19y.o. kid covers a satelite dish with mirrors and creates "death ray"

[gravityblock]

After I get back on my feet financially, since I'm back to work now, I plan on using the light from a superdish with mirrors to magnify the attractive and repulsive components of light on the macro scale. For more information on how light is a bipolar force with both an attractive and repulsive component that can be controlled (not to be confused with light's radiation pressure), see this article with an illustration. Any comments on this idea would be appreciated.

Thanks,

GB

[FRC]

Yes gravityblock

Yes that is that is correct. They used to have those little globe sun motors with
four plates two white and two black. Maybe they are still around. They demonstrated this principle.

FRC

[Hoxan]

Very nice project.
Few years ago I created similar thing. I took parabolic plate and glue on 9 mirrors 5x5 cm and directed it on small solar panel from solar garden light.
Solar panel directed to "normal" sun made 63mA, when using parabolic mirrors it was 217mA, so there was 3,4 fold increase.

[bugler]

No you don’t need a Stirling engine, but it is cheaper than a steam turbine system in smaller applications and is similar in efficiency.

Do you know of any Stirling engine that can be used to generate 3-5kw?

[Matthew Jones]

Do you know of any Stirling engine that can be used to generate 3-5kw?

| www.sunmachine.de |

This is a parabolic setup with a sterling engine. I am not sure how much power it makes. They also make version that burns pellets. From what I understand they can keep a house going.

Cheers
Matt

[kcarring]

I played around with this concept last summer. I discovered a few things, or, at least with my steup.

1. Old projection TV sets provide a nice fresnel lense, often, for free.
2. Parabolic works too, but take notice of the difference between the focal point created by parabolic vs. fresnel. Theres a guy on youtube, I think it's "Greensciencepower" or something who has done extensive experimentation with this stuff.
3. I forget the number, but in direct sunlight I believe it is estimated that (somewhere...) you have about 1000 watts of heat energy available to you, for every square meter of space, and thus;

Heating water is a real waste. You just aren't utilizing that power wisely.

In my experiments I quickly found out, the available heat, when focused far exceeds the needed temperature to raise water to a boil. There within lies the problem. If you refurbish the water or "use it quickly" - then, you are replenishing the water with cold water, thus your temperatures are all over the map.

Do some research into just how much (volume) of steam you require to generate any level of power via a steam engine or turbine. It's monstrous; more than you can afford, directly, on deman CONSISTENTLY with a solar lense.

The holdback is that you've got an amazing beam of energy, but all you are "using" is the heat joules to raise water about 150 degrees.

You need a buffer. A battery of heat. Something to get you ahead of the game before your pants fall down running.

That's where the eclectic salts come in. They will not melt until about high five hundreds, 585F. The beauty in principle is that you are sucking every last joule out of the sunlight to change the state of that salt from solid to liquid, pushing it through that latent heat energy state.

The bonus is, when that salt cools off, your going to get back, that "heat burst" in the form of latent heat change, again... as the molten salt goes from liquid to solid. And all of this happens far above the temperature required to boil water, to THEN run your steam gen, consistently. Heat a smaller amount of salt to a higher temperature, to then heat a much larger quantity of water to a lower temperature.

It's the key to success.

Otherwise you'll quickly find out that you have about a 50 watt system like I did... a waste of time, essentially. Not only that, you only get production during peak moments of sun. Use eclectic salts and you'll be making power under the moonlight at 3 a.m.

Cheers

[kcarring]

To store your molten salt you require a bunker that has three elements. The first is the liner. It must be able contain both the temperature and any pressure of expanded gas, but it wont be a huge pressure equation, but it must be able to also handle corrosion. Stainless Steel comes to mind. Secondly, you'll need heat rention, if you cannot properly "store" the heat, it'll be very hard to insulate. Salt. Thirdly you'll need insulation and fire barrier. Concrete lined (exterior) with blue foam. Remember, even a consistent 200-300 degree temperature, day in, day out, released to ground as heat loss WILL start nearby roots on fire. Lord forbid if they are cedar tree roots or some type that have resins to perpetuate a ground fire. I have experimented extensively with sustained long term underground firepits, and let me tell you... if you start a ground fire like I almost did, it's a scary proposition. In my experiment I thought I had a good thing going, a perpetuated covered fire for 18 days... until one day I saw smoke coming out of the ground... everywhere... for about 100 square meters... with forest all around that. We spent 7 days digging with machinery and extinguishing the root fires I had caused. So be very careful!

