I'll introduce my self as and American
with a PhD in physical chemistry from the University of California at
Davis, I'm retired, and currently live in the Philippines. My
background has been largely in theoretical work, but now when I'm
trying to do something practicable I wish I had engineering
knowledge.
I can use help on a system I'm developing to take water out of the
air using a deliquescent salt that is subsequently boiled off where
the salt stays behind and the water is re-condensed and saved. I'm
using CaCl2 as the deliquescent salt and everything works
fine on getting water out of the air. It's the boiling side that I
need help with.
Water takes on the order of 2.2 Mega Joules/liter to boil at 100
degrees Celsius and more with the salt present. This mixture can take
up to 130 0C to boil and the options available to me as I
see them are: 1. rocket stove, 2. gasification stove, 3. charcoal
stove, 4. solar thermal concentrator, etc. The 130 0C is
no problem for the stoves, but I'm curious about what the maximum
efficiency of any of these is. It seems to me that the rocket or
gasification would have about the same efficiency, but perhaps I'm
wrong. A charcoal stove may be useful in some situations, but
probably not in most. And I suppose reverses osmosis and flash
boiling etc. are also possible, but seem pretty sophisticated for
local people?
In the Philippines there is a lot of biomass lying around and the
rocket or gasification stoves would probably be the best way to go.
It appears to me that the rocket stove is one that can be operated
continuously while the gasification stove is one that cannot? The
rocket stove takes longish pieces of wood while the gasification
stove takes small pieces of fuel, could use a machine that compresses
fuel in a shape for use in the rocket stove or grind for a
gasification stove? I would be happy to hear from anyone who knows
about this and it would be much appreciated.
Solar thermal concentrators would be the only way to go in a
desert, but getting fairly high temperatures is the problem. We may
be able to use a compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) reflector that
is orientated few times a day coupled with a receiver that is made
out of an evacuated glass tubes or spheres that are sputtered with
copper on the inside followed by stainless steel followed by aluminum
nitrite on the outside. Or we could go with Fresnel lenses covering
a sphere with no tracking required that are segmented with entidue
requiring a wide angle lens coupled with a separated converging lens
that is focused at the center of the sphere. Active tracking wouldn’t
be the way to go in my opinion, but maybe I’m wrong. Once we have
water, we can make the deserts green by using something like
aeroponics etc. Electricity can come from steam turbines (like
plastic spoons) on the way up or from “Kelvin’s thunderstorm”
from water on the way down, enough for now.
Thanks in advance,
Ken Gotberg
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