"Steve Firth" wrote in message
...
Ian Stirling wrote:

Of course, if you could get small 24*7 generators, doing the CHP
thing and putting the exhaust heat into the house, and the low-grade
residum into the heat source, plus using the shaft power to run a
compressor, then that would pretty much beat anything.

Heh, I'm working on something similar. Generators work best at constant
load so I'm fixing up an immersion heater as a ballast load and planning
to run the exhaust through a coil in a separate calorifier.

The calorifier will have to be a strong, expensive stainless job. The
exhaust may rot a lesser one very quickly. It will generate much heat (the
IC engine produces more heat than turning power), so you will require a vast
amount of hot water storage to make it anywhere near viable.