Member postings for Paul Kemp

2.5mm thick isn’t going to give much thread engagement? Also a risk that if the bolts bottom out you will be jacking against the slots and potentially break them out! Better idea would be to machine up some ‘bolts’ with a head that fits the slot and then use a decent washer and nut on the vice.

Paul.

Ryan,

Great work, well done. So good to see someone using limited resources to very good effect. As mentioned by others brilliant to see someone not scared to pick up a file and even better, using it to produce something flat and square! Also good to see someone not frightened to deviate from a drawing and find an alternative solution to make a part. Posts like this restore my faith that there are still a few people around who can just dig in and get on and make something of good quality without the luxury of tonnes of shiny equipment worrying about microns. More power to your elbow sir!

Paul.

And if they do (get them made for free) will they be giving them away?

Paul.

To drag this back on topic! I have read the linked document plus others like the UK hydrogen strategy and I agree with Martin they are mostly containing fanciful possibilities rather than solid deliverables and are smattered with captions like “for illustrative purposes only”. But don’t forget documents like this have great value as they distribute significant funds between the various consultants employed to assemble them.

I agree with SOD, whether you have interest or belief in the climate change argument or not, generating electricity from renewable sources as opposed to depleting finite fossil based deposits makes perfect sense. However we must not lose sight of the fact that if coal mining reduces other forms of mining will still be increasing to provide the ingredients for all these green machines. Copper doesn’t grow on trees, it is recyclable but recycled copper, lithium, graphite etc will go nowhere near supporting demand - but again that is a different argument.

Where I fundamentally disagree with SOD is green electricity is cheap or is ever likely to be cheap! It might be cheap(er) to generate but the way the market is structured (which is supposed to ensure low prices by competitive bidding) it’s never likely to happen until the last expensive nuclear generator is decommissioned. Within 3 miles either way from my house are 2 solar arrays of reasonable size and within 10 miles as the crow flies a large offshore wind farm, the latter having been on stream for well over 10 years. Last year around 40% of electricity in the UK was renewable, that’s a pretty decent inroad, anyone seen their electricity bill drop, even by a penny?

Paul.

Might be. If it were me unless I was planning to leave it outside in the garden I would leave out the primer and go straight on with the HT. Primers are generally ok at higher temps than ordinary paint but end of the day if the primer fails the top coat will fall off! Unless you are sure the primer is good for elevated temps I would leave it out.

Paul.

Why would we have supported energy wholesalers and resellers when they had to sell it at less than cost? Surely that is a problem with regulation and the “price cap” with regard to electricity. Plain fact is their costs rose but they were prevented in passing those costs on immediately to the customer. That is not exactly a capitalist model? The little guys that folded would have recovered their losses in time but they didn’t have the capital (cash) to ride out the trough. I don’t think any of the big oil and gas producers or wholesalers went bust during covid? Sure they had a tough time with negative profits over a longer period than they have ever endured before but the rebound ably boosted by the Russian situation gave them returns way above their dreams only to have their wings clipped by mild weather this winter! Overall though they have recovered handsomely.

Neither do I believe green will magically make electricity cheaper. The UK is not doing badly in the renewable stakes with around 40% of electricity in 2022 generated by renewables but it has made zero impact so far on the price to the end user! The advantages for householders are purely to those able to generate their own and they can’t even sell anything surplus back to the grid at spot price!

As far as I can see the mechanism of regulation and the way the market is set up is a primary reason why those with a plug in their hand are ever destined to be poor. Wind and solar farms can disconnect from the grid and sell direct and cheaper to hydrogen production for example - but why would they when they can get better returns from the grid?

Paul.

I also struggle to understand how the table can be high at the front, how are you measuring it? Are you are tramming off the vertical spindle? The tapered gib for the x axis has the thick end to your left stood in front of the machine in the operating position (or mine is anyway as I adjusted it last weekend). I reckon they are great little machines.

Paul.

What a lovely thing to have. Make a new compliant boiler and you can charge your iPhone with it!

Paul.

All, fair cop on the units, for the record it was Mega and not milli that was intended, rushing as just before bed and fed up scrolling between tabs on the browser but poor excuse for sloppiness, shall endeavour to do better. As per the IT stuff, good tips I am sure but I am not much for computing and as tight as the proverbial duck’s bottom so unlikely to be investing in a paid utility that I will rarely use, thanks for the tip though. As for Chuck Taper terminal type I would be clueless where to insert in an iPad lol.

