Loved your dog! 😍 Thank you for sharing. What you are doing not only saves money but think about no smoke, no cleaning chimneys, being able to cook on the surface, run copper tubing inside to heat water. The possibilities are endless. I will be waiting for your next videos.
Thank you for watching and commenting!! I will have some new videos out soon, I will.be adding a digital controller. The dog likes to see himself in my videos he knows to watch for himself at the end now when I play them at home after editing 😄
I used my original wood stove a Jotul , filled up dried beach sand x 5 ptc elements and it works great!! I put mine directly into the sand and made a huge difference keeping my living room nice and warm 🤙
I used 24 gage Nichrome wire with two 29 volt solar panels and builders sand in large terracotta pots. Worked great with heat left one after being outside on 40 degree nights. They can be very simple.
Put a modded square C shape pipe on top with 2 tiny dual TEG wood stove fans in the pipe heat collector on top the battery to collect and blow out the heat. In a power outage you plug into a solar battery during a stormy low solar. You could come up with a similar sand battery that could run on alcohol stoves in a long term power outage, with copper piping inside to transfer heat from the alcohol stoves.
Nice diy work to get a prototype! The solid state heating elements are probably cooking themselves to death due to the heat exchange rate becoming too slow over time as the surrounding sand gets hot and newly generated heat has nowhere to go for dissipation. NOTE: no matter how good the design/build, the physics of solar pv generated electric heat via solid state conversion is going to top out at some fraction of total solar panel array generation capacity, which at best is a little over 300 watts per panel for a few hours of usable sunlight per day during the winter months. Consider that the heat content of one gallon of fuel oil roughly equals that of 41 kWh of electricity, and a typical home uses around 2-8 gallons of fuel oil a day depending upon square footage, insulation, outdoor temperature, and thermostat setting. That translates to 82kWh per day to 328kWh per day of electricity, although a fuel oil furnace is likely 80-90% efficient. Taking an average of 246kWh per day for an average house during winter and dividing by 6 hours of usable sunlight per day during the winter season, you would need a solar array of around 41kW to heat the house! And that, theoretically, would leave the sand batteries fully depleted after every day. To have stored heat available in the sand batteries to start a new day you would need an even larger solar array. (This is why the currently deployed sand batteries mostly use industrial scale waste heat from commercial sources that are probably burning fossil fuels.) Still, small scale sand batteries are a worthy experiment, and there are other possible sources of energy to use to charge them with heat energy. Looking forward to seeing what you learn along the way.
🙂 I have learned quite a bit along the way. This project is explained a little better in the 2 videos that follow this one, and 1 more coming soon. It might seem the title for this was a little bit click bait but not my intention and it depends on your heating needs and I do explain that as best as I can. Thank you for watching and commenting! Please watch for my upcoming videos on this project it may change your opinion
The issues you are having with the smaller heating elements: 1: heat saturation of the sand vs component durability. These smaller heating elements don't like being run at their upper limits for too terribly long. 2: Heat transfer through the heat exchanger isn't happening fast enough. 3: Aluminum is a good material but it needs some help in this configuration. Copper foil sandwiched into the interior of the heat exchanger (possibly wrapped onto the sides) should increase the thermal transfer rate sufficiently. 4: Heat charging the sand. Heat transfer from the heat exchanger to the sand media can be enhanced with the addition of copper powder mixed thoroughly with the sand. I haven't directly experimented with any quantities nor generated any data point's personally. I would think that it would be a safe bet to start at .5% by volume and go from there. 5: Fine stainless steel mesh could be used to create a higher content copper % core for greater thermal transfer to a lower % bearing copper sand mix including sand with zero copper powder added. Hope I helped even a little bit Sir. Please do post a follow-up video. I'm curious to see how everything works out! ~Daniel
You are correct, I have since switched from PTC to an immersion style element (there is a newer video ) Coming next is a PID controller. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Love this. A man enjoying and sharing the journey. Im constantly impressed by clever people looking to create clever solutions. Keep the videos coming :)
Warren, thank you for watching and for your comments! There are 2 more updates for the heater after this video on our channel it is a work in progress and a final update coming soon.
