Tub of Water Solar Heat Exchanger Experiment: Mar. 22, 2010

[MarianaSteal1975]

Nowbuild a plate exchanger and add it before the warm water pumps through the coil and you will get even hotter water :-)

[windoes98se]

if you hooked the solar water panel up to a base board heater than you can heat yore house or a shed

[BenjaminNelson]

@leaualorin

It's 1/2 inch diameter. I think it was only 25 feet long.

[growinggreenri]

Thanks for the very hands on demonstration in both this and the hot water tank videos. We need to add a heat dump for our solar hot water system, we have the soft copper but didn't really want to bury it in the ground. This gives us a way to connect the heat dump and we'll have hot water to use outside. Excellent demonstration and great scientific ingenuity!

[Nicholsp02]

Thanks for the video. I will be doing something similar in Hokkaido but with parabola troughs. I am looking for a cheap manufacturer of heat exchangers that can interface with the legacy heating systems for those days when there is not enough sun. Do you know of any?

[catatonicable]

Stick your bucket on some stepladders then you wont need that pump.

[thphsu]

Why didn't that 130 F water scald your hand?

[gchenley]

Nice experiment. I've been researching the possibility of using polycarbonate panels as my collector making manifolds at each end to pass water through. Multi wall polycarbonate is UV protected on one side and could be painted black on the back side. Then the panel could be insulated on the back and glycol placed in the first loop. Polycarbonate is easy to find, but expensive to ship. So I'm still shopping.

[elbeghast]

Excellent video! You are giving me tons of ideas. =D

[BenjaminNelson]

Most "heat storage" systems use mass to store heat. If you could heat sand, concrete, drums of anti-freeze, or anything else that is heavy with the solar panel, it would absorb heat during the day and release it at night.

I know a couple with a strawbale barn used as a greenhouse, which has a thousand gallon water tank that is heated by solar thermal panels. They can grow tropical fruit in Wisconsin in the winter!

[planetvance]

So... Newton was right, heat will flow from a warmer system to a cooler system. Too bad you could never remove a useful amount of energy from your system. If you could, of course, you would just shower with the water running through the solar panel instead of just pumping it around to demonstrate the 2nd law of thermodynamics. If you could rig up the system to charge a couple of AA batteries, it would be as useful as many other solar systems out there.

[BenjaminNelson]

In batch solar hot water systems, you DO shower with the water running through the panel. I am in a cold climate, so my panel will have antifreeze running through it instead, which then needs to exchange its heat out to water.

Not quite as efficient, but it won't freeze in the winter either.

[Ayomide345]

@BenjaminNelson

you could make one of those heated floor systems with it if you wanted :)

[miquelmahhhh]

5*......

[bret354]

awesome video was thinking of doing this, now i will build one

[deepwater1974]

Wow it works. Thats cool.

[ibpointless2]

What do you do about when the sun not out?

This gives me an idea for a solar powered jacuzzi. sun light recharges batteries and a pump and electric heater does the rest.

[BenjaminNelson]

This is just an experiment. The finished version would use an insulated water tank in the house. That tank would feed my existing water heater. Since that tank is insulated, even at night, it would still have some heat in it from the day. If the water isn't hot enough, it gets heated the rest of the way by the traditional heater.

[MountainMonsters]

pretty cool thanks for sharing! =-D

5 Star!