Jones wrote
Ha! ... but had they only known about the miracle Stirling engine, the
one which is supposedly 40% efficient with that kind of heat, then they
could have diverted the hot water flow in the summer months to the
Stirling, and used the power generated from it to offset the normal grid
power bill... Sounds silly, and the devil is in the details, but if it
were reliable, that kind of thing would definitely have a market in the
USA.
Good point, but we are talking about the stone age here -1956 !!
Anyway I'm not sure what would be the minimum back-feed to the grid required
to support the expense of the control switchgear.
I also forgot to mention another idiosyncrasy of this lousy system, namely
that in winter the heat exchanger in the cold room became totally blocked
with snow from condensed water vapour, reducing to zero any heat transfer!
The Ferranti boys were too clever by half. Not long after this product
failure the Ferranti group went belly-up, although they were partners with
Bristol Aeroplane Co. in developing the very successful ramjet powered
Bloodhound SAM (on which I had been working for the previous several
years!!).
Norman.
