Solarpunk technology

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/14570630

Well done Germany

Alternative Invidious Link

Summary:

According to the video, a new discovery by MIT researchers could revolutionize our understanding of evaporation and have a major impact on desalination, weather prediction, and even climate change. The traditional understanding of evaporation is that heat from the sun heats up water molecules, causing them to move faster and eventually escape as vapor. However, MIT researchers have discovered a new phenomenon called the photomolecular effect, which shows that light can directly cause water to evaporate without heating it. This process is much more efficient and can potentially evaporate four times more water than heat alone.

This could be revolutionary for desalination.

I guess the conversation I would like to have is, are we ready? Do you think we have had advancements withheld and held back and is the economy more important than the planet? Personally I feel like everything comes back to monetary wealth getting in the way of global happiness. Star Trek really got that right.

Ignore the fact that Tesla are involved. I'm quite excited for this era of energy storage that we're entering.

I'm not sure if any of you are/were anime fans, but do you Vash Stampede and Trigun? There were a bunch of giant sand batteries in there, that always stuck in my head.

Obviously, things didn't work out great for them, but a clean future requires clean storage and clean generation and the first step is storage for everyone.

I have a 100 W rigid solar panel including a charge controller that I currently only use for camping to charge batteries (also useful in an emergency at home). It strikes me as a waste that I could be generating more clean energy with equipment that I already have, but I don't have anything in mind to use this energy for.

Obviously I could try to tie it into my home to run more of my household on solar, or buy more/bigger batteries to charge, but with 100 W of generation, it's probably not worth it without a significantly increased investment.

I tried searching around online, and I found plenty of discussion for what to do with a whole house that generates excess capacity (mainly sell to the grid), but nothing really on what to do with small scale DC generation.

Anyone here have thoughts?

I can't remember if I saw the argument here or on Reddit, but this is my preferred platform so it's going here.

Summary of argument: a user should have been using water for their thermal battery, not sand, because water has better heat capacity (4.18 joules per unit of mass person unit heat - 4.18/gK). Sand's thermal capacity is significantly lower (0.835J/gK).

Looking at these numbers alone in the post I understood why someone would say that; it also made me question why so much research is being done on sand batteries. The user who argued against sand batteries missed a crucial factor: material density. Water has a density of 1000kg per m^3. Dry sand (regular not pure quartz sand) has a density of 1730 kg per m^3. I found no satisfactry response to the argument in that thread, but that thread is now lost to me. I have also been curious about how much better regular sand is for heat batteries than water.

When designing large batteries, the goal is usually energy per volume. Let's compare 1m^3 of each (roughly 3.3ft cube) and how much heat it can hold before the next state change (which matters a lot when managing the pressure from steam).

Total stored energy = mass (g) * thermal capacity (J/gK) * heat (kelvin).

Water: 1,000,000 * 4.18 * 373.15 = 1,559,767,000J Sand: 1,730,000 * 0.835 * 1996.15 = 2,883,538,482.5J

Over 1 billion more joules per m^3. I hope this makes it clearer why sand batteries are such an area of interest lately. It certainly did to me.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert, so there may be mistakes. All the numbers and relevant equations were found on the internet.

I've always been fascinated by these small computers. GPD makes these kinds of devices too. Ordered one once but I never got it. Been thinking of building one myself though I'm worried it would be too small to enjoyable use. I would definitely write on it, that I am sure of.

a cool video i think is tagnentially related to solarpunk meows!

robots get workers rights too for betterment of all!!

Kind of curious what tech people own, everything from small to big tech. Assuming solarpanels are a given for a lot of peeps here, or maybe will be in the future. But what other tech do you own that you're happy with?