[kcarring]

Once the molten brine is stored, it's heat can be fed to the reactor quite easily, heat rises. As the heat is given off, the salt reforms into crystals, and then you'll need a corkscrew to turn that salt back upwards to the solar heat chamber in the focal point of your lense.

[bugler]

Use eclectic salts and you'll be making power under the moonlight at 3 a.m.

Cheers

Thanks for the information.

Could you give details of the set up with the eclectic salts with the amount to use?

[gravityblock]

Yes that is that is correct. They used to have those little globe sun motors with
four plates two white and two black. Maybe they are still around. They demonstrated this principle.

FRC

The above is based on a different effect. Did you read the article I referenced? Light is a bipolar force with both an attractive and repulsive component that can be controlled. The discovery was made by splitting infrared light into two beams that each travel on a different length of silicon nanowire, called a waveguide. The two light beams became out of phase with one another, creating a push, or repulsive force, with an intensity that can be controlled; the more out of phase the two light beams, the stronger the force. This was done on the nanoscale, but I want to do this on the macroscale by generating huge attraction and repulsive forces from the intensity of the light converging at the focal point.



GB

[kcarring]

I was using the wrong term, the term is Eutectic pertaining to Thermal energy storage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Where my experiment went wrong was I was not using stainless steel and my formulation of eutectic salt, failed to be, just that... eutectic. Read more about this and Gibbs Free Energy = 0 state.

It's a tricky process, I experimented with Potassium nitrate but later learned it should have been combined with Sodium Nitrate.

I got as far as melting the salt in stainless steel orb, I guess you'd call it, at the focal point of a single fresnel lense (which wasn't enough volume). i think a better method would be a long narrow parabolic, all focused in on a stainless steel pipe on a slight grade to allow flow. I burned out 2 pumps designed for a pulp brine (pulp mill) - I thought they'd stand up, but they didn't - so that's another issue. I've never actually seen it done on a small scale but I don't see why it couldn't be. Then there was my first experiment with a steam generator and I'm downright embarassed about that one. There's a lot too it, I've learned, but it is how it's done, commercially. Nevada Solar one is an example.



I have a bunker, still built near my Yurt. If I try again, I will first perfect the brine, and see the volume produced, and most likely purchase a small turbine. I made a turbine from Mother Earth News plans and it was a very very dangerous little contraption, let me tell you! hehe One needs to be careful.

[FRC]

Thanks gravityblock

Thanks for correcting me. Most things do have both a negative and positive
component to them, if not all things, like electricity. I do not understand how
you will do it at a larger scale than the nano scale done in the article.

FRC

[QMC]

It did happen.

Come on, now. Polished shields? You mean, tightly-toleranced parabolic shields with a focal length of at least a hundreds feet, and lapped to mirror finish?

It's a cool story. It's also pretty ridiculous. And even aside from the pretty blatant infeasibility, have you wondered why this wasn't an incredibly common method of destroying ships, if it worked? If this was successful, why didn't it essentially dominate naval force for the next thousand years, becoming very well-documented in the process?

[QMC]

Very nice project.
Few years ago I created similar thing. I took parabolic plate and glue on 9 mirrors 5x5 cm and directed it on small solar panel from solar garden light.
Solar panel directed to "normal" sun made 63mA, when using parabolic mirrors it was 217mA, so there was 3,4 fold increase.

Sounds like a good way to inexpensively stretch a given solar panel's real estate.

[citfta]

Home made turbine?

Hi kcarring,

I am interested in the home made turbine you mentioned. I tried searching the Mother Earth News website but did not find any info about a home made turbine for steam. I found a little info about wind and water turbines. Were the plans in the magazine or did you have to order them from MEN? If it was in the magazine do you remember what issue? I saw where they have back copies on cd available now. Was this turbine similar to the Tesla Turbine as his design looks pretty easy to make for a home built project?

On another note do you think it would be possible to use a large metal block of cast iron or other metal as a heat sink to stabilize the temperature and have holes drilled through it to let the water circulate instead of the salt storage. I realize you could only use this in the daytime to charge your battery bank. It just seems like it would be a lot easier than dealing with all the problems you reported having with the salt.

Thanks for any info you care to share.

Carroll

P.S. Why did you say the turbine was dangerous?