Entrepreneur develops more efficient engine

Entrepreneur develops more efficient engine By Ed Taylor, Tribune Brian Hageman has devoted a good part of his life to building nuclear power plants. Now he is ready to commercialize a new type of engine that could drastically reduce the need for electricity — and save money in the process.

Hageman is president and chief executive of Deluge, a Phoenix-based company that is preparing to bring its thermal hydraulic engine to the marketplace.

Ten manufactured prototypes of the engine, which convert heat energy to mechanical energy without combustion, will be used to drive pumps at an old oil field on the Kansas-Missouri border beginning next month. The technology is ready for more extensive use after being tested last year at a U.S. Department of Energy research center at the old Teapot Dome oil field in Wyoming.

Hageman also sees a bright future for his patented engines in the desalination of sea water and compression of Freon for air conditioning. Both use large amounts of electricity and would benefit from lower energy costs.

He has even proposed a grand vision to the U.S. Department of the Interior to take water from the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, remove the salt and pump the fresh liquid uphill to the Valley to provide a new source of water to thirsty Arizona by 2020.

The thermal hydraulic engine works on the principle that fluids expand when they are warmed, which creates a change in volume that can be used to displace a piston.

A working fluid — carbon dioxide that has been liquefied under high pressure inside a cylinder — is heated by circulating hot water through a heat exchanger. The liquid carbon dioxide expands as it is heated and pushes on a piston, creating the power to operate a pump. Cold water can then be pumped into the heat exchanger, causing the carbon dioxide to contract, pulling the piston back to its original position and preparing the cycle to begin again.

The hot water can be produced by solar, geothermal or other environmentally benign heat source without the use of electricity.

Hageman developed his first thermal hydraulic engine in his garage in 1984. It wasn’t much of a device, but he did prove it would move a shaft.

He formed Deluge in 1996 to commercialize the technology after a 10-year career as an engineer for the Bechtel Corp. on nuclear and other energy projects. His work gave him experience in highpressure design and construction, which helped him to design his engine.

"I was a typical entrepreneur and decided to pursue my dream," he said of his decision to start his own company.

Initially, Hageman thought the system would work best for pumping groundwater for agriculture (thus the name Deluge), and he got a permit to test his first unit at the University of Arizona experimental farm in the town of Maricopa. But he met a group of Wyoming business representatives at a trade show who asked him to develop a similar system to pump oil. And, with oil prices soaring, that appears to be the most commercially promising use for the technology, he said.

Because electricity can account for 30 percent or more of the cost of operating an oil well, the power-saving technology could allow the reopening of old oil fields that are too expensive to pump using conventional engines, he said.

In tests by the Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center at Teapot Dome, a prototype Deluge engine operated a single well for 30 days using geothermal hot water.

In a report, the center said the technology could offer "significant" benefits for oil and gas production, especially because CO2 and hot and cold water are commonly found or can be produced in oil fields.

Also the engine’s "relatively small profile compared to typical field pumping units may provide a cost-effective alternative where limited space or esthetic concerns must be considered," the report said.

For the next step, production prototypes are being built by Prince Manufacturing Corp. in South Dakota for the Missouri project. Water will be heated using natural gas from the wells, which Hageman said will represent a minimal cost for energy. He figures the operating cost will be only 10 percent to 20 percent of a traditional well.

The operation also promises to bring Deluge its first revenue. Since its start, the company has been funded with about $8 million in "angel" investments from venture capitalists willing to bet the technology will pay off someday.

The company also plans to produce two prototype engines for water desalinization that could be tested this summer at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Water Quality Improvement Center in Yuma.

Large amounts of electricity are needed to pump salty water through reverse osmosis membranes, and a reduction in energy cost is the key to making the process economically viable. Using solar energy panels to heat the water allows the system to operate with one-tenth of the power of electric motors typically used for desalinization, Hageman said.

Pat Phelan, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Arizona State University, who has tested a Deluge desalination engine using brackish water, said the process appears to be technically feasible although more testing is needed to determine its commercial viability. Still, the early results are encouraging, he said.

