- That traditional biomass stove in paper's figures is perhaps the worst stove imaginable. Its efficiency could below 10%. Better designed stove has efficiency above 30% and has much less indoor air pollution.
That being said, the more I read it, the more I like this PV steam cooker. It is simple and easy to scale up by adding more PV panels and more sands. Although Ghana is close to the equator, I wonder whether it worth to steer the PV panels during the day.
Edit, efficiency measured by energy transferred to boiling water or cooking vs energy released from burning biomass.
- Sand batteries are pretty well known in the passive solar greenhouse world. Even in cold northern climates they’ve been proven to store enough heat for year round use to keep tropical fruits producing.
- A system similar to this can also be used for cooling rooms and buildings.
A lot of the world's population lives on the tropical belt, in hot conditions. A lot of them use air conditioning, and a lot more are going to start using it in coming decades.
A simple system, that cools a room down about 5 to 10 degrees Celsius, would be a great way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
- I've seen very simple DIY versions of this (stove coil directly wired to a panel) for home heating. At current panel pricing, I wonder if there is a config with a reasonable ROI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6KOWGN6C28
by 21asdffdsa12
2 subcomments
- Just imagine the machinery you could power beneath the dessert, if you store the heat of the day.. Imagine for example salt water pits near the coast, where the heat creates fresh water mist, that rises and distills int he cold desert nights. To then be pumped onwards with sundriven steampumps, to places where the water is needed. No moving parts, just light redirecting glasfiber and infrastructure created beneath the sands creating geysers of fresh water miles away.
by Legend2440
4 subcomments
- I was expecting some sort of cool focused-light cooker like a solar oven, but it's basically just an electric cooker powered by solar cells.
- The article talks about a similar device developed by Cal Poly in 2015: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/08/direct-solar-power...
by tony-john12
0 subcomment
- [dead]
by Barry-Perkins
0 subcomment
- [dead]
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