Great idea! Maybe try scaling up to a 1/4" or 1/2" copper plate with that same angled bend. If you can aim 2 fresnel lenses at it, could you achieve cooking temps? A solar hot plate. Keep up the great videos!
hi. even 'one' if you used a slightly bigger one. i may have to get one. if you see any for sale, feel free to drop a link in the comments. i may buy it
I've seen several of your videos and all seem like great ideas. If you had to choose one, which would be your favorite as far as safety and heating? xo
hi there and thanks for watching my videos! i think i have something like 40 total DIY heater videos posted so far (so it's hard to say which one is best). they all have their pluses and minuses. the best ones in terms of btu output are probably the ones i've made with larger (water to air) heat exchangers. those units are rated 25,000+ btu's and the biggest one is rated 57,000 btu's. you have to have a source of hot water though. i do have a compilation video that i made that shows 33 of the projects all in one video. if you watch that one you can see a lot of them all together
some place pots on top of each other but it s interesting if you have a tall coneshape ceramic or bluestone as a larger heat collection surface, the hot air can also be captured in a smaller metal pot on top , before dispersed
Hi, I actually found you from your AWG video from years ago. If you have the time can I ask you a question about it? I’m looking into building a short bus eventually right, and I need fo figure out a water solution pretty much. And I really want to do a AWG since I do live on the east coast southern area so it’s sun tropical. Normally a dehumidifier is very intense in a solar array if it’s going 24/7. Your solution would work I believe. Do you think if I upscale it a lot it would work? If I have a deep freezer in my tiny house on wheels and have many gel packs that freeze and keep rotating them with long copper pipes circulating them would that be enough to sustain myself comfortably? Like making a fully enclosed system so it’s not ugly out in the open persay and vents in air from the outside. Almost like a very slim tower fan I guess going from the ground to ceiling. How much water did your unit make in a day with only your short amount.
Would be interesting to see with a larger fresnel lens, it's basically the size of the object anyway so it's not gathering and focussing more light during daylight hours - ideally outside, and not light that's already going in through your windows.
Wouldn't the heat being released by the sand be negated by opening the door and bringing the sand battery inside? Therefore what if you had a large glass window and just done it inside your home that way you were not really releasing any hot air to the outside when you open the door to bring the sand battery in?
well, you'd want to heat the sand outside. i used the frensel inside just for demonstration purpose but i would typically heat it outside. the sand will stay hot a long time (several hours). i heated it to around 300F/150C using the parabolic but you could heat it much hotter than that. the frensel i have is a little small so i think the sand only got to 150 or 175F but those fresnel lenses get really hot (over 1000F/538C). the fans starting temp is 122F/50C.
cool I seen some guys have the pot fixed to an arm attached to the disk and it rotates. Those fresnel lens in flat screen tv's make huge lens. Keep the videos coming you are getting closer to the answer.
i just thought of an idea. i wonder if we could heat the sand, bring it in and then cook over it. my parabolic could probably get it up to 800F/425C or so (if i left it there a while longer). maybe put a rack over it or just set a pan on it
@@desertsun02my thought would be maybe like a very large steel pot or like a 20 pound propane can with the lid cut off or something, just because it being thick steel and so large it could hold heat that you could cook with possibly longer? If the parabolic cooks the hell out of it and can get the whole thing up high But also I’m now considering trying to move a large sand filled propane tank that is 400+ degrees Maybe not quite that, but you know what I’m shooting for
@@priestesslucythey’re called projector style TV’s, it’s a projector that sits in the focal point of the fresnel lens And then the screen is in front of that fresnel lens
Have you ever considered brazing aluminum fins or copper fins to the bottom of pans to improve thermal efficiency of cooking over an open flame? Off the top of my head jetboil is an example, but any Amazon camping pot with heat exchanger is similar, a ring of aluminum that’s affixed to the bottom of the pot around the edge to grab the extra heat going around and not in to the pan You are someone who I would think would do amazing things with heat exchanging pans
i was thinking of trying the 2.5 gallon bucket shown in the video and maybe a 5 gallon bucket of sand. will have to set up a concrete stand to hold the larger buckets. i wonder if we could run solar heated water into an indoor sand bank. you could bury copper pipe in the sand and circulate hot water thru the sand to heat it. (just on idea but i guess the water would only get the sand to maybe 200F/93C or so). installing a lens on house to heat sand indoors sounds pretty cool. i'll have to give that some thought
@@desertsun02 oooh, port the heat with water to another storage device. as long as the porting segment is insulated, there should be little loss. For the trombe wall --> window - lens in gap - interior heat sink wall or would the sun going through the window scatter?
