Solar thermal chimmney. Is this Practical?

Question

I have been reading a lot about Enviromission (for those who dont know who Enviromission are here is the website www.enviromission.com.au ) seeking millions of dollars to build a working solar Chimmney. But im thinking they could build a proto type for a couple of thousand dollars.

Take a family sedan painted mat black. Park it on a concrete slab with no shade around and aim a couple of mirrors at it. Then seal the car almost completly up leaving a small one way air inlet on the south side (north side if in northern hemisphere) of the vehicle. Through a hole in the top of the car extends a 15m tube that has a turbine on top of it. Using the process of thermal dynamics, the air inside the car heats and expands it builds up pressure, the only way for it to escape is up the tube. as the air passes through the turbine, eletricity is produced. The air inside the car is replaced via the inlet and the whole process continues.

Answer 1

I do not agree there.

There have already been several small scale (more or less) working prototypes of this kind of generation. This is not the intention.

Please note that we need to build large ones in order to test the economic viability and improve it. Such plants with a large scale are much more performant since the "wall effects" (heat losses) are reduced by the scale... This is since the outter surface of the cylinder is proportional to its diameter but its inner cross section is a square function...   SO the bigger, the lowest the air friction with the chimney inside and the lowest the heat losses.

It is about the same as with wind power which did not make a lot of progress until we pushed (with subsidies) to make them always bigger.

Answer 2

Rhys M

Let me start off by saying we (my family and I) live completely, 100% “off of the grid and are completely self sufficient”

i use solar convection for 100% of my homes heating. basically think of a big green house on the south side of your home with black walls and black floor. there are vents on the top and bottum of the inside wall going into my house. when the air in the room heats up the hot air rises up threw the vents in the house, pullling in cooler air from my house. then at night i simply close the vents.

i also use solar aic conditioning in the house. i have a big black metal box on the top of my home that heats up supper hot in the summer time. as hot air rises it sucks the warm  air that's collecting in my cieling, which creates a suction inside the house. i have vents on the floor that are pipes threw the dirt (or a pond) in the front yard which draw in the cool thermal air into the house.

i wrote a few guides on exactly how to do it yourself for under $100 if your interested. it shows the step be steps of it and is available at

http://www.agua-luna.com

Hope this helped, feel free to contact me personally if you have any questions if you’d like assistance in making your first self sufficient steps, I’m willing to walk you step by step threw the process. I’ve written several how-to DIY guides available at http://www.agua-luna.com on the subject. I also offer online and on-site workshops, seminars and internships to help others help the environment.

Dan Martin

Retired Boeing Engineer now living 100% on Alternative & Author of How One Simple Yet Incredibly Powerful Resource Is Transforming The Lives of Regular People From All Over The World... Instantly Elevating Their Income & Lowering Their Debt, While Saving The Environment by Using FREE ENERGY... All With Just One Click of A Mouse...For more info Visit:  

http://www.agua-luna.com

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Answer 3

Seems to be as practical as other forms of alternative energy.  If people were prepared to pay a 10x premium for solar energy we could convert completely off fossile fuels.

It's just another technology that's waiting on the sidelines in case something happens like we run out of fossile fuels.