"What we found out is that the engine would work with lower-temperature water than what Deluge normally uses — as low as 125 degrees Fahrenheit — and it was still able to push water through the membrane," Phelan said. "That (temperature) is easily achievable with solar technology."

http://urlcut.com/strerling-vs-deluge

Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 14:41:51 -0400
Reply-To: Brian Hageman
Sender: Environmentally Conscious Design & Mfg List
From: Brian Hageman
Subject: new thermal engine NOT a sterling

Thanks for your thoughts and ideas about our new engine, I thought I would pass along a report by one of our consultants about the subject of Sterlings engines and the differences in our engine.

Comparison of the Sterling Engine and the Deluge Engine Cycles:

Many engineers have compared the Thermal Hydraulic Engine to the Sterling Cycle engine. We have found that the basic working cycle of these engines are completely different.

1. Sterling Engine This is basically a piston engine with a sealed integral gas working fluid under pressure (hydrogen or helium).

The engine may be visualized as a cylinder with a piston at each end. Between the pistons is a regenerator. The cylinder is insulated except for contact with a hot reservoir at one end and a contact with a cold reservoir at the other end.

Heat from the hot reservoir enters the closed cycle gas, which does work on the piston by expansion to a lower pressure. Both pistons move together to produce a constant volume by means of a complex 90 degree crank mechanism. During this constant volume phase the gas is passed through the regenerator where the heat is stored for the return phase of the cycle. The gas then passes through the cold heat exchanger and then the cold piston through its 90 degree phase crank mechanism compresses the gas and returns it back through the regenerator to the hot piston side where heat is added and the cycle is repeated.

2. The Deluge Thermal Hydraulic Engine The engine is based on the expansion rate of a working fluid under pressure when cycled between 60 degree F and 180 degree F. Water heated by solar collectors or other heat sources is passed through a heat exchanger to heat the working fluid for expansion then a valve system switches to cold water for cooling and contraction of the working fluid.

This expansion and contraction is causes the piston in its cylinder to pump hydraulic fluid to a hydraulic motor that converts cyclic motion to a power output shaft.

The cycle time is very low (approximately one minute) so that the unit runs very quietly with no vibration.

The usual desirable features claimed for the sterling engine are:

1. High thermal efficiency (equal to diesel)
2. Low emission due to external continuous flow combustion heat input
3. Quiet operation
4. Reversible operation (can be refrigerator)

Adverse features of the sterling engine when reduced to practice:

1. High temperature in heater components require expensive materials (up to 1800 degree F continuous operation)
2. Piston and crankshaft, mechanism is expensive (variable load and speed controls are complex).
3. Hazard of use of Hydrogen under high pressure for working medium (hydrogen is difficult to seal under pressure).
4. The cooling heat sink capacity is twice that of a conventional internal combustion engine.
5. Hazard in the use of sodium in some models.
6. Lengthy start-up and stopping time (3 to 10 minutes).
7. Engine bulk is large due to burner and high temperature heat exchanger.

By contrast the Deluge engine has the following features:
1. Uses a high portion of commercially available hardware (very low cost)
2. The hardware is conservatively designed for extended life and ease of maintenance.
3. There are no safety hazards.
4. The engine is quiet.
5. Uses ?low grade? heat sources such as solar or waste heat.
6. Machined parts are low tolerance.

Basically this is a 4-cylinder engine with a CO2 heat exchanger for each cylinder. The engine can be assembled in a packet roughly 4? x 4? x x6? for easy transport and installation in the field.

Footnote: I have extensive experience with the Stirling Engine. At Mechnical Technology in Albany, NY, we installed a United Stirling Engine in an American Motors passenger car for the Department of Energy. At Stirling Thermal Motors in Ann Harbor, MI, I worked with Dr. Meier to redesign his swash plate variable stroke stirling engine.

Reported by: David T. Marks, Engineering Consultant

--- ECDM List -- http://pdomain.uwindsor.ca/archives/ecdm.html

http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2003/01/06/story2.html

EXCLUSIVE REPORTS
From the January 3, 2003 print edition
Company tests engine to run on hot water
Angela Gonzales
The Business Journal
Move over electricity, a new kind of engine is in town.