hi yes. it will be warm to hot depending on how hot you heat the sand. the fan starts at 122F/50C so it will need to be at least that hot to use fan. i heated sand up to about 300F/150C but you could heat it much hotter if you wanted to.
Bottom should be painted black. Should use large amounts of solid aluminum, has higher heat capacity than sand, heats up much more evenly. Only downside though is you need to insulate it very well until you want to use it.
hi . they sell the fresnel lens and the clip arm together. the flexible post is the same as what a gooseneck lamp is made from. i'm not sure if they sell those clip arms separately, but they should. it could hold a much bigger fresnel lens. the clip is so strong that it takes 2 hands to open it all the way. even has a thick padding inside the clip to protect whatever it's clipped to.
hi, yes. if you search for 'magnifying glass with clip' you will see lots of them. they don't seem to use the term fresnel lens though. they just call them magnifying glasses with clips. i'm currently looking for a bigger fresnel lens with a clip but haven't found one yet.
are they just boiling water in a pot with a mini turbine placed over the pot or? (3 to 5 foot parabolics produce anywhere from 650 to 1800 watts if i remember right). that is with 95 to 98% reflectivity.
Glass or plastic (for fresnel) can block some UV light, also copper in sand might distribute heat inside sand. Hope you make some more development thanks
Love your ideas man but how about a solar sand heater that would keep a bedroom warm all night long during the winter months. I'm thinking a steel or concrete 55 gallon filled with sand drum heated by a water heater element and two solar panels .Run a copper coil in the sand filled with water into the bedroom, pumped to a recycled heat exchanger from a old portable air conditioner.
i was thinking about actually buying a custom made DC element that could run dry and that could run off of 2, 3 or 4 larger 48v solar panels. that would heat the sand in a 55 gallon barrel pretty easy. should last a couple days at a time. i know of companies that can do it but the problem with a custom made element is that no one else would be able to make the project. i need to find an 'off the shelf' large element that can be run dry.
What's your advice on where to her a fresnel to try this? I've seen the guy with a massive one he calls the solar death ray. How do I know when big is too big 😂?
hi. the fresnel i bought is from amazon. about 18 dollars. i've seen a couple of them with the 'gooseneck' style tube. i don't know that there is one that is too big. sand can be heated to 3000F before it melts, so you'd be limited by the container. steel melts at over 2000F so i'd say you could potentially heat the sand to 2000F in a steel container if you wanted to. i may try a fresel lens about the size of my 32" tv. i think the guy the runs the greenpowerscience channel still sells large fresnel lenses (but i'm not sure)
Good idea but not practical at all ! One kg of sand stores 835 joules per Kelvin or 0,23Watt hour, let's say you heat the sand to 520°C and let it cool down to 20°C, it will release 115Wh of heat for 1kg, that's not much, we can easily manage a 10kg pot which will give 1,15 kWh, even 25kg would gives less than 3 kWh (and knowing that the sun radiates less than 0,5 kW /m2 it would take most of the day to heat up that much). So yeah it's a cool experiment but what are the application you have in mind ? Feel free to correct me if i made any mistake :)
hi there. the translation came thru as 'this makes bad eggs'. i'm not sure if that is what you meant to say, but if is, i'd disagree. these cookers make pretty good eggs.
