Sand Battery Part-8, 550 Degrees F
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- čas přidán 5. 09. 2024
- I am happy to say the new 240-volt element performed fantastic on the first day using 850 watts of solar panels. The temperature on the element reached over 550 degrees F that is how high my thermometer goes. I have another video after this showing how the fan and vents are performing. Thank you for watching.
Looks like the R & D is going well. Volts x amps = watts. Looks like you’re ready for a larger storage container and more insulation. R-50 is zero energy loss. Now if you can get the sun to shine long enough to get your results and fully heat your sand storage. Keep up the great work
Thank you for the information.
@@off-gridsurvivalmike8120 Hi, thanks for sharing, I just saw this video will look more on your channel as I find time, but I have a quick question: how come the direct link with the pannles dont burn them? Anyway you can provide the exact descriptions for noobs like us? Thanks.
@@off-gridsurvivalmike8120 and also what happens if you don have sun in pannels, I imagine they heat less, like in a morning, but what happens to the pannels, dont they get burned?
@@off-gridsurvivalmike8120You can also use a generator to power it for testing purposes
I agree with you on needing a different wire to handle more heat. For the soldered connections - how about sliding a piece of copper tubing over the connection and then crimping it like you would a terminal connector for a battery cable? That way you get a "cold weld" instead of the solder. Liking what you are doing.
same for welding cables
I love what you are doing out there! I love to invent and tinker with things as well and this tech has the ability to make life so much easier and cheaper to live. I am with you now.
Awesome. Well done. It’s great that you’re doing this in winter when it’s really relevant. Looks like you have pretty clear skies, so it will be interesting to know what it’s like on an overcast day.
Seen some great comments it was an instant subscribe. Have looked at a few projects concerning sand batteries. We'll done on the project!!!!
Thank you
I love this series, great work!
Great project! I keep wondering about this stuff, but on a bigger scale. Use stainless steel pipes as the heat element, so air can be blown through. I was thinking about putting a barrel in a gas tank, pull a (as far as I can get) vacuum for insulation, and seal it off. You should look into the CESAR project in the Netherlands, they build a really big one for 36 homes.
I have been thinking about making a similar system, thanks for sharing!
thank you I'm really enjoying your experiment
Very Nice ! Now use zeolite or calcium chloride and you don't need too much of insulation (thermochemical storage..), and can store heat for months if you need ! (But weeks is already good, as you got sun back before...
Interesting, I will have to research that. Thank you for the information.
Thanx too to share your works !@@off-gridsurvivalmike8120 Trihydrated sodium acetate can work too, in a closed package, but heat less (58C° max)
It is a cheap chemical used to conserve industrial food. Other components i told about are also cheap and few toxic..
I applaud your efforts, despite electric heating elements being notoriously inefficient. I encourage you to look for non-electric means of heating the sand, as cloudy skies, rain and snow will greatly reduce the solar panels output.
This is still a prototype, although it will be to heat a room addition. I will try some different ideas on some future ones I will build. I will be pursuing this thermal heating for quite some time in the future. Thank you for the information.
@@off-gridsurvivalmike8120 I'm adding reflective mirrors on both sides of the panels to harvest more power all day, especially early morning and late evening. I'm in Wisconsin, so overheating the panels is not a worry in the winters. I might try PTC elements, see if that is more efficient.
I finally know what a flux capacitor looks like!
Excellent!
water heater tank on top of the sand.
12 volt immersion heater ($12 eBay) 12 volt socket ($10) hooked to the battery out of your riding lawn mower. Heat activated stove fan ($12eBay) small solar car charger ($20 eBay)
try direct solar concentration heating, at least 4x more efficient than first solar panel conversion to electricity
Problem with that is aiming sun all day long, i tried using fresnel lens from old tv. It works very well yet need some sort of motorised mount that can follow sun at exact point so lens can make concentrate heat at a point.
