The world’s cheapest solar heater 300 ⁰С: its problems & their solutions, new experiments 2024
This concave mirror is made from this reflective film at a cost of 25 cents / sq.m, and this mesh of steel rods with a total cost of about $3, and it is almost 100 times cheaper than these mirrors which are used to convert large amounts of solar radiation into thermal energy and electricity, and we understand that the radical reduction in the cost of these mirrors makes their electricity cheaper than from solar panels, or thermal and nuclear power plants. You may think that these cheap mirrors do not work well, but it is not, and my old videos showed how that mirror focuses the solar radiation here, where it can heat up to temperatures higher than 300 ⁰C. In addition, my old videos repeatedly showed how we can turn this thermal energy not only into cheap electricity, but also into very cheap heat for greenhouses, for industrial processes, and for district heating of a city. Of course, you may ask, if this device is so wonderful, why has not it made a breakthrough in electricity generation yet, and why do not we see a revolution in agriculture based on cheap greenhouse heating? Why do not we see a revolution in cheap space heating and hot water supply and revolutionary breakthroughs in factories and mining due to very cheap thermal energy? I can answer as follows: no one is researching or producing this simple and cheap mirror yet. This very simple idea was first shown by me only 2 years ago, and this video will show my new experiments over the past year. Unfortunately, my YouTube channel is the only source of information about research on such combinations of meshes and films. In addition, let’s assume that someone decided to create a start-up to manufacture and install this type of solar heaters, and let’s look at the problems that the start-up will face. Perhaps you think that this cheap film has a short lifespan, but now I show that my film has been living for many months under snow and wind. Here we can notice that there is a strong wind now, but pay attention here, and we see that the film is motionless because it is very stretched. Unfortunately, solar radiation and weather cause films to age, and one of my old videos showed the life of a mirror month after month. It turned out that the life of the film ended after 18 months in this way, but it was the cheapest film made from one layer of mylar 20 microns thick, but maybe the start-up will find a more durable film. So, that startup should create the possibility of replacing films every 1…2 years, and now I will show an example of the replacement on a row of these 3 mirrors, when first a film roll is placed along the entire row, and then the film is fixed with meshes. But I think another replacement method is more promising, when first a rectangle of film is fixed on a similar multi-year frame, and then they are fixed on a mesh. I think the height of the frame should be larger, 2…3 meters, and the optimal width would be between 1.5 and 3 meters, for installation by two workers who should spend less than a minute replacing each frame. In addition, that startup should create a factory to remove old films from frames and install new films on old frames so that the total cost of the film replacements is about 1 USD / sq.m, including the cost of film, logistics and worker salaries. That start-up must find a way to reduce or eliminate these wrinkles which decrease the thermal energy production, and now we see that getting rid of the wrinkles is possible. Now I am showing this mirror film of other bloggers, which also has these wrinkles, and now we see how these wrinkles are removed with hot air from this heat gun. Of course, I tried to remove these wrinkles with this heat gun, and you can see how it worked. This is the result of removing the wrinkles in all four corners of my mirror. But it is obvious that the start-up should not use hand-held heat guns, but some hot objects in the form of such a frame that can be carried by two people or a machine. It was the 1st option for removing wrinkles, and now I will describe the 2nd option, and I show you the mylar film again to remind you what wrinkles it had. But this is the same mirror, but the film is not made of mylar, but polyethylene, and we see that there are no wrinkles because polyethylene and mylar have different stretch parameters. This is my attempt to use reflective polypropylene film, and here we see the cause of my failure and understand that these are the places of maximum stretch of the film, but these corners have almost no wrinkles. Now I am trying to show you the stretching force of the film. The 3rd option is based on various influences on а reflective film with temperature and pressure during its installation on the frame, or after the installation, or this option gives necessary deformations to the film before the installation. Let me show you some of my little experiments, and now I remind you how many wrinkles the mylar film had in the beginning. Credit to : Sergiy Yurko