Earlier quoted context omitted.
Burn magnesium in carbon dioxyde captured from the air then electrolyse the magnesium oxyde to get useable magnesium back?
Plant some trees, make charcoal?
A bit difficult to do if we're in a desert, I think...
The Godzilla of Solar Ovens
21–30 of 44 posts
Re: The Godzilla of Solar Ovens
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
>By 2020, China plans to build 10 more—the equivalent of 100 solar farms the size of Crescent Dunes. The ability of china to scale never ceases to amaze me.
One of the upsides of not being a democracy is that NIMBY, environmentalism and health&safety can be pushed much further down on your list of concerns/priorities.
All true, but in this case there's millions of acres of cheap desert in the US. I think there's other forces than those retarding solar progress.
Re: The Godzilla of Solar Ovens
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the upsides of not being a democracy is that NIMBY, environmentalism and health&safety can be pushed much further down on your list of concerns/priorities.
All true, but in this case there's millions of acres of cheap desert in the US. I think there's other forces than those retarding solar progress.
On a grander scale one could put solar plants in the sahara and use their power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. To transport energy, that is.
Re: The Godzilla of Solar Ovens
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
All true, but in this case there's millions of acres of cheap desert in the US. I think there's other forces than those retarding solar progress.
On a grander scale one could put solar plants in the sahara and use their power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. To transport energy, that is.
It's an interesting idea for a place like Australia - use solar power to desalinate water, and pump it inland. You could create an oasis in the middle of nowhere, sort of like Las Vegas.
Re: The Godzilla of Solar Ovens
#25I like this. Imagine if you took something like this to the desert, you could have the means to convert sand into silicon without needing to use a locally-sourced fuel to generate the required heat (For what it's worth, I realise the sand that goes into silicon wafer production usually has to be purer than commonly-found sand, but I still think this production method may prove useful, perhaps for the silicon that goe…
Would bricks or roads created from melted sand be stable enough? This is something I've thought about as well. There are parts of the world that have lots of sunlight and lots of sand. Imagine being able to 3D print roads and buildings out of melted sand. I think the idea has some merit that needs further exploration.
Re: The Godzilla of Solar Ovens
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
>By 2020, China plans to build 10 more—the equivalent of 100 solar farms the size of Crescent Dunes. The ability of china to scale never ceases to amaze me.
One of the upsides of not being a democracy is that NIMBY, environmentalism and health&safety can be pushed much further down on your list of concerns/priorities.
My favorite example of this is line 2 of the Beijing subway system. It's a circular route approximately following the old city wall. During planning, there was a great debate over how to build it. Boring tunnels would have been too expensive, but the cheaper cut and cover would have destroyed many homes. Instead, they just demolished the centuries-old city wall and built it there.
I don't mean to praise that decision, but I think it's a great example of both the advantages and disadvantages of that sort of dictatorial decision making.
Re: The Godzilla of Solar Ovens
#27On sunny days, London's 'walkie talkie' building makes the sidewalk nice and toasty (and melts plastic bits on your car) with its south-facing concave glass wall: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23944679
Not quite a solar furnace, though.
Re: The Godzilla of Solar Ovens
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
On a grander scale one could put solar plants in the sahara and use their power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. To transport energy, that is.
It's an interesting idea for a place like Australia - use solar power to desalinate water, and pump it inland. You could create an oasis in the middle of nowhere, sort of like Las Vegas.
You still have to deal with the bi-product of salt and other various minerals that come out of the desalinated water.
Re: The Godzilla of Solar Ovens
#29On sunny days, London's 'walkie talkie' building makes the sidewalk nice and toasty (and melts plastic bits on your car) with its south-facing concave glass wall: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23944679 Not quite a solar furnace, though.
There's a hotel in Vegas with a slight.... design flaw, causing similar problems:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39403349/ns/travel-news/t/death-ra...
Actually hang on, is it the same architect??
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Viñoly
Maybe he's actually out to burn things on purpose... /s
Re: The Godzilla of Solar Ovens
#30This and the Odeillo plants are pretty amazing. It is remarkably easy these days to build something which can create some really amazing temperatures. I used a Fresnel lens from a 50" rear projection TV to build a concentrator for the kids as part of a science project. We have also used more commercial solar ovens[1] to cook bread and other parts of dinner in the backyard or at camp.
That said, I've always wondered if you could build an industrial processor based on this technology. Can you bake iron out of hematite? Aluminum out of bauxite? The interest stems from research on how one might actually go about mining asteroids effectively. Using an inflatable mylar coated mirror could you effectively distill metallic elements out of a rocky asteroid?