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Haven't been doing experimenting recently but wanted to pass along to the board a couple technologies I have been reading about and mention what I have been doing to promote them.
1) Outdoor Wood boilers + Thermo-electric generators (TEGs)
Outdoor woodboilers http://www.centralboiler.com/products.php http://www.portageandmainboilers.com/
are basically wood stoves placed outside with a water jacket and circulation system. They are used to provided central heating and hot water. From rural customer anecdotal reports on the websites people are seeing two-three year simple payback times and saving thousands of dollars per year versus propane or electricity.
TEGs are an inefficient means (currently 5%) of generating electricity using semiconductors and make use of the Seebeck/Peltier effect that generates power from a difference in temperature across a semiconductor. In the past few years a few companies have started marketing 30-70 watt air or water cooled TEGs that could lay atop a wood stove. The price is about 8-10$/watt, however TEGs have no moving parts are durable, long lasting and also already marketed for remote power generation using propane as a heat source. So I was thinkin, if someone engineered this into a wood stove, outdoor wood boiler right from the start they could likely bring down the price and generate significant power. If it was water cooled and one was already circulating water for indoor heating, well that's great.
I would have to dig out the links but DOD research apparently generated 1kW from waste heat from a diesel truck engine. DevilWatt markets a 70 watt water cooled TEG and looking at the specs you could probably lay three across a small wood stove not to mention the sides of the wood stove. About the only nation intelligent (or crazy) enough to implement my idea of engineering this right into the stove was Russia, which markets a very small woodstove for under 1000 dollars, available in the US with an aircooled TEG that generates "a minimum of 60 watts". How about that for a hunting cabin?
I wrote Portage and Main and basically asked them to build this, haven't heard back yet. I mentioned that I thought they could likely get 400-500 watts or just have a small TEG/battery to run the water pumps in a power outage. Seeing as this is a large furnace that is said to run at up to 2000F I would actually not be at all surprised if they could get 1kW+ out of it. The payback time might be ten, twenty years, for the electricity, but then again anyone who bought one, as they would have no need for electricity for heat or hot water would be basically free. Perhaps others might ask various OWB/wood stove manufacturers if they are thinking about incorporating this tech in future.
2) Solatubes http://www.solatube.com/
Take sunlight use a reflective tube to channel it indoors then disperse it for lighting. Very simple, marketed for 20 or so years, likely 90-99% efficient. Compare with scenario of using 20% efficient solar panels to what 60% efficient inverter to maybe LEDs or less efficient lighting, order of magnitude superior. It is being marketed mainly to residential, but what about say taking street lights and putting a solatube on top channeling the light down into subways. What about using the roofs and periphery of high rises to provide lighting during the daylight hours when they are occupied. So, and you may laugh, but I remember leaving an e-mail for Ray Kurzweil and he got back to me like three hours later and I thought hey this works pretty well, still disagree with him though, so I left a post on Elon Musk's facebook page. Don't know if he will see it, but he might be just the type of person who would both find it interesting and have the means and desire to see it more widely utilized. Heck, depending on how you dispersed the light you might be able to get a natural tan in summer while working in an office.
3) Other Thoughts
Was thinking about those situations energy wise where houses are working against themselves. One example would be when you run the dryer in winter and that heat is shunted to outside instead of central heating. A possibly more important example is a refrigerator/freezer running in a heated house in winter. Now if you can shunt the heat from a dryer to outside, you can also certainly shunt the coolant for a refrigerator freezer to outside. Someone might look into whether it has been patented. The average temperature, year round, day/night for many of the most populated areas might well be (I honestly have no idea) 50 degrees or so. Certainly in colder climates one could generate their refrigeration without recourse to other than the outside environment for much of the year. With modern sensors and electronics it should be simple not to transfer coolant into an 80 degree day and also to run the refrigerator only when necessary.
These approaches should both decrease "energy consumption" and if anything improve quality of life.
Ciao,
Paul "Duffy"
1) Outdoor Wood boilers + Thermo-electric generators (TEGs)
Outdoor woodboilers http://www.centralboiler.com/products.php http://www.portageandmainboilers.com/
are basically wood stoves placed outside with a water jacket and circulation system. They are used to provided central heating and hot water. From rural customer anecdotal reports on the websites people are seeing two-three year simple payback times and saving thousands of dollars per year versus propane or electricity.
TEGs are an inefficient means (currently 5%) of generating electricity using semiconductors and make use of the Seebeck/Peltier effect that generates power from a difference in temperature across a semiconductor. In the past few years a few companies have started marketing 30-70 watt air or water cooled TEGs that could lay atop a wood stove. The price is about 8-10$/watt, however TEGs have no moving parts are durable, long lasting and also already marketed for remote power generation using propane as a heat source. So I was thinkin, if someone engineered this into a wood stove, outdoor wood boiler right from the start they could likely bring down the price and generate significant power. If it was water cooled and one was already circulating water for indoor heating, well that's great.
I would have to dig out the links but DOD research apparently generated 1kW from waste heat from a diesel truck engine. DevilWatt markets a 70 watt water cooled TEG and looking at the specs you could probably lay three across a small wood stove not to mention the sides of the wood stove. About the only nation intelligent (or crazy) enough to implement my idea of engineering this right into the stove was Russia, which markets a very small woodstove for under 1000 dollars, available in the US with an aircooled TEG that generates "a minimum of 60 watts". How about that for a hunting cabin?
I wrote Portage and Main and basically asked them to build this, haven't heard back yet. I mentioned that I thought they could likely get 400-500 watts or just have a small TEG/battery to run the water pumps in a power outage. Seeing as this is a large furnace that is said to run at up to 2000F I would actually not be at all surprised if they could get 1kW+ out of it. The payback time might be ten, twenty years, for the electricity, but then again anyone who bought one, as they would have no need for electricity for heat or hot water would be basically free. Perhaps others might ask various OWB/wood stove manufacturers if they are thinking about incorporating this tech in future.
2) Solatubes http://www.solatube.com/
Take sunlight use a reflective tube to channel it indoors then disperse it for lighting. Very simple, marketed for 20 or so years, likely 90-99% efficient. Compare with scenario of using 20% efficient solar panels to what 60% efficient inverter to maybe LEDs or less efficient lighting, order of magnitude superior. It is being marketed mainly to residential, but what about say taking street lights and putting a solatube on top channeling the light down into subways. What about using the roofs and periphery of high rises to provide lighting during the daylight hours when they are occupied. So, and you may laugh, but I remember leaving an e-mail for Ray Kurzweil and he got back to me like three hours later and I thought hey this works pretty well, still disagree with him though, so I left a post on Elon Musk's facebook page. Don't know if he will see it, but he might be just the type of person who would both find it interesting and have the means and desire to see it more widely utilized. Heck, depending on how you dispersed the light you might be able to get a natural tan in summer while working in an office.
3) Other Thoughts
Was thinking about those situations energy wise where houses are working against themselves. One example would be when you run the dryer in winter and that heat is shunted to outside instead of central heating. A possibly more important example is a refrigerator/freezer running in a heated house in winter. Now if you can shunt the heat from a dryer to outside, you can also certainly shunt the coolant for a refrigerator freezer to outside. Someone might look into whether it has been patented. The average temperature, year round, day/night for many of the most populated areas might well be (I honestly have no idea) 50 degrees or so. Certainly in colder climates one could generate their refrigeration without recourse to other than the outside environment for much of the year. With modern sensors and electronics it should be simple not to transfer coolant into an 80 degree day and also to run the refrigerator only when necessary.
These approaches should both decrease "energy consumption" and if anything improve quality of life.
Ciao,
Paul "Duffy"
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