@@HarpreetSingh-di4hk well use a perfect lens, or aluminium concentrator mirrors, I did not mean fresnel lens specifically, any type of concentrator setup, concentration is assumed, not problems, and you can make a trough that stays aligned to sun path all day with no movement, ie longitudal parabolic pipe concentrator
@@HarpreetSingh-di4hk making a tracker is no problem, what if people would just solve the issue and not complain there is a thing to be made
You can get a 48v dc water heater element for $40 and likely get around some of the wiring concerns
and maybe use muliple hearters?
I have to wonder, considering water heaters are usually in the the 120-140 F range if the element would handle 450+ F
BRAVO...You read my mind. I have been thinking about doing this for a several weeks now. I plan on using a 55 gal steel drum insulated with ceramic fiber blankets, fire bricks, etc., and an electric range heating element just like you have done. Target temp will be 500C++. Hopefully I can insulate well enough so that the heat can be stored for at least 30+ days. I have 8Kw solar driving a 12K Sol-Ark and 20Kwh of LiFePO4s. I will initially power the heating element from the Sol-Ark 240V output when there is excess solar but may elect to use DC directly from a couple of dedicated 450W panels. There are many options...
Ultimately, I would like to duct heated air from this into my central HVAC air handler to heat ~1600 sqft of living area,
Quick calculation using 55 gal of sand(~750lbs) heated to 500C gives ~134,000 Btu of stored heat energy. Plenty of heating capacity for at least a few COLD days in N Texas and MUCH less expensive than the 100KWh of LiFePO4 bats that would be required.
Have you worked on your design? I'm in Wisconsin and am thinking of something similar. Using mirrors to increase the lumens hitting the panels will increase the inputs, especially early morning and late evening. Cold temps means no overheating the panel issues.
At only 50% efficiency and approx. 5Kwh of power input, you should be able to easily heat 50 lbs of sand up to 500 degC( 932 F )
Thanks for answering the other day.
I'm still confused how the small cables from the solar panels, aren't also getting super hot.
I'll be following your design though, but adding a 1" iron pipe coil arond the element bottom to top, to blow air through and extract the heat into the room.
Super free super hot air.
It surely must supply for hours.
I believe it doesn't get hot because of the element material. It is designed to dissipate the heat. But to be honest I don't really know the answer because I am not an electrician. I like your idea of running a tube to extract the hot air. I will post more on the project soon. Thanks for commenting.
@off-gridsurvivalmike8120 Cheers Mike. I'll let you know know how mine goes in time.
It is a resistive heating elemnent... same as the ones on an electric household range.
@@DougJohns Yep, the other wires are too electrically conductive to get hot, but the resisttive metal gets hot precisely because it is far less electrically conductive.
You will be better off to just build a solar thermal panel to get the heat from it. Solar photovoltaic conversion of Sun's energy is around 15-20% efficiency. Solar thermal conversion of Sun's energy is up to 90% efficiency. Thanks for the video.
Good thought... I wonder how hot it would get
More elements at lower voltages.
Now if you can heat it with a parabolic lens during the day and blow the heat in all night.
You need a crimp made from INCONEL TUBING.
PURCHASE HIGH TEMP WIRE FROM (TANSTAFL WIRE)
That is great information, thank you.
Like the progress.
1. Will you show temp differance form outer diameter and 3 places headed to center after sand is heated?
2. And how much did it cool down overnight from the 550 degrees?
Really like the progress Mac in Michigan
It cooled down to 140° that next morning. I will show more readings. My plan was to top it off with more sand and close it sealed but I won't do that to this prototype at least not yet so we can see how it performs for a while.
Cool. But how many btu went into the sand and at what temp did you maintain in a room for how long? How does this compare to say a propane heater heating the same room?
Would you also use a extra solar panel to charge a battery then use that battery to run a thermostatically controlled fan to distribute the stored heat into the room?
Would it take say 100 pounds of sand heated up by X watt solar panels to warm and hold stead a x square foot room for a whole day and night?
These are all things that need to be looked at. Get to it!!!!