I don't see why not . Hot sand and salt have been used to cook things like cracked corn. You might want to wrap them in foil to keep the grit out or in case the eggs crack. Though a good vegetable brush could help with the potatoes without foil. It wouldn't be too much different cooking in a sand or salt bath than in boiling water bath.
Here is an idea. I have plenty of sunshine, so during daytime passive solar provides pleasant warmth in my house. I live in the southwest, too. I don't need extra source of heat during day, but I need it during nighttime. So, how do I use solar light heater to heat sand battery in a system where the sand battery is heated and insulated, and then moved to my bedroom to release heat during night? I can use truck dolly to move the battery from in and out of my house. The sand battery can in theory be in an insulated wooden box with one side being glass. In theory, I can drill a hole through my house wall and get wires from solar panels to the sand battery permanently stationed in my bedroom if not using solar light heater. My research also indicates I would need lots of sand but for a small bedroom I hope one big bucket of sand would be enough. I don't need super toasty ambient. I like sleeping in little coldish environment. Can you make a system like this something small enough to easily move around, and easily heated enough for nighttime?
hi there. sounds like you've got some good ideas. one big bucket should be enough. insulating the bucket for later use is very good idea. i'll give this some thought. may be a future video.
@desertsun02 Thank you for your considerations. I was thinking solar panels as source would be easier to implement than reflective mirror. Also, maybe having a metal bucket full of sand inside bigger metal bucket with fireproof insulation in between and on the top, and drill holes where DC thermal resistant elements goes in. The thermal DC resistant element you use in your videos from several years ago to heat sand. Thank you.
I was previously thinking about using a Fresnel lens to create more electricity on a solar panel but I was afraid I would end up frying it instead. This is a great alternative.
But in order to heat enough sand to last the night, you'd need to spend the entire day heating sand and storing it, one pan at a time, into a big barrel... We need a way to auto track and auto move the heat.
to upscale this i'd consider getting 5 foot parabolic. those are up to 1800 watts and could heat a 5 or 10 gallon barrel of sand pretty quick. you might make a couple and i bet the heat could last a day or two. the biggest unit i ever saw holds heat for about a month
hi. yes, relatively low compared to copper or steel. (aluminum melts at about 1221F/660.3C) but the parabolic won't get much over 800F/426C though so it works good. if you use larger parabolic or larger frensel lens you may want to use steel or stainless steel pans
hi, yes, it really works.👍🙂 (thermal energy storage using sand is becoming a big thing the last couple of years). with this setup you basically have free heat.
yes that's exactly what it is doing. the sand holds the thermal energy from the sun and to use as an air heater you just bring it in and drop a 'heat fan' on top.
Great idea! Maybe try scaling up to a 1/4" or 1/2" copper plate with that same angled bend. If you can aim 2 fresnel lenses at it, could you achieve cooking temps? A solar hot plate. Keep up the great videos!
hi. even 'one' if you used a slightly bigger one. i may have to get one. if you see any for sale, feel free to drop a link in the comments. i may buy it
This is an epic concept..well done
hi and thank you!
Yes my friend Thank you for sharing this very efficient concept good work ☝️🙏🙏👏👏
hi and thank you!
I'd like to see some temps taken in room - perhaps copper pipe into the sand will help distribute the heat inside quicker?
I've seen several of your videos and all seem like great ideas. If you had to choose one, which would be your favorite as far as safety and heating? xo
hi there and thanks for watching my videos! i think i have something like 40 total DIY heater videos posted so far (so it's hard to say which one is best). they all have their pluses and minuses. the best ones in terms of btu output are probably the ones i've made with larger (water to air) heat exchangers. those units are rated 25,000+ btu's and the biggest one is rated 57,000 btu's. you have to have a source of hot water though. i do have a compilation video that i made that shows 33 of the projects all in one video. if you watch that one you can see a lot of them all together
Thank you so much! I will try to find that compilation video. I so admire your brilliant mind and creativity! 💖
good idea, may i add a ceramic tower for the heat to be captured in the altitude , thanks
hi. a ceramic tower. i'll look into it.👍🙂
some place pots on top of each other but it s interesting if you have a tall coneshape ceramic or bluestone as a larger heat collection surface, the hot air can also be captured in a smaller metal pot on top , before dispersed
We get 50c in June /July here in Lahore Pakistan, so this would be very interesting as an experiment.
hi. sounds like this would work well where you live. 😎👍
Fantastic, thanks for trying this.
you bet and thanks.