More seriously though I saw a passing headline today that the Chancellor has millions more to play with, due to fall in gas prices - electricity it seems is still immune as my personal energy cost forecast from the supplier just keeps going up

Paul.

Idly speculating this evening I did a bit of research trying to find a reliable source of info that explains the current price point. I took screen shots of some of the graphs but this infernal apple device saves them as PNG so they can’t be uploaded to this thread! So will try to summarise without!

From trading economics.com which shows spot electricity prices for the last 5 yrs until roughly the end of Q1 2021 since 2018 the spot price wavered a bit but averaged around 52p/mWh. From that point it rose until December 21 where it reached 550p/mWh, that was to my recollection a point before the Ukraine crisis? Through 2022 it was very volatile with the highest peak being around 580p/mWh but probably through the year averaged around 300p/mWh dropping in December to around the current level of 150p/mWh albeit there has been some fluctuation between December and now. So ignoring 2022 for a minute electricity is now around 3 times the previous steady price 2018 - 2022.

Gas prices using info from the Clifford Talbot partnership from 2006 to 2021 were pretty steady at around 30p/mWh, peaked at around 200p/mWh in 2022 and have now settled back to around 50p/mWh. So currently gas is 0.6 times more expensive today than the previous long running average.

National grid figures for 2022 suggest 43% of electricity came from gas, around 40% came from renewables (around 23% of that was solar and wind) and the balance was other sources which I assume was mainly imports.

So we are being told that the massive rise in electricity prices is due to the high cost of gas and yet only 43% of electricity came from gas and the current differential between the cost of gas and electricity is not proportionate?

So what is the truth? Is it driven by the way our electricity market is run that wholesale costs cannot be passed immediately to the consumer and energy companies are still trying to recover huge losses? However when you look at the difference between the wholesale cost of electricity and the cost it is sold to you and me there is currently a difference of around 3 times wholesale to retail! Is the difference disappearing into network, transmission and infrastructure costs or is it going into someone’s pocket?

Anyone got any pearls of wisdom?

Paul.

BOAS qualification is not a legal requirement, acknowledged on the CEA website and both qualifications (operator and manager) can be gained on a 4 - 5 day course for each, renewable every five years. Undertaking this training and gaining the qualification Is obviously a good idea in demonstrating competence and it is recognised by HSE. However there are other ways of demonstrating competence as competence under the PSSR is defined as “qualification or experience”. There is no national “licence” issued in the UK under statutory legislation that I am aware of.

The national driving standard assessed and awarded by DVLA for “steam” rollers is actually for ROAD rollers and contains no element of boiler management, so you can take the test on a diesel roller and be qualified to drive steam on the road! Similarly the ordinary vehicle licence within the various weight limits entitles anyone to drive a traction engine (any road engine or lorry without rolls). Anomaly of the system perhaps but as boiler safety is well covered in other areas it seems to work. The NTET has a recognised driver training course that again is a good idea to undertake as again this demonstrates a certain level of competence but again it is not legally mandated.

I didn’t read the job advert but would expect it should have contained as an essential requirement “demonstrable experience / competence in boiler / engine management for the Council to cover it’s posterior! As others have said £20k is not going to buy much of that.

Paul.

Bloke on the right looks like he is the elf from safety.

Paul.

I managed to get 7/8ths of a large capacity myford steady from RDG, I missed out when they were selling them at a show and rang them on the off chance later. They very kindly sold me the last one they had which was incomplete at a good price and I made the missing bits (one finger and a couple of screws). It is an aluminium casting for the body and it’s been fine, I bored the cast iron cylinder liner for my 6” scale traction engine using it on the S7 (3” bore). Used it for lots of other stuff too and it’s been fine so I don’t think aluminium would be a problem.

Paul.

Not quite as new as the article claims it’s called pilot injection in other OEM / researchers parlance. There are a few applications of this in commercial service, at least one in marine. It seems to be most effective in the mid power range but does not completely eradicate NOx and SOx. Given all the hoops you have to jump through for marine on the H2 storage and on board distribution in terms of ventilation, monitoring and ex rated electrical equipment you may as well go the whole hog and remove the ICE. However it is giving opportunities for flag states and class to develop experience, confidence and rules for hydrogen and the big plus is it retains some flexibility on range and duty cycle so can be viewed as a useful transitional step to eventual tailpipe or net zero.

