Solar cooling with 2 clay pots ! Very cheap genius idea !

[laci]

What's interesting here is that we have a sustained and confined heat differential.
How do you turn a heat differential into an energy generator? Personally I don't know how to do that, but maybe someone has an idea.

Let's brainstorm everyone. Throw out some ideas if you have any.
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Hi ResinRat2,

  Try to get the solar cooling out of your head, but I have a working idea as to how you turn a heat differential into an energy generator>
  Heard about the Seebeck effect? There you get DC from a very simple model of heat differential.
  19th century discovery, college level physics.

  Regards,

    laci

[ResinRat2]

Quote from laci:

"Hi ResinRat2,

  Try to get the solar cooling out of your head,"

Actually, I am obsessed with this notion. Many people here are searching for the elusive "zero-point" energy, but I believe we need to focus our attention on the SUN. It runs this planet and drops kilowatts of energy per square meter on the earth's surface each day. I believe even Linnard Griffin's Electrolysis Process uses its endothermic nature to take advantage of the sun's heat. So I am inclined to be drawn toward exploiting the sun's naturally available power to run the world on. Anything that produces a temperature difference can be used to produce power.

Thanks for the Seebeck idea. It looks interesting and could easily apply to this "solar cooler"

I was just throwing out ideas, not necessarily something that I would pursue, just something that looked simple and easy to experiment with. Heck, I even went out and bought two clay flower pots, one that fits inside the other, and some sand to see if I can duplicate this temperature differential and take some measurements just for fun. I am still working on my hydrogen reactor, but this is just something quick and dirty that I could look at. I guess I just like to research stuff; even in my spare time. I guess you can see that I'm not a "party" type of guy. LOL!

[Koen1]

Although I don't really follow how exactly a simple two pot setup is used
to provide cooling from sunlight (couldn't run the .mov for some reason),
it seems to me that a sustained temperature difference should allow
for the use of a simple thermocouple to produce electrical output?
Depends on the temperature difference, of course...

[ResinRat2]

Hi Koen1,

The simple process involved is merely cooling by water evaporation. The center pot is cooled by the water evaporating from the sand around it. Apparently it is cool enough to preserve vegetables for three weeks that normally spoil in three days. So it must be in the very low 50 or mid 40 degrees F; and it looks like this is in a very hot region of the earth. So we could probably guess a 25-35 degree difference in temperature at least. Probably even more on a hot day.

Based off your noted Seebeck effect, I wonder what kind of current is possible from this temperature differential?

This is just an idea, something I probably wouldn't be pursuing at this moment in time; but maybe possibly later on. I still need to do my experiment with the clay pots just for fun. I am curious what kind of temperature difference I could see.

[jeanna]

ResinRat2,

I was inspired by your interest in this 2 clay pots thread to post the item on Donkey's solar refridgerator.

In that system, the stovepipe is painted black and powerfully draws the air into the lower part of the system, and across the water evaporator which is the burlap bag. This cools the air inside the walk-in cooler. In fact there is even a draft controller to slow down the breeze to keep things from freezing.

But in addition to this cooling, The moist breeze is drawn across the aluminum cans that are sticking out of the entire inside wall of the walk-in cooler.

I am not sure what it is called, but cold moist aluminum boosts the cooling process.

The proximity of the cold cans and the hot stovepipe would make it easy to rig up a thermocouple, I should think.

I just thought I would draw your attention to the design, in case you missed it.

thank you,

jeanna