Brilliant video
hi. thank you!
Hi, I actually found you from your AWG video from years ago. If you have the time can I ask you a question about it?
I’m looking into building a short bus eventually right, and I need fo figure out a water solution pretty much. And I really want to do a AWG since I do live on the east coast southern area so it’s sun tropical. Normally a dehumidifier is very intense in a solar array if it’s going 24/7. Your solution would work I believe. Do you think if I upscale it a lot it would work? If I have a deep freezer in my tiny house on wheels and have many gel packs that freeze and keep rotating them with long copper pipes circulating them would that be enough to sustain myself comfortably? Like making a fully enclosed system so it’s not ugly out in the open persay and vents in air from the outside. Almost like a very slim tower fan I guess going from the ground to ceiling. How much water did your unit make in a day with only your short amount.
Would be interesting to see with a larger fresnel lens, it's basically the size of the object anyway so it's not gathering and focussing more light during daylight hours - ideally outside, and not light that's already going in through your windows.
Wouldn't the heat being released by the sand be negated by opening the door and bringing the sand battery inside? Therefore what if you had a large glass window and just done it inside your home that way you were not really releasing any hot air to the outside when you open the door to bring the sand battery in?
well, you'd want to heat the sand outside. i used the frensel inside just for demonstration purpose but i would typically heat it outside. the sand will stay hot a long time (several hours). i heated it to around 300F/150C using the parabolic but you could heat it much hotter than that. the frensel i have is a little small so i think the sand only got to 150 or 175F but those fresnel lenses get really hot (over 1000F/538C). the fans starting temp is 122F/50C.
cool I seen some guys have the pot fixed to an arm attached to the disk and it rotates. Those fresnel lens in flat screen tv's make huge lens. Keep the videos coming you are getting closer to the answer.
i just thought of an idea. i wonder if we could heat the sand, bring it in and then cook over it. my parabolic could probably get it up to 800F/425C or so (if i left it there a while longer). maybe put a rack over it or just set a pan on it
@@desertsun02my thought would be maybe like a very large steel pot or like a 20 pound propane can with the lid cut off or something, just because it being thick steel and so large it could hold heat that you could cook with possibly longer? If the parabolic cooks the hell out of it and can get the whole thing up high
But also I’m now considering trying to move a large sand filled propane tank that is 400+ degrees
Maybe not quite that, but you know what I’m shooting for
@@desertsun02 Maybe 2 cast iron frying pans with sand in between them and welded closed then bring it in and cook on it.
There are fresnel lenses in flat screen tvs?
I was always told that was only the tube types... Huh... I'll have to look into that.
@@priestesslucythey’re called projector style TV’s, it’s a projector that sits in the focal point of the fresnel lens
And then the screen is in front of that fresnel lens
Does it blow hot air?
hi yes
Have you ever considered brazing aluminum fins or copper fins to the bottom of pans to improve thermal efficiency of cooking over an open flame?
Off the top of my head jetboil is an example, but any Amazon camping pot with heat exchanger is similar, a ring of aluminum that’s affixed to the bottom of the pot around the edge to grab the extra heat going around and not in to the pan
You are someone who I would think would do amazing things with heat exchanging pans
hi. thanks for the ideas. i hadn't thought much about that but it sounds like a great idea.
Do you think there would be any benefit to using cast iron, as the black would absorb more of the reflected sunlight?
hi yes black pans would most likely heat up faster and absorb more thermal energy. i like the cast iron idea too. i've got a cast iron dutch oven.
@ looking forward to the results of that experiment, should you decide to try it out! Very interesting video, I’m inspired to try it out myself
Are you planning to extrapolate?
