I figured there might be someone who has done this already, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask. Several years ago, I got a used FlatPlate heat exchanger that I'd planned to use as part of a methanol recovery processor when I was making a lot of biodiesel. Then I stopped making biodiesel.
Fast forward to today, and I'm kitting up my LR4 to do a bit of overlanding. My lady likes showers (and so do I), so I've been experimenting with how to make a good solar shower like they did on LR Time, even going so far as running an experiment with a half clear/half black container's performance relative to an all black container.
But then I remembered that heat exchanger. The idea of being able to mount that somewhere, have 10 square feet of exchanger area at a high flow rate, and basically flip the switch on a 12V pump and have water running through that with the engine warm and get hot water out instantly...pretty tempting. I've done something similar before on another rig, and was able to put a valve in there to control the amount of bypass around the heat exchanger to help control temperature. Worked well.
The exchanger I have has 1" MPT inlets and outlets. I'm wondering where the best place to tap into the coolant system might be to feed this. Any ideas or thoughts?
Fast forward to today, and I'm kitting up my LR4 to do a bit of overlanding. My lady likes showers (and so do I), so I've been experimenting with how to make a good solar shower like they did on LR Time, even going so far as running an experiment with a half clear/half black container's performance relative to an all black container.
But then I remembered that heat exchanger. The idea of being able to mount that somewhere, have 10 square feet of exchanger area at a high flow rate, and basically flip the switch on a 12V pump and have water running through that with the engine warm and get hot water out instantly...pretty tempting. I've done something similar before on another rig, and was able to put a valve in there to control the amount of bypass around the heat exchanger to help control temperature. Worked well.
The exchanger I have has 1" MPT inlets and outlets. I'm wondering where the best place to tap into the coolant system might be to feed this. Any ideas or thoughts?