Deluge Inc., a Phoenix company that has patents on a different type of engine that runs on hot water, is testing its environmental technology with the U.S. Department of Energy to replace electricity in oil wells in Wyoming.

The company also is working with Arizona Public Service Co. in Phoenix to test the engine in the utility company's coal-powered plant in the Four Corners area in northeastern Arizona.

Deluge expects to test its thermal hydraulic engine as early as March at the Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center, 40 miles north of Casper, Wyo.

"We can get rid of electric power in the oil fields," said Brian Hageman, president and chief executive of Deluge. "It's really going to change things."

The engine replaces electric motors, using hot water pumped by the oil wells to fuel the engine.

Patrick Petit, director of minerals, energy and transportation for the Wyoming Business Council, said he has faith that the new technology will work.

"We're just real excited about having an entrepreneur like Brian with a good, marketable idea come to our state," Petit said. "We see great potential for it here for our energy development. Hopefully, we can cement a broader business relationship between Deluge and Wyoming."

Hageman also has attracted the attention of Houston-based Torch Energy Services Inc. to use the Deluge engine in oil wells in California and other areas.

"After seeing Brian's invention, we believe his technology represents a significant deviation from typical heavy oil extraction in the San Joaquin Valley," said Jim Farr, president of Torch Energy. "We think this is real pull-through technology that could revolutionize the way heavy crude is pumped."

In California, oil companies were required to replace gas-powered engines at oil wells with electrical engines, making it more expensive to operate, Hageman said. As a result, the companies are looking for alternatives to electricity, he added.

Farr said oil companies could save as much as 33 percent by switching to Deluge's water-powered engine.

"We would jointly assist in the development and install the product for other oil-producing customers throughout California and other areas where heavy crude is produced," he said.

Deluge, APS and Arizona State University have applied for a joint grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study unique ways of using wasted heat that escapes from coal-powered plants, said Peter Johnston, manager of technology development for APS.

"Normally in a power plant, the engineers do everything they can to extract every bit of energy," he said. "Nevertheless, there's always some heat that escapes somewhere. We will study the possibility of using the Deluge heat engine to make electricity from those heat sources."

Johnston said the Deluge engine also could be used in flare stacks in landfills, where natural gas is burned off to protect the environment.

"But nobody does anything with the heat that's available," Johnston said. "Maybe we can with Brian's machine."

Brian Meidinger, project manager for the Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center in Wyoming, said he is looking forward to testing the Deluge engine's ability to use hot water that currently is going to waste.

"We think the theory behind it is sound," Meidinger said. "We really want to check out the qualitativeness of it; how much of it are we going to be able to recover?"

Deluge's Hageman said a lot of things need to come together at the same time for new technology to be introduced into the energy business.

For one, he said, the deregulation process needs to have some momentum. Plus, he said, the economy must have very low interest rates, and the culture must welcome change.

"Right at the moment, all three of those characteristics are in place," Hageman said. "Alternative energy has been around for a long time, but the idea is now being accepted by institutions like utility companies and the government. We'll be able to take advantage of 20 years that the other companies have been pushing alternative energy into play."

Hageman started tinkering with the concept two decades ago, but dedicated his efforts full time about six years ago.

With six employees, Deluge is in its research and development stage, with revenue expected to be generated in 2003. So far, the company has raised nearly $7 million through the sale of private stock.

As a child, Hageman considered himself an inventor.

When he was 10, he made a metal detector for a school project using magnets.

In 1973, Hageman began working as a field construction engineer for the Fluor Corp., with overseas assignments in Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. In 1979, he became a construction engineer with the Bechtel Power Corp., working in nuclear power plant construction at the San Onofre plant in California and at the Palo Verde plant in Arizona.

Hageman said he plans to manufacture his engines at his Phoenix plant, contracting out locally to make parts.

"Engineers are amazed this technology was missed," he said.

Get connected
Deluge Inc.: 602-431-0566; http://www.delugeinc.com

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