What would it take to have a large bank of sand inside, but heated with a lense - trombe wall style?
i was thinking of trying the 2.5 gallon bucket shown in the video and maybe a 5 gallon bucket of sand. will have to set up a concrete stand to hold the larger buckets. i wonder if we could run solar heated water into an indoor sand bank. you could bury copper pipe in the sand and circulate hot water thru the sand to heat it. (just on idea but i guess the water would only get the sand to maybe 200F/93C or so). installing a lens on house to heat sand indoors sounds pretty cool. i'll have to give that some thought
@@desertsun02 oooh, port the heat with water to another storage device. as long as the porting segment is insulated, there should be little loss.
For the trombe wall --> window - lens in gap - interior heat sink wall
or would the sun going through the window scatter?
does it blow hot air on you though? Cool project
Warm Air
hi yes. it will be warm to hot depending on how hot you heat the sand. the fan starts at 122F/50C so it will need to be at least that hot to use fan. i heated sand up to about 300F/150C but you could heat it much hotter if you wanted to.
Bottom should be painted black.
Should use large amounts of solid aluminum, has higher heat capacity than sand, heats up much more evenly. Only downside though is you need to insulate it very well until you want to use it.
Amazing! What’s the name of the clip arm you used to hold the fresnel lens in place?
hi . they sell the fresnel lens and the clip arm together. the flexible post is the same as what a gooseneck lamp is made from. i'm not sure if they sell those clip arms separately, but they should. it could hold a much bigger fresnel lens. the clip is so strong that it takes 2 hands to open it all the way. even has a thick padding inside the clip to protect whatever it's clipped to.
@ Thanks! So on Amazon?
hi, yes. if you search for 'magnifying glass with clip' you will see lots of them. they don't seem to use the term fresnel lens though. they just call them magnifying glasses with clips. i'm currently looking for a bigger fresnel lens with a clip but haven't found one yet.
@@desertsun02 Fantastic! Thanks. Love your channel!
I seen some one on TH-cam making steam power with one of these wondering how much power you can produce with these?
are they just boiling water in a pot with a mini turbine placed over the pot or? (3 to 5 foot parabolics produce anywhere from 650 to 1800 watts if i remember right). that is with 95 to 98% reflectivity.
Glass or plastic (for fresnel) can block some UV light, also copper in sand might distribute heat inside sand.
Hope you make some more development thanks
were you thinking copper sheet or copper pipe? sounds interesting but any extra details would help me build prototype.
Love your ideas man but how about a solar sand heater that would keep a bedroom warm all night long during the winter months. I'm thinking a steel or concrete 55 gallon filled with sand drum heated by a water heater element and two solar panels .Run a copper coil in the sand filled with water into the bedroom, pumped to a recycled heat exchanger from a old portable air conditioner.
i was thinking about actually buying a custom made DC element that could run dry and that could run off of 2, 3 or 4 larger 48v solar panels. that would heat the sand in a 55 gallon barrel pretty easy. should last a couple days at a time. i know of companies that can do it but the problem with a custom made element is that no one else would be able to make the project. i need to find an 'off the shelf' large element that can be run dry.
What's your advice on where to her a fresnel to try this? I've seen the guy with a massive one he calls the solar death ray. How do I know when big is too big 😂?
when you melt the pot
hi. the fresnel i bought is from amazon. about 18 dollars. i've seen a couple of them with the 'gooseneck' style tube. i don't know that there is one that is too big. sand can be heated to 3000F before it melts, so you'd be limited by the container. steel melts at over 2000F so i'd say you could potentially heat the sand to 2000F in a steel container if you wanted to. i may try a fresel lens about the size of my 32" tv. i think the guy the runs the greenpowerscience channel still sells large fresnel lenses (but i'm not sure)
Good idea but not practical at all !
One kg of sand stores 835 joules per Kelvin or 0,23Watt hour, let's say you heat the sand to 520°C and let it cool down to 20°C, it will release 115Wh of heat for 1kg, that's not much, we can easily manage a 10kg pot which will give 1,15 kWh, even 25kg would gives less than 3 kWh (and knowing that the sun radiates less than 0,5 kW /m2 it would take most of the day to heat up that much).