Paul.

Fuel cell efficiency for PEM is an interesting one, efficiencies over 60% have been claimed, some in the high 60’s however in my (non car) world they are usually 200kw units linked together to provide the base demand. However, maximum efficiency does not normally correspond with maximum output but sits around 2/3 of their maximum rating. They do run at a relatively low temperature and there are several ways of managing cooling particularly if teamed up with liquid cooled batteries. If you are running on liquid H2 you have a ready made source of cooling that will take far more heat than you want to surrender! LH2 has its own challenges and and risks in terms of cryogenic temperature and of course costs more to produce with the additional compression and cooling cycles but it is significantly safer in terms of pressure and provides around twice the energy by volume than gas at 700bar. One drawback with PEM low temp cells is they require high purity gas, a high temperature cell is more tolerant to lower gas quality.

A step further than hydrogen for gas boilers expounded at an event I attended was high purity H2 in mains to houses with fuel cells installed could provide individual electricity supply to each house, killing the load on the grid and power stations in an instant and also providing a heat source for water and winter heating. Given a fuel cell life is currently relatively short (depending on load cycle) that will be a significant burden to those at the bottom of the money tree! Be interesting if that ever grows legs!

Definitely Hydrogen is not the whole answer to everything energy but it does I think have a part to play. Anyone watched the JCB hydrogen video on the net?

Paul.

Clive,

Some good points there and the simple fact is whatever the motivation to reduce emissions and replace the internal combustion engine be that climate, health or other there is no simple one size fits all solution and the answer will be a mix of different propulsion methods for different purposes.

I freely admit that I am an emissions hypocrite! In the day job (supposedly semi retired) I am leading on projects to decarbonise marine transport whilst I drive a “dirty old diesel” landrover! Simple reason for that is cost and flexibility. If I have to drive to London to the office including the mayors daily charge it costs me around £35. If I price the journey according to government mileage rates which are supposed to include the other incidentals of insurance, tax etc it would be around £56. If I were to take the train to arrive in London by 09.00 the last time I did it including the tube it cost over £60 and that was before the recent fare rises. So yes the railway has had a big head start but it still can’t compete journey cost wise with the ICE. Add to that the fact that I would need to leave home a good 2 hrs earlier to catch a train to get me there at the same time I can arrive if I drive! That is without considering the return and being packed in on the train / tube.

Yes I could buy a BEV or hybrid that would do that journey but it wouldn’t give the ability to tow 3.5t of steam engine and related equipment at the weekend - something with that capacity would cost me a lot more than I am prepared to spend! Neither would it allow me to do those journeys some of which are 200m or more to a field without stressing over where I could plug in to “fill up” - depending on what I am doing the old clunker will do between 550 and 600m without needing a top up. Converting the vehicle to hydrogen would be little better, as was correctly pointed out in the video I commented on there is a massive premium on the cost of hydrogen kw to kw than diesel, even at the recent high diesel prices and due to the energy density I couldn’t pack sufficient volume in to do the same distance as I can on diesel. Green hydrogen produced in a location with a suitable climate with solar panels feeding directly and solely to an electrolyser is actually pretty cheap to make, transporting it to the point of use adds cost but it’s still easily competitive against other colours but why would a supplier sell it cheaper when capacity is limited.

The average journey would be interesting but would it mean a lot? In my terms although I do a good mix of long and short journeys because I work from home some weeks the vehicle never moves Mon to Fri. So while on an annual basis my mileage is under average my journey profile would definitely look a bit odd. Maybe this is the exception outside the norm but squeezing me into the norm would require a major lifestyle change!

It is a fact that to achieve the targeted or desired carbon reductions a mix of technology will be required, as a very minimum pure electric and some form of hydrogen hybrid (a fuel cell has to be combined with a battery so can be considered a hybrid). The other currently available options such as ammonia, methanol, HVO or other bio fuel are to an extent only smoke and mirrors in terms of true reductions, that’s where net zero come in! It also going to require a massive change in public attitudes and expectations around personal transport. Norman Tebbit (if you remember him) wasn’t far wrong Cost is quite another thing, even the government predictions show electricity prices dropping rapidly, however even without the dreadful situation in Ukraine the cost of raw materials required to increase renewable generation was continuing to rise, SOD gave a nice summary a while back of supply and demand. Even before 2022 electricity was not dropping as predicted - recently over 30% of UK demand was delivered from renewables, the wholesale cost of gas has dropped dramatically but has your bill gone down?

