21st century shelter Solar a/c

Reflections on fusion history, current events, and predictions for the 'fusion powered future.
Post Reply
3l
Posts: 1866
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2001 3:51 pm
Real name:

21st century shelter Solar a/c

Post by 3l »

Hi Folks:

I'll bet you are dying to ask me what I patented.
Well it's patent pending but I can tell you the equipment was not new but I combined them in a new way. and designed equipment to use the process.
My previous plans are ashes, my roof won't have flat panels at all. The technology I described to you has been superceeded ....I just got the way last week. My new method allows a walk in freezer , a refrigerator and a 10 ton A/C plant. Total cost under 500 bucks. WOAH! You Say! Woah indeed. The flat plate collectors were ok but were slow as Christmas at gathering energy.

I started with a blank sheet of paper and looked at all the stuff I've done over the years. ( I've done solar work 13 years longer than my fusor work...I have a trust fund and had a half million dollar a year company. My ex sure likes it! LOL! :>) ) One experiment years ago ,I took a portable frig and filled it with brine and ran it on a solar panel and a 40 watt inverter. A kid's pail of water froze solid in 4 hours. Then I took a thermo electric fridge
filled it with brine and made ice with just a solar panel. I did the same with ammonium nitrate. when it's in solid form and drip water on it and get -20 degree temps. Don't Believe it? Try this fill a beaker with ammonium nitrate and put in a teaspoon of water. Put a bead of water on a small board and then set the beaker on it. The water will freeze soo hard you can lift the beaker and the board will be stuck tight to it. (use small wood though)

I worked for six years to use solid ammonium nitrate with dripped solution to air condition my house at night. The 20 ton Prototype had a massive Ice tank and held 20 tons of ice at the end of the day. It barely did the job in 110 degree 80 % humitity Arkansas summers. 20 tons will only last 8 hours tops. So at two or three in the morning I would have to turn on the regular A/C.

The savings were huge but it fell short. I had dreams of going commercial but that unit would not sell. Since my recent Apiphany about patents that I grabbed the rottening brown notebook from 1984. Nitrates destroys paper over time.
I studied it for a day and came to the following conclusions:

#1 The tank must go.

#2 It must work day and night

#3 It must not use any electricity. Only sunlight.

#4 Be the same size as a normal A/C.

#5 Must be competative with standard A/Cs of the same size.
(my first system filled a 20x20 shed)

If I did all that I would have earned the right to get a patent. In the past I would have stopped dead in my tracks and given up. After building a pulse fusor from a paragraph in a journal ...it looks trivial. You know what ... it was. If something does not work don't lower the bridge lower the river. I switched to fresnel lenses and got 3000 degree on focus. Water's out. So liquid metal is the thing. So what to use....I'm familliar with NaK but I won't use it in any water based system . It blows in water. So I decided to use a eutechtic mixture of lead and bismuth . the 50:50 mix of these two elements melts at 230 degrees . the stuff boils over 4000 degrees so using it won't poise a problem. It is water safe and will not freeze solid in the water exchanger. Very Good! So in 30 seconds I solved the speed issue.

OK That left storage.
The storing on the ass end (as ice) was simply a bad design choice. It would have been better to store the heat on the front of the process design wise. A valuable lesson I learned auditing Process Thermo in Chem. Eng. class in the school of Engineering at Ole Miss. My Philosophy and Religion adviser just stared at me when I used that course as an elective for my Philosophy degree. Academics just ain't flexible ya know ! So at a bargan price of 540 bucks I learned a lesson that could be turned into a commercial product. Well worth it. So I now use a tank with a 50:50 mix of of NaCl and KCl the mix melts real close to 2000 degrees but the ratio must be fiddled with by raising the percentage of potasium chloride to raise it up to 2000
degrees. The higher the process temp the better carnot efficiency would be but the limit as usual was the material of the pipes you have to stay below the softening point of the exchanger pipes. Inconal X pipes starts turning to putty at 2200 degrees so a safety margin of 200 degrees was desirable.
You can get 3/8 inconal pipe at any speed shop. Just get high performance fuel lines for dragsters..they can get it for you. If that fails call Boing surplus in Kansas City, get the number and call. They throw away tons of Inconel daily. That plant builds the engines and airframes for the 747 , 737 and all Boing drones and fighter aircraft. Great place for slightly worn end mills and
tooling. My 8 ft ice tank shrank to something I could hold in my hands. The itty bitty tank has the capacity to store an entire day's sun in a 6" tall and 4" diameter tank. Now we have real heat and great storage to work with. But how to get the heat in the jug? Well you don't want a window on the tank for it will melt unless it's saphire. That makes it too expensive for a commercial Product. So we need some kinda of heat port in the tank. Humm inconel tube coiled inside with some kind of collector outside. Yep that'll do it. Just hIt the pipe at the focal point and we are cooking with solar. But you need to move the metal to get the heat in the tank. You need some kinda Pump.
HYumm...My theoretical musings of liquid exchange in and for hypothetical fusor power plants gave me the answer. Liquid metal MHD Pump. What you don't dig magnetoheterodynamics?
(I admit it's an aquired taste.)