1 btu is equal to 0.293 watt
More details and experiments are needed.
Wow. Is that a success?❤
i am supposing if you add some cement tubing.. you could get some haat to gravitate up and create a blowing hot air hear which can be adjust by opening and closing (or partially closing) the vent holes.. while retaining the heat inside when not in use?
Great job , for how long can this storage system hold its heat?
Will copy paste my comment here hoping someone smarter will consider it and give his review..
Ok I think we could buy old steel tank from truck at scrap yard 3000-20000 liter and fill it with fine sand that have big capacity for heat storage at high temperatures.
(Cost of a such tank here is about 1500$)
Can go up to 300-400*C inside steel tank and with stainless steel tank even higher.
(That way we have many times larger capacity of heat than using same volume of water at 100*C)
We cut rectangular hole in steel tank and put copper plate 40x40cm with ribs going into sand to spread heat faster, painted black on that place so that spot would receive all heat we are going to transmit to the tank.
(That tank is welded and hermetically sealed with tons of sand inside.)
Now we buy another slightly bigger tank, coat from inside with reflective coating, put our first tank into it and make sealed glass window 30x30cm on it to align with black coated copper on inside tank.
Internal tank should be sitting on a bigger tank with some non conductive and heat resistant legs so that would not transfer heat to surrounding tank.
We make outer steel tank more rigid by welding outer support so it doesnt shrink, put some copper pipes around and insulate whole tank very good.
-Those copper pipes are to flow water into them for heating.
-To outer tank is also connected vacuum pump that makes vacuum between two tanks to stop 2 ways of heat transfer (conduction and convection).
-That inside coating of the tank stops 3. way of heat transfer which is (radiation).
Now we make huge set of parabolic mirrors that would be guided with motors to reflect huge amount of heat through that window to copper plate and heat sand material and inside steel tank up to 300-400*C or more with stainless steel tank.
We can use huge parabolic mirrors 2x2m by adding many smaller ones to construction of a big one.
We can also put 4 mirrors at window at 30* to collect light that would otherwise not hit the window and size receiving area up to 1m.🔳
How does it work?
So on a sunny day mirrors should reflect huge amount of heat through a window of outer tank to a copper part of inner tank filled with sand that would get very very hot because its totally, vacuum(conduction and convection) and coating(radiation) insulated from the outer surface.
Now when sun is out and we need heat we simply push the water through pipes connected on outer tank and via motor we make less vacuum between so outer tank and pipes start rapid heating and water gets hot.
Then we transfer water to our house boiler for a in house hot water and room heating, or to a steam turbine that could make electricity all summer nights when we dont need so much of a heat.
Such a well insulated tank could maybe keep a sand hot for a month which is great considering whole week might be cloudy.
Am not sure if about 50sqm of mirrors would be enough to make such amounts of heat during winter but it seems like long lasting, not much expensive and very earth pollution saving project.
Would like some engineer to take a look on this and give real calculations about efficiency and possibility for such a project.
Thanks for making me think of this idea and please everyone who have some recommendations or ideas to add something..
Some basic issues to consider. Water holds roughly 5 times the amount of energy as sand at the same temp per mass/weight. So the same weight of water at boiling holds the same amount of energy as the same weight of sand at 500C. And you can change the boiling point of water by changing its pressure, so you can raise its boiling point to 200C at 18atm, which gives you the same amount of energy as 1000C of sand.
These are the theoretical numbers you need to beat to make all this engineering more effective/effiecent than water based systems.
The potential is there, sand at one atmosphere melts at roughly 1500C, so the potential to store 3 time the amount of total energy is there, but now you are talking about containing that temp. And then the pipes that run through it have to have a higher melting point than that.
We already have the tech to handle the water at those temps, and you can use the water itself as the transport medium, so it is simpler.
Use a mixing chamber to bring the water to the temp you need it at for your application is something that is already solved.
So this is a harder sell for home applications, but for large communities and larger the sand may be the way to go.
