Solar Archives - FutureFarming.Org

I’ve become very interested in projects that normal, everyday people can do that will harness the free power of the sun. This ‘solar flower’ is intriguing, and it can be built very cheaply, or even for no cost if you visit a scrap heap and rummage through your own ‘junk’. What is it used for? “Basically, generating heat. With that heat you can then run external applications such as generating electricity, smokeless cooking, heating and purifying water, making charcoal, anything that heat can be used for.”

Visit www.solarflower.org for more information.

What is it?

A solar energy collector you can make easily using scrap materials.

What’s it for?

Basically, generating heat. With that heat you can then run external applications such as generating electricity, smokeless cooking, heating and purifying water, making charcoal, anything that heat can be used for.

How much does it cost?

Depends. All the materials are things you can find in a corner store or scrap heap, so it could potentially cost anywhere between nothing and, let’s say about €$£50 per device.

How much power does it produce, and how efficient is it?

One square meter of full sunlight is about one thousand Watts of power, which is the collector size for which the SolarFlower is designed (although it can probably drive something twice as large). Depending on the materials used, you can assume at least 50% thermal efficiency overall (probably higher), so that would give you 500 Watts in full sunlight. This is enough to heat 50 litres of water to 100 C in a little over 8.5 hours.

What principle do you use to track the sun non-electrically?

It’s a little complicated to express in text, I’m working on some animations at the moment which will make it clearer.

Basically there are two collector mirrors, one big one that concentrates all the energy you’re going to use to power your applications, and a smaller one attached to it which drives the tracker. When the main collector is pointing directly at the sun the focus point of the secondary collector is sitting just off the edge of a little boiler filled with a small amount of ethanol. As the sun moves off by about a degree that hot spot shifts onto the boiler, which in a minute or two starts the ethanol boiling, the vapor exits into a chamber (metal tin) attached to the boiler, and forces out some of the liquid ethanol in it. That liquid goes through a pipe and pours into the waterwheel assembly, turning it, which turns the gearing, which turns the two collectors into the sun, the hot spot shifts off the boiler, the boiling stops, the vapor in the tin starts to collapse and the resulting vacuum sucks ethanol from a reservoir below the waterwheel and refills the whole system.
It all sits there until the sun moves off again.
The small collector has about a two hour range, so if the sun goes behind a cloud or something the system can catch up to it.

What license / patent / protection is on the design?

None. This is an open source hardware project, and as such is not owned, or able to be owned by any one person or company.
Since the designs have now been published they are unable to be patented by anyone, including the original designer.
At some point the project may take on a Creative Commons or similar license, but it will be one which allows any form of use, including commercial. (In fact you are encouraged to make and sell these things, royalty free).
The only thing you are not permitted to do is stop anyone else making and using them in any way.

As pressure mounts with the upcoming election season is President Obama on track to be the worst environmental President ever? And why are more people not talking about it?

President Obama made many promises that captured the imagination of young and old liberal Americans, now some years later we see he is just a politician like all the others. He will make “pie in the sky” promises to get elected, but when its time deliver you get only excuses about how hard it is, or how his former position is somehow no longer valid. It is ok to change one’s position on an issue as new information becomes available, this is rational I will agree. But how can continuing, escalating and adding to Americas wars in any way be good? He promised to close Guantanamo Bay, immigration reform, create green jobs, take action on climate change, reform healthcare etc, etc. You could argue he has done what he can, but I do not believe that. So here are some of the bigger fails of the Obama environmental policy.

Tar Sands and Pipelines.

Recently tarsandsaction.org held a two week sit in, the White House’s response to this peaceful protest? The Park Police/ D.C SWAT team arrested 1,252 people, even a few famous ones. The Keystone XL pipeline is a danger to eco-systems from Alberta, Canada to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and even as far east as Patoka, Illinois. The Keystone XL has been and is being built in phases. Phase one is from Hardisty, Alberta to Steele City, Kansas then on to Patoka, Illinois, with a stop off in Wood River Il, this was 1853 miles of pipe completed in June of 2010. Phase 2 was from Steele City to Cushing Ok, another 300 miles of pipe that was completed in Feb. 2011. Proposed by 2013 is a 435 mile extension from Cushing to Port Arthur and Houston Texas, AND another 1,179 miles in a second pipeline from Hardisty to Steele City. The second pipeline is to cross the Bakken formation, to tap domestic oil in pristine lands in Montana and North Dakota, yet another amazing violation of nature for only about a one year supply of oil in the Bakken formation, and oil in the tar sands that takes 10 calories of energy to produce one calorie of oil, that’s a major energy loss.

Air Pollution

Recently a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, author and scientist named Joe Romm said that allowing Presidents Bush’s proposed smog regulations to be realized would have been better than President Obama’s recent decision to eliminate regulations all together. He did so after asking the environmental organizations to drop pending lawsuits, then he did the opposite of what was promised.

Joe Romm on Countdown

Oil Drilling

Under President Obama we had the worlds largest environmental disaster in world history. Of course the Gulf of Mexico/ Deepwater Horizon oil spill was not Obama’s fault, but how he and his team handled it IS his fault. And immediately following the final plugging of this well, the President almost immediately allowed drilling permits again, even with no revision of safety and drilling procedures, AND without Haliburton going out of business for their millionth deadly mistake. And while he was at it, the President recently added exploration in Alaska, even more than President Bush had proposed.

Coal

As Appalachian communities suffer from disease, environmental devastation, excessive flooding and water contamination caused by mountaintop coal removal, the President still has not reduced coal usage, or even tried. . The President has had ample time and backing from the Environmental Protection Agency, Army corps of Engineers and the Dept. of Interior, and yet he supported scams like cap and trade and “clean coal”. First of all I think most of us know the pitfalls of cap and trade, but something that I want Americans to know is that there is no such thing as clean coal. From harvest to burn its dirty EVERY step of the way.

Nuclear Power

Nuclear power is often said to be the “clean” alternative, and though it may “burn” more cleanly than coal or oil, it produces waste that cannot be disposed of. On top of this the tsunami in Japan recently pointed out how easy it is to have an accidental meltdown as we do somewhere in the world every decade or so.

C.A.F.O. Closed Animal Feeding Operations and Factory Farms

Though seldom discussed, a lot of pollution, greenhouse gasses and water waste are in the agricultural field. I have never hear the words “factory farm” or CAFO from any Presidents mouth, let alone the “environmental President” which Obama had been labeled when he was elected.

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These are only a few of the lies and short sighted policies that Obama has furthered and that our former leaders used to get us where we are. A lot of promises have fallen to the altar of jobs, I hope all those who want oil drilling or coal mining jobs know they are not providing for their children, but killing them. Obama is sending us up the river with no paddle, and water so polluted that the boat will soon begin to melt…we are sinking…hope you can all swim in coal sludge and nitrates.