Egad! More to post...later!
BrettWilder
Posts: 21
Joined: Thu Dec 29, 2005 3:01 pm
Real name:
Contact:

Re: 21st century shelter Solar a/c

Post by BrettWilder »

larry.......... what in the world????
User avatar
Carl Willis
Posts: 2841
Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2001 7:33 pm
Real name: Carl Willis
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Contact:

Re: 21st century shelter Solar a/c

Post by Carl Willis »

Hi Larry,

Ammonium nitrate is used in the little instant "cold packs" you can buy in any drug store. A pouch of water is contained in a bag of dry AN having about ~150 grams. To use the pack you pop the bag of water...and that thing does get mighty cold! You have to be careful you don't get frostbite.

Another fun thing you can do with cold-pack grade ammonium nitrate is to heat it, slightly moistened, in a CLEAN (i.e. grease-free) microwave oven, preferably located in a small airtight room. The AN decomposes into nitrous oxide, oxygen, nitrogen, and water. You'll smell the sweet odor of the nitrous pretty soon. Of course, I don't advocate substance abuse, but I did learn about this reaction "the hard way" early in my amateur chemistry career.

I hope the refrigeration project works out for you. I'd reckon there's enough humidity down there in the sultry air of the Mississippi summer to provide all the moisture you'd need to drive this endothermic reaction. Maybe when spent, you could sell your ammonium nitrate solution for fertilizer.

-Carl
Carl Willis
http://carlwillis.wordpress.com/
TEL: +1-505-412-3277
3l
Posts: 1866
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2001 3:51 pm
Real name:

Re: 21st century shelter Solar a/c

Post by 3l »

Hi Carl:

Good to hear from you at last!
Please tell Frank (Sanns) stop all patents now .
He will hate himself if he pays $5000 to his patent shark!
The is workable but standard patenting proceedure is bogus ...I figured out how to do it legally and binding for 330 bucks.
My next post will make it very obvious why when you read it.
I start my Phd in Electrical soon.
I loved your gatekeeping piece....too darn true! LOL!

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech
User avatar
Carl Willis
Posts: 2841
Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2001 7:33 pm
Real name: Carl Willis
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Contact:

Re: 21st century shelter Solar a/c

Post by Carl Willis »

Hi Larry,

My instinct would be to trust Frank to do the right thing for whatever other patents he's working on. Lawyer's gotta make a living: I could see your $330 being reasonable only if writing an application took ten minutes or less.

You're going back to school? Good for you, but get ready for a lot of process, horse-race, underwater basket-weaving, and head-butting with people who've long ago lost their imagination. Academia is a world unto itself and, in general, hardly represents the best interests of a person who simply wishes to learn. That said, these guys can do a great job of printing a little piece of paper with calligraphy on it...which to the simple-minded, is an invitation to respect you or hire you.

Despite my cynicism, I have only good things to say about Guilford College, my undergraduate alma mater (not quite true--I did find much at fault with the cafeteria food). My graduate career, however, has taken me into the quagmire of uninspired academic traditionalism and bureaucratic inertia that is one of the largest education-factories in the nation--Lord, I hope to be done with this doctorate soon so I can go do some actual research!!)

Best regards,
Carl
Carl Willis
http://carlwillis.wordpress.com/
TEL: +1-505-412-3277
001userid
Posts: 212
Joined: Sat Oct 01, 2005 1:59 am
Real name:

Re: 21st century shelter Solar a/c

Post by 001userid »

Hi Larry,

Solar a/c is something I considered when building my house. In South Texas it stay warm 10 months of the year so high winter energy bills are practically non-existant. The hot months are another story.

I built an A-frame with concrete floor and foundation. Only half of the a-frame catches sun. I also set the footprint so the prevailing wind would "wind tunnel" through the house for cool mornings and evenings.

That left a solar profile of 35'X20' for the other side. I planted trees on that side which has further reduced direct sun impact by about 50%(on sunnyside side). I will soon install solar panels (with an offset) to further reduce the suns rays from contacting the house.

I have insulated well, and a small a/c makes the house comfortable during the hottest part of the day.

This has GREATLY reduced my a/c bills. In the next 2 years I hope to go off the grid.

Best Regards, Joe Sal
3l
Posts: 1866
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2001 3:51 pm
Real name:

Re: 21st century shelter Solar a/c

Post by 3l »

Hi Sal:

You and I are on the Same page!
I'm from Irving TX originally.