@@NdxtremePro
Its about 3.4x more thermal capacity in water at same volume, but I was calculating that we need to keep it below 100*C.
Seems even at 100*C water could be better option, but how to handle the pressure in such huge tank..
Also that tank would lose heat very fast, in couple of days probably.
In my idea one tank of sand is completely sealed and there is no any pipes in or out, and that thank is inside a bigger tank that have pipes on its surrounding.
Between two tanks is a empty space of about 20cm at every point except some non conducive legs, and on outer tank you have just one valve on which is connected pump that makes vacuum inside as best possible insulator, so when you need heat, you just let some air inside through pump and outer tank and pipes heats up quickly.
The main problem here is what material to use inside to reflect radiant heat back to tank with sand to keep insulation as good as possible.
@@egaega2458 You are not thinking about thermal bridging. While a vacuum is good this purpose, you have to suspend the inner chamber and the heat tranfer pipes you are going to use have to contact the inner chamber as well, both creating bridging points for heat transfer.
Since you need your transfer pipes to conduct heat, as that is their purpose, you can't avoid that, unless you can physically separate them when not in use. This is doable, but you are increasing failure points.
I would go with a thick ceramic encasement to insulate the heat, and your bridging pipes can run through the sand and container. If you want, you can enclose the pipe in ceramic to limit the amount of heat that can transfer, but you can also create a vacuum inside the pipe itself when not in use.
This allows you to limit the thermal bridging to your control.
They currently make water tanks designed for radiant heating, you can buy them in hundred+ gal enclosures preinsulated. They are designed to hooking existing boiler and heat pump installations. They operate at pressurized levels, but they are meant to go into Pex pipes, so they don't go up to 100C.
They are commercially available which means warranties and other niceties, like home owners insurance will approve them.
@@NdxtremePro
Inner tank is completely sealed and there is no contact with pipes and outer tank, heat transfer to outer tank and pipes is regulated by pump regulating vacuum between.
I dont see a reason why this wouldnt work.
That sound like expensive solution with all ceramics and heat is lost by pipes themselves because in that case they need to be connected with whole house system all the time and with vacuum or not they are steel pipes and heats go through them.
Are connections burning up at element wires?
You have to use a high nickel crimp attached to a high temp wire..
Regular heavy gauge wire will degrade from the heat that transfers back from the element wire.
srml rated wire
What is that shaped element element for and depending on the voltage the resistance is kinda high so basically it's 24 ohms so thats only 1 amp at 24v but really a 24v panel would be more like 30 something Volts so maybe you get 50 watts but at 120v dc the most you should be able to push thru it is 600 watts which is probably enough I don't know I haven't messed with sand batteries
how long and what could be a temperature after power switch off?
I don't know a lot of the details as of now. Once I get this unit up and running I can do temperature readings and determine how everything works.
If there is a feed store near you you can buy a water heater for cattle water troughs maybe that would work , Also I only have one 150 watt panel ,will that work? . How many panels and what size are you using ? Great show
I have a question, Im currently gathering the materials for a own demonstration project, but I could find something like th cooking heater coil anywhere, on the internet only from China and then its for 220V.
Are you using the 220V AC voltage trough a inverter from the solar panels or are you using the DC voltage direct from the solar panels?
For me, I want to test it with a 400 Watt solar panel and see what results I get, but Im a electronic technician (trained 10 years ago and know the theory but dont applied for a while) and could calculate it, but they just say its for 220V AC, and I dont know how large the resistant is, so how much power I could use it for.
What specifications has your solar panels? Im thinking about to use a 30,9V x 12,9A = 400W panel
Hope you can help me.
Ps. thanks for your channel, I watched all your sand battery videos because Im fascinated how easily it can work. Would love to know, whether you can share a video with some diagrams how the temperature in your house (how many rooms are you heating with it? How many sqm/sqft?) change and how fast the sand battery discharge.
