your videos. Keep up the great work.
Well done!
I really am inspired by this video to finish my projects!
*@Joel Creates* 7:40 You could "recycle" the air for an even more efficient burn. Not sure how exactly, but the principle is like this:
Take cold air from the outside & let it pass over the heat-sink while it's as cool as possible, (then maybe let the air go up in the upper compartment?)
Then use those fans to push the now pre-heated air into the coal burning box, to create a more oxygen saturated flame that is hotter, and only THEN let air exit the furnace, but preferably draw the air an extra round past the hot side of the heat-sink-area to really push in the last heat into them (like how Tiled Stoves rout their hot air to get out as much heat as possible). Good luck.
congrats, you managed to make me actually care about the furnace minecart!
That looks really neat. I love the concept. If that was only 20% I would love to see this thing optimized
Your project are crazy ambitious.
I’m excited to watch this, I was waiting for it ever since the last video! 😁
I think this is such a good idea, don’t give up, keep trying mate!!!
Very respectable video. Not many people are willing to show the part of the creative process where things don't work and having to do major redesigns. Good on you man
For the finish, I would suggest electrical etching. It is fairly safe to do on aluminum, and pretty easy too! Depending on how long you do it, the finish can be different.
I wasn't actually expecting peltier module when u say nasa part i was like expecting some atomic fancy fusion thing whatsoever but im not disappointed
Basically a fancy Peltier unit.
Your thermal inefficiencies because of heat.
Current is generated by a differentiation in temperature.
The temperature on the outer plate is too hot.
Liquid cool it.
Isolate the heat sinks and add a liquid coolant to it and a reservoir.
These work so well for satalites because space is pretty cold, and thin.
The highest temperature observed during the tests was 1921 F. A rocket stove was constructed of sheet metal using a 5”diameter by 12”tall ceramic fiber “riser sleeve” for an insulated chimney. The feed magazine was 3” high by 4 ½” wide with an adjustable flap at the top to control the free air entering above the level of the feed shelf.
Few points for improvements. Most have been mentioned by others.
1) The greater the difference between your heating and your heat sinks cooling the more power you will get out of your TEG.
2) Quality of your thermal grease/paste will affect your transfer rate.
3) Insulation will also help. To ensure that all the heat is going through your heat sinks and your TEG rather then going into the air around it.
4) While moving the smoke away via a pipe is good. You are losing heat. So rooting that with some heat pipes to your TEG would give you more power.
as a blacksmith it made me chuckle to see you try to light up coal with a blowtorch, it reminded me of when i was a beginner. Yeah you have to put the coal in an already red hot fire... And good idea having a good air flow in the chamber, coal doesnt burn well, you need constant oxygen supply. Charcoal will burn without additional air flow , and will give off a lot of heat quickly. wood will just gunk up everything, except if the whole contraption becomes hot enough to burn the tar off
Ur a mad genius! Awesome job dude!
I love it man, keep up the good work and stay inventive
for the body of the furnace. I wonder if you could find some sort of stain or chemical that reacts with the aluminum, to form a darker part of the plates.
7:00 I would have intervals of color per pixel from the top left part of each, this is because there is less black per pixel yet it still looks somewhat decent.
Here’s an idea… Make a second cart, use the furnace to hide everything inside, and hook the crankshaft of the steam engine to an alternator, keep the battery as a backup power source, but the alternator will do all the heavy lifting whilst the cart is in motion, much like a car, a voltage regulator to regulate the motor speed, and a coupling between the two carts
It'll run slower even at the cells full capacity, and it might need gearing to get it rolling, but it'll work if you optimise it some more!
Honestly I'd be really interested in seeing the optimisation process itself, data and all! Throw in some charts and I'll watch even an hour long video from you
Though as for alternative ideas.. there would be the option to go halfway steam powered. As in, you keep the Peltier modules, but use water to cool them down
If they manage to get so hot as to make the water boil enough, you could use that steam for some extra power by either running a turbine, or connecting it directly to the driveshaft somehow
First we had the person that made a computer in Minecraft, now this guy made IRL redstone out of electricity, I love it.
I missed this video when it came out, but this is VERY cool. One thought is that you want to pass oxygen through the coal. To do this on a steam locomotive, oxygen comes from under the firebox, then is exhausted through the stack. That airflow through the grates and coal itself is critical to full even combustion. Might be worth looking at an old furnace motor, as they can handle the heat during fire up. That's what I used on my old steam engine. Also may be worth trying a fan outside the airflow to create a vacuum in the firebox.
Joel, the exhaust from the coal burning carries most of the heat energy from the fire. If you want to significantly improve your efficiency, I suggest directing the exhaust near the thermocouples as well.