So yeah it's a cool experiment but what are the application you have in mind ?
Feel free to correct me if i made any mistake :)
Kolay gelsin, bunda fena yumurta yapılır!!! 👍
hi there. the translation came thru as 'this makes bad eggs'. i'm not sure if that is what you meant to say, but if is, i'd disagree. these cookers make pretty good eggs.
@desertsun02 çeviri yanlış yapmış, süper olur dedim 👍⚡⚡⚡
you should try cooking eggs in the sand ... in the shell?
neat idea! i was wondering about cooking over (or in) hot sand. i wonder if potatoes could be 'baked in hot sand
I don't see why not . Hot sand and salt have been used to cook things like cracked corn. You might want to wrap them in foil to keep the grit out or in case the eggs crack. Though a good vegetable brush could help with the potatoes without foil. It wouldn't be too much different cooking in a sand or salt bath than in boiling water bath.
Good video, thanks for sharing, YAH bless !
Glad you liked it, and you're welcome! 🙏
Here is an idea. I have plenty of sunshine, so during daytime passive solar provides pleasant warmth in my house. I live in the southwest, too. I don't need extra source of heat during day, but I need it during nighttime.
So, how do I use solar light heater to heat sand battery in a system where the sand battery is heated and insulated, and then moved to my bedroom to release heat during night? I can use truck dolly to move the battery from in and out of my house. The sand battery can in theory be in an insulated wooden box with one side being glass. In theory, I can drill a hole through my house wall and get wires from solar panels to the sand battery permanently stationed in my bedroom if not using solar light heater. My research also indicates I would need lots of sand but for a small bedroom I hope one big bucket of sand would be enough. I don't need super toasty ambient. I like sleeping in little coldish environment.
Can you make a system like this something small enough to easily move around, and easily heated enough for nighttime?
hi there. sounds like you've got some good ideas. one big bucket should be enough. insulating the bucket for later use is very good idea. i'll give this some thought. may be a future video.
@desertsun02 Thank you for your considerations. I was thinking solar panels as source would be easier to implement than reflective mirror. Also, maybe having a metal bucket full of sand inside bigger metal bucket with fireproof insulation in between and on the top, and drill holes where DC thermal resistant elements goes in. The thermal DC resistant element you use in your videos from several years ago to heat sand. Thank you.
Try a slab of Soapstone. holds heat forever
i have been wanting to buy soapstone. i can't find a good price on it though.
I was previously thinking about using a Fresnel lens to create more electricity on a solar panel but I was afraid I would end up frying it instead. This is a great alternative.
With solar panels this is only a good idea if it is very cloudy or if there is fog in bright sunlight you burn out the modules very fast.
But in order to heat enough sand to last the night, you'd need to spend the entire day heating sand and storing it, one pan at a time, into a big barrel...
We need a way to auto track and auto move the heat.
to upscale this i'd consider getting 5 foot parabolic. those are up to 1800 watts and could heat a 5 or 10 gallon barrel of sand pretty quick. you might make a couple and i bet the heat could last a day or two. the biggest unit i ever saw holds heat for about a month
Aluminium melts at a low temperature
hi. yes, relatively low compared to copper or steel. (aluminum melts at about 1221F/660.3C) but the parabolic won't get much over 800F/426C though so it works good. if you use larger parabolic or larger frensel lens you may want to use steel or stainless steel pans
👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
💣❤💔💕💝💥سلام خسته نباشید بیشتر (دستگاه آب ساز) بسازی ممنون میشم💘❤💝💞💥💣
No way.
hi, yes, it really works.👍🙂 (thermal energy storage using sand is becoming a big thing the last couple of years). with this setup you basically have free heat.
Isn't it just blowing hot air from that hot sand though?? 😆
yes that's exactly what it is doing. the sand holds the thermal energy from the sun and to use as an air heater you just bring it in and drop a 'heat fan' on top.