Hi this looks great, I've got a off grid property in Ontario and have to bring in drinking water in 250 gallon totes well insulated on a trailer. this can safely keep my tanks from freezing in the winter with no maintenance and not touching my camp power. I'm keeping this on hand
I have a friend with a 4ft x 4ft x 4ft well house he wants one badly as soon as I get the details worked out, it should keep it from freezing. Thanks for watching, and commenting!
You can get heating cable it's water proof it's used in greenhouses as well as tanks for snakes etc They're really cheap £20 for 3 m and 12V float it just below the surface and it'd stop it from freazing
My Thermal Battery is my basement, which is insulated underneath and outside. It's *120 tonnes* of concrete. The house has a lot of passive solar gain (~24m^2), and a fan pulls the hot air into the basement. Relatively cheap to heat all winter, in Canada, with high electricity rates.
Cool! Maybe instead of puttin half sand put a temperature cutoff in heat sinks. So if you hit set temps it'll cut off & cool down. Then when its low enough it will turn back on? It'll also conserve some energy that can go into your solar batteries while its cooling.
The best machine is no moving parts. Use AC 110 volt electric oven coil powered directly from 130 volts DC from the panels... OFF-GRID SOLAR MIKE goes thru the math and explanations et al
I build 55 gallon drums for our sand batteries that we sell and install here in Massachusetts i have one heating my 3200sqft home and dont use water heater elements its the worst idea use oven elements and exhaust piping for success and hook it all up to solar panels in parallel to a pid unit that feeds ac and dc voltage so in winter if solar is lacking on your property you can heat it with grid power also safely
Fantastic, great job! I was thinking on a larger scale if copper tubing could be coiled inside and run cold water in, hot water out..... I am looking for ways to heat hot water other than using solar with battery backup. I love this concept. I plan to use an old wood stove to heat my greenhouse but will use sand and heating elements with the solar panels, love all these great ideas and inventions, keep them coming. :) I am just editing to add, this could also work as a cook stove!
Thank you for watching and commenting. The possibilities seem kind of endless and any heat source would work to a certain degree. I chose electric for the higher temps it's capable of producing. More videos are upcoming.
I seen designs that uses a heating element for electric hot water tanks. Some use the common household 120v heating element. Some use the 12v heating element from RV and campers
You are awesome, I hope your company is flourishing! The world needs somewhat simple common sense solutions like yours. Thank you for watching and commenting! I am a big fan!
Какво става колега? Няма ли вече евтина енергия от съседите? Кой ви накара да се хванете на хорото на губещите? Е, това е политика, аз не разбирам от нея. Моята препоръка е да използваш една много стара технология- газификация на биомаса, но да я използваш за преработка на биомаса и домашни отпадъци! В интернет има достатъчно информация за такива инсталации! Бъди здрав и се грижи за семейството!
@@valerigeorgiev5615 I disagree, biomass gasification requires a ton of investment and work, collecting materials maintenance compared to sun, wind, , waste electricity and sand. All the things we are given free. I don't own a farm an don't want to spend hours searching for biomass and feeding the troublesome monster . I've seen them and am not impressed.
And how efficient is to store summer heat for the winter? Small systems that store heat over the day are small and cheap, but energy collected in winter is expensive. So, how much costs a big system, able to store heat all the summer and return it during the winter? Let say that I use 1Mwhour during whole winter for heating. A 10 or 15 kw solar array plus some regular electric boiler to preserve the heat for the night may provide enough heat. Reducing the amount of panels to a half or a third and replacing them with a sand heat battery will be cheaper? I assume that at bigger level efficiency will be better. For example at city level. But then such a system would be better built underground, the rock being the insulator. Almost a geothermal thing, replacing the depth as heat source, with summer heat storing. Speculating on this direction I feel that the sand solution may be a niche one, for intermediate sizes.
