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Sometimes, you use what you got ;)

K2, you were right about back pressure from steam production impacting the flow rate !! I just needed to get the boiler to over 80% power before the dial pressure guage on the feed pump moved enough to be noticed. Below left is the feed pump guage while the pump is pumping tap water through...

Full ceramic bearings don't require lubrication,...just remove excess heat and they'll last forever. I use full ceramic bearings for most application. I have no knowledge on placing back pressure on Tesla turbines. I do know that radial turbines don't work well with back pressure.

Answered in the DIY Tesla Impulse Turbine thread.

Yes, center drills are by far the easiest way to get a 60 deg cone shaped hole, which should be much better than my plain drilled holes. And I just today found a supplier on AliExpress that sells center drills with 0.5mm tips; before today, the smallest I could find was #1 center drill which...

Which is why I didn't chose a bucket-shaped blade. I chose the flat-plate "bucket" blade shape not only for it's ease of machining, but also to allow the impacted steam to be easily forced inward between two rotors where it would continue to expand, hopefully in a useful direction, acting as...

I suggest we move all Tesla Turbine discussions over to the DIY Tesla Impulse Turbine thread, which is where I will answer your above questions.

Not right away,...perhaps in the future when I have more data points to plug in.

The tensile strength temperature knee for 6061 aluminum is 200 C. Sure, stainless will allow for much higher steam temperatures, but it's also more expensive and much harder to work with, so for this first prototype, aluminum was my preferred choice. If test results prove the idea to be a good...

I do appreciate your cautions as I suspect a halogen reaction is similar to dropping a chunk of sodium into a bucket of water. However, per the safety data sheet, R-123 is only slightly reactive with freshly abraded aluminum, ie, don't scratch off the aluminum oxide layer while in contact with...

Yes & No. I've talked about two very different types of turbines here on HMM; the current main power turbine I may use is a 3-stage design that looks a lot like my avatar, having blades on the discs and stators. I've read that wet steam will eventually destroy the blades on this type of...

I adjusted the unloader valve to it's lowest setting when I was still using it as a pressure washer,....it was still pushing over 1200 psi. I wont be going over 500 psi in the boiler application, so unless I want to try replacing the load spring , the unloader is pretty useless. :-(

Hopefully, this one will arrive be end of week; it's adjustable from 28 to 40 Bar. Then I will need to plumb it in. Good info,...Thanks :)

Chinese marketing,...all too common to inflate the specs. No. The pump housing (actually the swash plate housing) also served as the front plate for the motor, and contained the front bearing. Since the original motor no longer had a front plate or bearing, I tossed it to a motor recycling...

I agree. The outlet pressure does, and should, read 0, or perhaps even a bit negative. But I also agree with K2 that the input pressure should show at least a small pressure as the feed pump pushes against the steam pressure inside the boiler tubes. I suspect that pressure is so low that my...

Back in post #528 I mentioned, something was amiss with my power numbers, and that it seems likely I will need to rerun some tests. The boiler has pressure sensors on both input and output (from post #362), but since there's no restrictors in the tube, both sensors read "0".

Back pressure caused by steam production should show up on the feedwater pressure sensor and displayed on the LCD screen; also, the dial gauge mounted on the feed-pump should have shown something, but both gauges didn't move. I suspect that any steam produced backpressure was so small that it...

Yes K2, I did post max fuel burn data back in post #405,...along with a short video of the burner output. At 95% power setting the burner consumes 10 LPH (Liters Per Hour), which equates to 103 KWH or 138 HP-Hours. It's gonna be interesting to see how many BHP I get at 100% burner output...

I do have hopes of one day using a centrifugal pump as the feedpump, but for now, the feedpump is a standard, 3 piston, positive displacement, pressure washer pump (see post #332). The difference in flame output between 72% and 100% is fairly large, so I suspect the difference in steam output...

123 HP (91.7 KW) !!! (calculated) The second test run was started at idle power level. From idle, I increased the feed pump from 5 to 10, which resulted in a mixture of water and steam exiting the boiler. I slowly increased the power until I could see only steam output from the boiler...