Hi Carl:

Well I know Frank (Sanns) is really tight with you but we are really tight also. I don't know how far along in the process he is but Frank is pretty much like me inventing wise. He's done many inventions,spent a hand truck of cash, I am only letting him see another way. If he wants it.

I want to hang out in the Ole Miss buildings without being arrested.
After the fiasco with the head of physics , I took a hard look at what a degree means. Since I'm out of the rat race it does not matter what my degree is in...I have 540 hrs...Pre recs are laughable. Since I'm the resident genius at Ole Miss, I make up my stuff as I go. The dean has made me sign a school release form of all responcibility from error ect... Best decision I ever made. See Carl when I was married to my wife
we were working balls to the walls she as a department head of a community college and me as the computer engineer of a Fortune 500 company . The school foolishly offered free courses to the faculty dependants...boy that was a mistake on their part!
I took 2 courses a semester for 15 years on top of my AA in business. I ended up with 5 AA's in total. I continued that thought at Ole Miss (only took seven years) So when It came time for grad school they recruited me like a football hero. I have almost a 3.0 average in 5 different fields not counting all the languages I speak (8 so far) !! My advisor told me to just skip the masters program and go straight to the Phd program. You need a thousand on the GRE! But I gave this a year or two of thought.
I came to the conclusion that a piled higher and deeper is the same in all fields if you don't need a job. The degree is mere formallity as I have a contract to teach as an assistant till I turn pro. My Phd will be in Philosophy in order to relieve that painfull burning sensation I would get in any science Phd program. I don't really study anymore. I play chess at lunch with my academic dean ... we have fun for goodness sake. But that's just me.

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech
AnGuy
Posts: 208
Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2004 7:49 pm
Real name:

Re: 21st century shelter Solar a/c

Post by AnGuy »

>I worked for six years to use solid ammonium nitrate with dripped solution to air condition my house at night. The 20 ton Prototype had a massive Ice tank and held 20 tons of ice at the end of the day. It barely did the job in 110 degree 80 % humitity Arkansas summers. 20 tons will only last 8 hours tops. So at two or three in the morning I would have to turn on the regular A/C.

My only comment is that ammonium nitrate is explosive, and could become sensitive if the recrystallizes and become hot. I am sure your aware of the danger, but perhaps have'n't thought of if something goes wrong in the evaporator, (loss of circulation, clog, etc).

Does Ammonium Nitrate provide an endothermic reacton when it dilluted with from a high concentration mixure of water and AN, or does it need to be crystallized before the reaction occurs?

Perhaps your already aware, that it looks like you share too interests in common with Einstein. The Nuclear physics interest is well know, but Einstein also did lots of work on refrigeration.

>The itty bitty tank has the capacity to store an entire day's sun in a 6" tall and 4" diameter tank.

But how do you to prevent thermal leakage. The higher the temperature, the faster that it will leak heat, and I have a suspicion that there are few efficient insulation materials that work well at the temperatures that you be operating at.

Whats wrong with a large buried cold storage tank? Size isn't all that important if its out of sight. Millions of home are heated with oil that is stored in oil large tanks. If its cheap, I don't think the size of the tank would kill it as a commerical product. I believe there are office building that make ice in the night (during off-peak loads) to provide air conditioning at night, and the ice is stored in large tanks.


>My theoretical musings of liquid exchange in and for hypothetical fusor power plants gave me the answer. Liquid metal MHD Pump

Another idea would be to use a heat pipe since it does require a pump to operate, but the tricky part would be finding an working fluid that work at the temperatures you need. All a heat pipe is a pipe with a wick material (braided metal would work) and a working fluid that vaporizes at the hot end and reverts back to a liquid at the other end, which transports the heat from one end to the other. But I think the issue your going to run into is high thermal losses. I think you would also have trouble getting your system as commerical product because of the dangers created by the high temperatures too (fire hazard).

What I've been thinking of is a low voltage system that stores either a chilled fluid or ice in a large under ground tank. However, this system would be dependant on electricity to drive a circulating pump as well as blowers to move the air through a radiator to cool the air in a room. I think I can construct such as system using low voltage circulation pumps and blowers which are available commericially. The Circulation pumps can run on very littile power (< 100 Watts) but the blower is another story which will probably need to about 150 to 350 Watts (per unit). Multiple blowers would be required since the power will be about 1/10 of a commerial central air blower and these low power DC blowers can't move the volume of air or push it as far. However, a decentralized system should be more energy efficient since there is less drag and less thermal losses with a central air system. Of course, at night there is a small electrical requirement to drive the circulation pump and the blowers (perhaps one at a time). Either a small generator or battery system is going to be required to operate at night.