Thank you in advance! Greets from Germany
To start with check the resistance on your element you have chosen to use. If it is a 220-V element you are probably okay to do a test with your 30-V panels. I show how to calculate using OHMS Law on one of my videos. You should be able to wire your solar panels in series to multiply the voltage but be extremely careful when handling the power as I am sure you know. I am not an electrician nor an engineer. So if you can get the resistance of your element with a little practice you can calculate how many Watts at various specific Voltages. I hope that helps some.
How are you getting 800 watts out of two solar panels?
I have an old oven i can use as a sand battery. I assume the elements would survive? Ive seen someone amp them into a kilns temps. I was wondering if i could put a huge sterling engine on them? I need mechanical energy.
I am looking into the sterling engines also. It sounds like a perfect match for a sand battery.
What about heating element in sealed aluminum container full of water surrounded by the sand?
Yes that may work but you can only reach around 200° or the water turns to steam.
If concentrate solar to sand which maximum temperature we reach...?
Wonderful! Thanks for sharing element source/type in video, would be good to have in the description.l too. Never seen a 3d spiral like that. Did it come that way or did you pull it out? Missed video 7, just went back and saw you pulled it out. Great work. How are you planning to get the heat out of it for use?
He pulled it out on a prior video 🙂
@@billymyers missed that one, thanks.
I should have shown when I pulled it out. I was surprised how easily it sprang open like that. So I will purchase another one and show how I did it. Now I may have too much power or it may not hold up for what I am using it for so I would wait at least a few weeks to see if this burns out like my last 120-volt one did. But as of today, day 3 it is still performing perfectly. I am monitoring it right now.
Also I will film the elements at Home Depot just so you can see they have them in the appliance department near the stoves.
@@off-gridsurvivalmike8120 great, and as many stoves hit the dump/tip scrap elements should not be hard to get. With a bit of power regulation even the 120v ones should work out, if a bit slower.
Could you just use this as a space heater in an insulated building??
Yes you should be able to use it for a space heater. One issue is the weight. So to have one that is adequate it needs to be fairly heavy. I suggest either outside next to whatever you are attempting to heat with venting or ideally reinforce the floor and have it indoors.
I'm going try your way seem better, I'll another using a water heating element that one fail. melted water heater element in 3 sec. I'm going to use a 55 gal steel drum.
Would an oven element be a better option?
iwas wondering how to insulate the connections ,thanks for that ,how long does it hold the heat for ?
Rock wool is a good high temperature insulation. It is what I will use around the larger one I am building. The heat stays all night on the prototype. I will know more once I start testing the larger prototype.
i'm going to be making one for my house in france ,open fire and convector heaters at the moment .Wood burner and sand batteries soon but i have to make them look pretty for my woman lol i get it, you can have dustbin(trashcan) in the middle of your room when your on your own ,but not so much when you have a partner .Well not in my case anyway :)
Ever tried heating up water with that? E.g. pushing water through a copper coil?
how long does it stay warm after the sun is down ?
The sand will stay hot all night. I have a prototype running and it was 294° F. after all night with no power at 6:30 AM in the morning around two months ago.
How many square feet of space are you heating ??
Everything is changing as far as my living quarters. This property I am building on will be sold because of disputes. It is a joint partnership that went sour. So as far as how many square feet I will be heating. I will determine that when I start my next property project. I will be posting all the details soon.
So, did you connect the solar panels' output directly to the coil?
Yes' directly to the panels.
yay you are doing great! I suppose you will set it up indoors somehow once you perfect it?
This prototype is too small to do much in a home. I may use it in a greenhouse not sure exactly yet.
@@off-gridsurvivalmike8120 That would be a great Idea. Put another pipe through and attach a fan and you are basically set...
Can this just plug into the mains?
Do you mean plug into power from the grid? If that is what you are asking I don't see why not but it will consume a lot of power.
Fantastic! Good man, not very young looking to his hands and voice, but young in his soul! Thanks, kind man! Usefull!!! We are decided to make one larger then your! :) We $u$cribed to your chanel! :)
How did it go? Success? How big and results? THANKS!!!