DIY Tracking Parabolic Solar Concentrating Trough

[georgeplhak]

Water

[justlivemyway]

What is the heat transfer fluid ? Or is it water itself?

[starnberg2413]

..-this is definitely the future.

Only with SMALL owners operated DECENTRALIZED Energy Infrastructure devices

like this example shows,

we can survive with 7+bn people on this earth.

Just go for it!

Thanks to all, who are taking up the lead here!

[bryncomeaux]

use a fluid with a lower boiling point like amonia hydrate or something that way you can get the pressure needed to make machanical energy. Perhaps a heat exchanger would be safer. Its been done with great success. Also pre heating water in a solar hot water heater then the trough then the heat exchange saw it in a book turn of the cenrty setup didn't catch on cause it wasnt transportable for ships and trains. oils too damn cheap.

[TheQedqubit]

tenyears ago a guy holland showed me this and showed 70degrees celcius on a cloudy day.

which is a higher rendement than solar panels, and also the manufacturing costs, both financial, and chemicalwaste were (are) less.of course he could not get a patent ,nor find a manufuckturor

[mangyscavenger]

I see a lot of people interested in using the trough to make electricity. A Sterling is one option, maybe the best. But, another option might be to use that heat to gasify wood, using the wood gas to fuel a generator. Seems possible.

Another use might be to blow air through the pipe & into the home for free heating during the winter months. Or, heat water, pump it through a radiator in the home, & blow air over the radiator for home heating.

Great work. Thanks for posting the vid.

[Peterwhitlock]

@mangyscavenger

how about making ICE! The world uses a LOT of power to coll itself! such devices can run freezers and frozen bottles of water would be put in coolers that have a fan to push air in and out a vent to cool rooms at will.

More demand for cooling than heat on this planet!

[georgeplhak]

43N. If the collectors are very long (like the big Mojave installations), it doesn't matter which way they are oriented. Since mine are only 8 feet long, I think that I get about 20% more heat collected over the day with them oriented N-S rather than E-W. You'd need tracking in either case for the concentrators to work well. I don't know if you had a chance to look over the information I posted at the link? More info there.

[craftmatic2]

I don't understand why "tracking". If you oriented the troughs perpendicular to the way they are now, you'd get the same energy non-stop without tracking, ok honestly, your table would need to ber about 2 ft longer, but you wouldn't need motors or electricity to run them...

You might need a hand crank to adjust the angle slightly for different seasons, but maybe I don't get it...

What lattitude are you?

[georgeplhak]

No I don't know. My collector is an efficient source of concentrated heat. Others are interested in making electricity with some type of steam turbine but I have not done that (not yet). I use it to provide heat for a swimming pool and I get on a good day approx 50,000 BTU/hr.

[CmdrTobs]

@georgeplhak wow, are you sure 50K BTU an hr? That is a lot of heat. If you bought some heat engine with a fairly modest ~10% efficiency that's like 5 KW/H of electricity you could generate!

I'm going to have to look into this, those numbers are really good.

[20YrBillionaire]

@CmdrTobs I've seen his # and a few others have confirmed them. Average steam efficiency will be 10% to 15% with a good setup using his setup so it should be 10 to 15kw.

[CmdrTobs]

@20YrBillionaire I'm not sure you will get anywhere near that with the temperature gradients you could realistically achieve.

[caddmaven]

This looks interesting enough to build. I might buy a copy of those plans. I am really interested in what this array could do if linked to a stirling electrical generator. Any ideas about the efficiency of such a system?

[1l1k32watch]

georgeplhak, Where did you buy the frames to build the parabolas?

Thanks.

[georgeplhak]

Please see the referenced URL and your question will be answered. There are a number of other videos from me here on youtube that you might also look at. Thanks for your interest.

[wjj4832]

Awesome!  I'll probably order the plans.

wj

Oklahoma City