Paul.

Are you not 90 degrees out or is the loco quartered at 180 degrees? With locos and TE’s it is more helpful to refer to front dead centre and back dead centre rather than top and bottom.

Paul.

As I said, costs of Green Hydrogen, weight of H2 fuel cell v battery and weight of storage tanks. I have been working for over 2 years now with hydrogen producers / suppliers, fuel cell manufacturers and storage producers on maritime hydrogen projects but drawing on automotive solutions where transferable and certifiable in the marine environment and I know the views stated are biased. Weight and volume of equipment is a particular focus for maritime high speed craft. I agree (and I said so) that around the first half of the video was excellent and gave a very good summary of hydrogen, it just went down hill when she discussed the items I flagged and the views were overly negative on those points.

I have worked with academics, manufacturers, regulators, classification societies across Europe and in the States over the period not just on direct hydrogen fuel cell systems but also methanol reformation and direct high temp methanol fuel cells (that is a real can of worms in terms of emissions if you want to look at it) so I do have some knowledge against which to judge.

Vic,

Your comparison is BEV versus ICE, try comparing current BEV to H2 fuel cell of an equivalent power, you need to compare apples with apples. Yes it may well be true that batteries will continue to get lighter or certainly more power dense but that benefits both BEV and fuel cell in comparison to ICE and may give BEV an advantage v fuel cell as the BEV requires a higher capacity battery - but I am talking what is available now rather than what may be available in the future.

Paul.

I watched that video with some interest and was quite impressed with about the first half which was factually quite correct. Sadly from about halfway it kind of lost its way and whilst still using basic facts unfortunately distorted the message with some biased opinion.

The claims about the cost of Green H2 if using wind and solar are according to one of the largest gas producers in the world unfounded because they are doing it quite successfully a long way from the UK and are shipping it to the UK and selling it competitively. In fact while I do not agree with SOD’s claims that wind and solar power is dirt cheap already and will only get cheaper - it is a lot cheaper than the nice lady was suggesting and in fact Green hydrogen from solar and wind is competitive (in gaseous form). There is a whole load of reasons why solar and wind power is not likely to be as cheap even some way into the future as SOD claims but that is not for this post on hydrogen.

The claim on the weight differential between a fossil fuelled car and a hydrogen fuel cell car is also not entirely correct. A pure electric EV is in fact heavier than a fuel cell vehicle as it requires a large battery pack, the fuel cell can make do with a smaller capacity lighter pack. Fuel cells unfortunately do need to be combined with battery reserve as fuel cells are not good at taking fluctuating or transient loads, so the battery is used as a buffer. Additionally PEM cell technology and membranes have moved on it terms of base resource requirement. Granted they still need some but it’s not as bad as portrayed. Look at Bramble Energy as an example.

True historically that hydrogen tanks have been heavy but that is not true as we go forward, there are light weight solutions coming to market for 350 and 700 bar gas and now even cryo tanks are being made with composites to enable liquid H2 to be used in aviation (as it was on the space vehicles shown in the video!).

I do not necessarily believe H2 is a silver bullet but there are applications in which it is a potentially viable alternative to fossil fuels and it does allow storage of surplus energy from wind and solar, albeit in a pretty inefficient and expensive manner. The picture is however by no means as gloomy as that video try’s to portray! It’s a shame they didn’t stick to the facts all the way through to give a balanced and unbiased opinion, but that is the modern medias for you!

Paul.

At risk of asking the obvious;

I am assuming the engine came with no boiler history, previous test certificates or the like?

Despite the patina of the gauge is there any sign on the face of a red line, discolouration or shadow where a line may have been? Any filed nick in the bezel that looks deliberate and aligns with a pressure between 50 and 80 psi? If none of these that suggests either it has not been tested in quite some years or the tester was quite lax on applying the “rules”.

If you can’t find a drawing or evidence of previous test it might be quite difficult to get a certificate on it these days that would allow you to run it in public.

Paul.