Using What We Have
By Richard Williams, 4/13/09
I have been known to do the unthinkable at times and even the absurd, but that is only because I am more comfortable outside of the box then inside of it. To be inside of the box you must be a conformist, a promoter of standards and S.O.P... I was not trained to be in that arena like most of you who utilize all those hard years of training and experience to keep the world endlessly supplied with products and devices. Most of you I would imagine make a decent to great salary doing it. My life was more focused on “get it done and no excuses” or “I hired you to make things work the way the architects and engineers wanted it too.” Such was my life in the Marines and later on as an electrician in the IBEW.
It does take a little getting used to working like that, but after the breaking in of a relentless five years of electrical apprenticeship school and “turning out” as a full fledged construction electrician, I was ready to tackle the world’s problems in a different way rather than with a military objective. Actually I was honored to work beside some of the very best trades people and engineering and architectural staff found anywhere in this world. I am a lucky guy.
Now that I am retired, I have the luxury of some spare time on my hands in which I write about interesting and or funny things. Spreading some ideas or humor around is a real joy for me to do, when I can that is. So today I would like to take you on a trip that some visionaries might come up with when they use their imaginative thinking hats while sitting outside of that proverbial box. I want to discuss one of my future solar projects with you and share some of my conceptualization workups also. Whenever I get some ideas I turn to my MCAD program and in this case it is SolidWorks. It is friendly known territory for me and ideas can flow nicely rather than when I try drawing freehand. I stink at that these days.
Using what we have is something that is going to be more critical as we proceed into this new millennium and the emphasis is on building green now as you all know already. We are suppose to be creating things with a very low or non-carbon footprint which means to use less of what we have used so wastefully in carbon fueled energy supplies. What I am going to share with you is not anything new or something that you haven’t seen before. It is just my rendition of it.
Now, I want to discuss with you what I have done so far over this last week with an idea for a solar mirrored concentrator. I envisioned the basic problem here was with actually directing the reflected sunlight onto a target at a distance of x meters distance. I have a mirrored surface of a one square foot area or 929.03 centimeters square, that will make up the basic building blocks for this design project. Just like any picture is worth a thousand words I offer you these first two pictures of an individual mirrored sub-assembly. As you can readily see it can tilt in any two axis with the use of this configuration. I believe from my memory that the Reflectance factor from clean mirrored surfaces is in the high 90’s in efficiencies. I also remember that the angle of incidence of reflected light would be about 61 degrees using our imperial system of angular measurements, if my memory is correct. I am not sure what the Metric System calls their system of angular measurements. My ESB Conversion program lists a few different ones so I am not sure which one is used in the Metric standards. I must study the angles of reflectance very carefully because of the focusing of the mirrors onto the same size target area of one mirrored tile. This will be a critical factor for optimization of the focusing that needs to be done and I have to do it as precisely as I can do it with crude instruments and some blindness.
Now as you would surmise, one or two of these mirrored surfaces is not going to produce any steam so I configured the one single representative example into a single array to produce close to 5 earth solar suns. Again a picture explains it much better. The metal bolts that are protruding from the wood framing will be used to lock in the various tilts used for hand focusing of the mirrors. Easily obtainable and cheap are the ¼ inch Machine Bolts with nuts and washers that will create sufficient pressure to “lock in” the various angled positions. Eventually I would like to run a small stationary steam engine from the steam made from this multiple array assembly.
Down below is another screen shot of just one 5 mirrored array. Mirrors are purposely turned in different directions to show the various positions that they can tilt in and also to show that they are all separate from one another at this point. This is by no means a finished conceptual design. It is an ongoing project that will take some planning yet, but I have a side yard that I can work in that is not being utilized for anything right now and it has an ideal south facing orientation and it is out of sight more or less.
Looking away from the wall at a perpendicular angle across to the other side of the yard where the sun shines brilliantly in the southern sky, you can see the shadows’ that are cast directly at the wall.
This area should give me some walk around room for manually focusing the mirrors onto the target area and also to manually keep the whole array orientated towards the sun. By stacking one on top of the other or even perhaps 10 on each horizontal row and then using more tiers of this same array I can hopefully produce the desired results of workable low steam pressures. Optimization is the key here and I could use smaller lumber sizes rather than 2X4’s, but I have to be careful not to compromise the rigidity of the frame itself. The desert has some amazing wind storms. My “Quad Array” is down below here.
Here is a look at the backside of this conceptualization.
A constant turning of the whole array will be made possibly by using two circular half inch pieces of plywood resting on marbles or ball bearings sandwiched inside of a groove for much easier orientation turning. The bottom larger circular disk will be set up on top of a very sturdy table platform on saw horses holding everything up off of the ground at a height of about 30 inches and everything will be perfectly leveled to achieve a start for angular measurements. I’ve seen this same idea used by teenage experimenters but it was crudely built and not able to be focused very well to keep the target area of one square foot immersed by intensely concentrated solar energy. Allowing for loses in reflectance angles and some other losses, I should still be able to get about 27 earth solar suns equivalent out of the 30 mirrors used. On Mars this same equivalent might look like a half of a foot ball field. It would have to be shielded pretty good too because of very high surface winds but of much less density I understand. I will leave that to be figured out by one of the youngsters that might really be inspired by this semi-sophisticated project. More sophistication could be a tracking system and who knows what else with time and money. Now I must tackle the other very severe problem like the financing of this project. Hello honey dearest, oh great and lovely cooker and homemaker… J I’m estimating about 250-300 dollars at the top end.
Here is a little different angle looking up from the bottom. I’m planning on putting a target out about seven feet in front of the mirrors.
Here is an interesting web site on animated engines and I hope to use one of the steam designs as a guide to build something that will work. I really love this web site. http://www.animatedengines.com/ If I can get this thing to work I will propose this as a school project for kids all over the world to do at their schools and to get them thinking about practical uses for solar energy usage. That is the whole idea here to begin with. But I wonder if Uncle DaVinci had these start up problems. I’m all ears if anyone has comments good or bad, praise or condemnation, worthwhile or not. I’m in my own little world in my backyard and what could possibly go wrong, uh huh! Kids learn quickly not to touch hot things and a solar oven, flat plate collector or concentrator like this is no different than an oven or stove.
Corporal Willy,