I made (a month ago) this new device for converting solar radiation into thermal energy of 300-400 ºC, which can be converted into electricity. It uses very cheap mirrors (less than 1 USD / sq.m) and is an improvement on my solar station, which was built 8 years ago, has 58 sq.m of mirrors and cost me about $1000.
Its mirrors focus solar radiation and turn it into heating water for space heating this house in winter and heating water of this pool in summer in the climate of central Ukraine.
Many of us might think that this steam could be used to generate electricity, however in fact it is not, and the main problem will be described in the middle of this video. But that problem is solved by this my new solar heater, and I will show how it can create thermal energy with temperatures up to 400 ºC. I will describe it in the last minutes of this video, and therefore millions of these cheap solar heaters can form similar solar stations to generate cheap solar electricity.
So, I repeat that in 3 minutes I will start describing this new solar heater that solves the main problem of these old devices, but for now let's analyze how this old solar station could generate electricity. Many of us may think that here we should install a turbine which will rotate an electric generator, but this is a bad idea, and we have to use another method which is used by solar power plants of this type.
Investors have already built more than 100 similar power plants in various countries, and let's look at how solar electricity is generated by this American station with a cost of $ 2,000,000,000. When the sun appears, its radiation is focused by these mirrors and heats thermal oil inside these tubes to temperatures of almost 400 ºC. This hot oil moves to the center of the solar plant, where a fraction of its thermal energy produces steam for a turbine that generates electricity. The rest of the thermal energy of the oil comes to these heat storages, where the energy heats more than 100,000 tons of molten salt. A few hours later, in the evening or at night, this hot molten salt will produce steam for the same turbine
Unfortunately, these solar heaters are very expensive, and therefore they give us expensive electricity, but these my devices are about 10 times cheaper.
So, here pumps must guarantee circulation of thermal oil with a temperature of about 300 ºC, and this solar radiation must heat the hot oil to even higher temperatures. In addition, our cheap solar heaters must form similar long rows, covering an area of many square kilometers. When the sun is shining, that hot oil must transfer the thermal energy to a turbine and heat storages which were described in this my previous video. Those heat storages can provide the thermal energy to operate the turbine in the coming night, or for several non-solar days in a row, and maybe they can transfer a lot of thermal energy from summer to winter. That is why our solar power plants are becoming independent of the weather and the season, and that previous video described these formulas with such a cost of our solar electricity, which is cheaper than electricity from thermal and nuclear power plants.
But unfortunately these old solar heaters have the following big problem which will be solved by these new heaters. Unfortunately, these old solar heaters are not able to heat the oil with a temperature of 300 ºC , and now we can notice the cause why this is so. We can notice that here the solar radiation from my mirrors is 5 or 8 times the normal radiation flux from the sun.
The compression of 5 or 8 times is sufficient for a good heating power of a heat transfer fluid with a temperature of 100 ºC, or perhaps 200 ºC, but unfortunately the good heating power at 300 ºC is not achievable. For example, these expensive solar heaters can compress solar radiation by about 50 times.
But this new device compresses solar radiation by a factor of about 20 or 30, which should be enough to heat thermal oil at around 300 ºC, and let's look at how this new device achieves such compression of solar radiation.
My old device uses these mirrors, which are a sheet of expanded polystyrene with a cheap reflective film. This is a very cheap type of mirrors, and it uses these materials with a total cost of less than 1 USD / sq.m of mirrors, and it is approximately 300 times cheaper than the total construction cost of these solar heaters. I use the simplest methods to replace my cheap mirrors because their lifespan is 1.5 years. Now I am showing how those mirrors cover a long row of my old solar heaters.
Let's look at the mirrors of my new device, and they are the same, but narrower, with a width of 25 cm. These mirrors form such mirror stripes. We see that 2 narrow mirrors are mounted on these wooden slats, which form the desired shape of our mirrors.
