Heat Matters
WARNING: LONG POST
Over the years, I’ve seen many different technological articles about alternative ways of producing energy, cooking food, cooling buildings, and so on.
My thing has always been, why not combine these elements into one big system? The advantages of one system can be appropriated to cover the disadvantages of others.
For instance, take the SCORE system that I read about a long time ago. It’s being researched, but the basic idea is that you have a wood fire that cooks something, and the extra heat is converted into electricity, and by the way of Stirling engines, also converted into refrigeration. Wow, right? Then, I read about rocket stoves. Cooking with twigs? That is also an amazing thing.
So I figured, hey, why don’t we combine the two? The SCORE system would simply use a rocket stove component in it’s heating chamber. That way, the stove could operate off of twigs, and make volts and ice!
Well, today, I went on a energy tech walkabout, and I found a few more things that are interesting to me. Firstly, I found micro-CHP. The idea works off of cogeneration, which is to use waste heat from power generation for other things, such as water heating. The “micro” part describes the concept of residential-sized applications. This NYT Green blog post talks about her freewatt.
From that vein, I looked into absorptive refridgeration, and that led me to this Youtube video:
A little doo-hicky that you put in a fire, and it then chills water for 24 hours? This is even better for mobile applications, especially camping. The way I see it, you could have a rocket stove made out of a tin can, cook some food, heat up that thing, then have nearly freezing water for all of your beer! The humanitarian application of the mobile refrigerator is obvious for nomadic peoples, and unindustrialized peoples in general.
Then, I saw this video, also from TED, about a new solar panel:
It’s a little bit longer than most uploads, but it does make an interesting point about the role of different technologies, and how they can benefit each other. The two main innovations for this device, is the use of microchips and servos to adjust the mirrors (because mirrors like this have been used before) and the use of the Stirling engine in the center to generate electricity, as opposed to using the heat to produce steam.
One thing that he presents in the video as a side note, that immediately grabbed my attention, was the option of heating water with the system. I don’t consider that an option; I consider that a big opportunity. That extra heat could create a Sunbelt version of the freewatt system that the Green blog post was talking about. The use of heat clearly can be used for refrigeration, as with Grosser’s device.
Since our command of electricity, we’ve been connected on a grid. This electrical grid is the focus of our energy development, but perhaps we should start focusing on the “heat grid.” After all, in a warming planet, we shouldn’t let any of that heat go to waste.