For the chiller either a commerical chiller (electric when the grid is available) or natural gas absorbion chiller converted to use steam would be used to chill the working fluid. The steam could be created by burning solid fuel (coal, wood, or another biomass) that would generate electricity (steam pistion engine) or run a compressor and the thermal waste heat could be used to by an absorbtion chiller. Using a ground sink to remove heat from the spent working fluid could also improve the overall system efficiency. It might be possible to use a large ground sink for coolling without a need for a chiller. The system drawback are of course the large cost in equipment (chillers, blowers, valves, piping, etc). The steam plant used by the system could serve to provide electricity for domestic demand, domestic hot water, and heat during the winter months.

Link for 12/24V DC blowers:
http://www.ametektmd.com/blowers.htm


Thanks
3l
Posts: 1866
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2001 3:51 pm
Real name:

Re: 21st century shelter Solar a/c

Post by 3l »

Hi AG:

Excellent you Knew about Einstein's work on refrigeration!
Kudos! It used mercury to cool with... Leo Silard was his lab Tech in Berlin during that work for Tehnistrassa Bilshanit. He later earned His Phd with Einstein as his mentor and advisor.
What did you think Leo Sillard just showed up one day with the a-bomb letter for Rooosevelt cold turkey? They were fast Buddies.

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech
Frank Sanns
Site Admin
Posts: 2119
Joined: Fri Jun 14, 2002 2:26 pm
Real name: Frank Sanns

Re: 21st century shelter Solar a/c

Post by Frank Sanns »

Larry,

You are totally out of line for disclosing ANY aspects of ANY of the ideas that were disclosed to you in confidence. It is not up to you to decide which of the idea were low enough priority to post on here. That is up to ME and ME alone. Please remove all of your references to any names, descriptions, or technologies that I have not specifically disclosed on this forum.

Frank S.
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
3l
Posts: 1866
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2001 3:51 pm
Real name:

Re: 21st century shelter Solar a/c

Post by 3l »

Hi Frank:

They only know the name but no details:
I kept my word on that.
I will not discuss any aspect you told me in confidence.
My only aim was to pass the patent process aspect only.
I slipped on the name ... my humble appologies.
It has been rectified.

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech
3l
Posts: 1866
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2001 3:51 pm
Real name:

Re: 21st century shelter Solar a/c

Post by 3l »

Hi Ag:

To ship Prilled Amonium nitrate for blasting the Dupont company uses wax to Stabilize the salt. Though it's like rocket fuel and will burn like crazy but it won't blow! That's important when you ship tons in rail cars to mine coal seams or limestone it must stand 110 degree heat with out crystalizing and blowing. Wax and other inhibiters prevent that from happening during a mid summer load or during a derail with fire.
Soggy ammonium nitrate won't blow either. Just never boil it totally dry. Military folks using AMPHO hate wet Ammonium nitrate! The oil won't pentrate the grain just float on top... Yielding a pop rather than a bang! Estes rockets use Ammonium nitrate as fuel ...
how to dispose of a live engine ..... soak it in water!
Richard (Hull) you handled explosives during Vietnam did I get it right?

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech
AnGuy
Posts: 208
Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2004 7:49 pm
Real name:

Re: 21st century shelter Solar a/c

Post by AnGuy »

>Soggy ammonium nitrate won't blow either. Just never boil it totally dry.

Right, but my concern would be what if it dries out in the evaporator. I think that if it was to recrystallize from a solution it would separate from the stabilizers, and become highly sensitive. I can't say that would occur for certain but I suspect its a risk.

I was thinking that a steam powered compressor could be used for cooling. How about a steam engine with a a generator head on one end of the drive shaft and compress on the other. Clutches could be used to direct the output power to either the generator head or the compressor. No matter if the sun is shining, or its a muggy overcast day, you'll still be cool with steam!

FWIW, I am currently researching PIC microcontrollers (http://www.microchip.com) to be used various monitoring and controls. They're cheap, very low power and the newer generations have a decent memory and clock performance. These could be used as controllers for all sorts of Heating/cooling systems.

In addition, the cost of manufacturing PCBs has dramaticly fallen. There are now dozens of shops that will produce low volume PCBs for the budget minded.
3l
Posts: 1866
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2001 3:51 pm
Real name:

Re: 21st century shelter Solar a/c

Post by 3l »

Hi AG:

The 19th century fix is a float valve in the tank.
Have a liquid heating loop with that valve controlling it.
under the surface of the cooling tank the valve is open but when the float is allowed to move into the closed position... that means the water is low enough for the valve float to be at level the valve closes...Ie ammonium level with a few inches of water but no more!

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech
Post Reply

Return to “Fusion --- Past, Present, and Future”