Also, you should be able to copy alot of ideas from boiler design.
That said, 200 years of research has gone into developing practices for safe boiler building and operation. In addition, a watertube boiler should contain shrapnel in the extremely unlikely event of an explosion. Just follow engineering best practices and you'll be fine.
My little brother wanted me to play one of those dumb "minecraft irl" videos, i showed him this and he loved it.
"Experimental technology by nasa"
(*Proceeds to do it in his basement*)
I like where your project is going. I say to keep working on the improvements that you mentioned.
7:10 YO STOP THIS MUSIC GIVES ME NOSTALGIA
Maybe mask off some of the squares, and sand them in the other direction
The different direction of the scratches might give a different shade of aluminium
12:00 kitty cat got himself a meal :D
Also your technique for lighting coal is exactly how we do it on real steam locomotives. Usually we'll start the fire on wooden pallets or something else the burns easily, then transition the fire over to coal.
i personally absolutely love steam power, but this is also VERY cool! I think in general, insulating the main chamber from the airflow which cools the heatsinks is one of the major improvements which could be done. what could also be done to increase effiiciency, is use a smaller combustion chamber, and have the exhaust pipe route through where the hot side of the thermoelectric elements are. you get roughly the same power output but for less coal. the idea is it removes more energy from the coal, since currently all the hot air just quickly moves out of the way and wastes heat. this is why in steam trains, the exhaust from the boiler is what runs through the water tank and thus heats the water.
With the current finish and with the way it generates electricity instead of cooking materials REALLY reminds me of the generator from Industrial Craft 2
F1 also does this, it takes (excess) energy from the turbo and turns it into electricity to charge it's hybrid battery. Also the battery can power the turbo at low engine RPMs
You've basically made the furnace generators you start out with to get power in some tech mods. They actually look more metal like that rather than a vanilla furnace.
This sounds like it could be turned into a grill that both cooks your food and charges your phone or even powers a TV depending on how much power it makes. Imagine this as camping gear where you can power your stuff with the excess heat while you cook your food.
I've realised, what you should try to do is to make "I" shaped coal buring areas, so it can maximize surface
now only that, but make sure they're ways for the air to scape, so it the diference bewteen the outer and inner temperature is higher, that would help on creating a higher voltage
I would try a vinyl print for the outside, but if you wanted to do it the fun way you could try 3d printing a super thin lithograph to glue on the metal to increase the color gradient and even texture
Lots of good info about TECs here. One small suggestion about your fasteners, iirc you can shave down the bolts at the air gap to reduce the amount of cross-sectional area that heat can conduct through.
I wonder if welding up a double wall vacuum insulated box for the “hot” box would net enough extra insulation for the amount of headache?
I like the idea! But it may warp under the heat and lose the vacuum
16:00 these was used also in peacemakers : Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers . These used pu-238
Well you're basically forced to make a Minecart with a furnace now! 😁😅
I think for a redesign of the furnace first you would need to chop down a tree, and you have some logs, now you need to open your inventory and put the logs in the crafting menu to make planks. Then with those planks place one piece of wood in each slot and then you have a crafting table. So with the crafting table place it down and craft some planks into sticks and make a wooden pickaxe, then mine some stone to get cobblestone and craft a furnace! Also get some coal to fuel it, next step for the minecraft is to make a cobblestone pickaxe and then mine 5 pieces of iron, smelt it and then place the iron in the crafting tables three bottom slots and left spot middle rowand right spot middle row and boom you have a minecart, now place your minecart and furnace in the crafting table and you're done you have yourself a furnace minecart
Biolite campstove is a great example of a TEG for a practical use being a wood burning, fan forced camp cooker and due to it being fan forced combustion is 100% so no smoke.
Looks great! I have a few recommendations to get it working to it’s fullest. To get enough power from the TEGs to power the motor and increase efficiency, I would recommend putting heat pipes into the hot side of the TEGs that would distribute the heat more evenly to from the coal to the TEGs, because if they are not heated evenly they produce a lot less electricity. If you buy heat pipes you absolutely NEED to get high temperature heat pipes that can withstand high temperatures where normal ones would explode. If you don’t have the money for the high temp heat pipes I would just recommend to put copper slabs to distribute the heat. Another thing I would do is to maybe put more thermal grease on the TEGs so that it would fill all the gaps, but this isn’t that necessary if you don’t want. The last thing I would do is to put some fans directly on the heat sinks for the cool side of the TEGs because the more the temperature difference between the sides, the more electricity it produces. You could either use the vent holes you already have for the fans or you could just make some vent holes. I hope this may help!
ps. this was copy and pasted from my community post comment