Thanks for sharing 🙏 - I was thinking more in terms of a large thermally insulated sand pit in the garden area with electric heating elements and water tubing to feed my underfloor heating. At the moment I am discharging any excess energy from the PV into conventional electric heaters and I don't see much of a difference from using a small sand accumulator which would take a longer time to reach the desired temperature but would in turn continue to be effective for hours and hours when perhaps it's non required.
This is awesome! Thanks for sharing the info! Only a prototype but it looks super polished. I’m excited to see what you turn it into! Edit: Oh I see you have more updates since this one. I'll have to watch those too now :)
'Desert sun 02' has also made plenty of these with different ideas and parts. I'd recommend an aluminium pot filled with sand and perhaps a thermostat, but on a cold day who cares right?! I like in your idea the tube being flat as you could use it to heat things on top like a stove. Was also going to say that heat rises, but given you have an aluminium conductor shouldn't be much of a problem reaching the sand. Maybe you could sandwich these to make array's. Nice build.
I tried the buckets it is hard to get meaningful heat unless your are in the desert 😏. It is a good way to test the theory but a bad way to get heat. In my opinion it must be contained so you can control the heat more effectively. By containing it you allow the entire volume of sand which in my case is pure silica which it mostly quarts a very effective heat transfer media, to entirely heat up and transfer that heat to the outside. I have 2 other follow up videos to this one where I have made some considerable modifications to help the heat come out but still get the sand benifits. Thank you for watching and commenting!
Haven't looked into where you are at with this so what I say might be a moot point. What I've noticed in transferring heat is that the least amount of times you can transition the better. So this would be going from electrical into the metal into the sand back into the metal and then finally into the air which is transitioning five times. My recommendation would be to find an electric element like others have said and instead of using any medium use it to heat the air. That would be the most efficient way. If you're looking to delay and diffuse I would allow the heated air from the element to run across a sand filled tube that would retain heat longer. In short, think of a normal electric baseboard heater with a design similar to yours suspended above it that is absorbing the heat until it reaches capacity
That's a very nicely made project! Could you mount the thermistor to the inside wall of the tubing? That way half of it is transferring the heat directly to the air and the other half is transferring it to the sand. This might keep operating temps a little lower and improve the life expectancy. Great concept and implementation!
That could work out. I have kind of lost my faith in them because of failures. There are 2 more videos on this project and another forthcoming, I have taken a new approach and think it will work better. Thank you for watching and commenting! And stay tuned!
@@mvpmachine I'm pretty sure Robert Murray Smith mentioned the melting point of solder. They may be getting too hot for the solder joints and that's where the failures are possibly occuring. I liked your design, nice and clean build. I hope you've got it worked out now. I haven't looked for a newer video yet. Thanks for taking the time to share your hard work.
Hi, thank you for watching and commenting! That is coming soon, going to be installing a pid controller. In a few weeks and will post an updated video.
Xcellent , re: "400-degrees" & _Aging of the components_ If the heaters ARE capable of "baking" things. I suppose the Connections/Leads are (maybe?) the weakest part of the design? So I suppose for *_Longevity's Sake_* Those parts have to be pritty rugged? (but I supposed you've already thought of that) This is a really Nifty build. It's seems actually *Very BulletProof already* This thing COULD Last for _years_ with no moving parts. if only the elements can Last Longer. Xcellent Concept
I think it would be interesting to try and somehow merge this with a solar thermal system with one of those evacuated tubes. They're quite a bit more efficient since you're keeping the heat as heat rather than having the losses of using electricity as a middleman.
It for sure would work just a lot more investment in the system would be required. I want to build a Gazebo and have those evacuated tubes on top for in floor heat for winter of course using sand for a thermal mass. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Im new to all of this and getting invested in the whole sand battery idea, how would a water heater element or a stove heating element work in something like that?
I have heard of people doing that if you look at Robert Murray Smiths Channel in the UK he tried that: www.youtube.com/@ThinkingandTinkering I wanted something low current so I could power it from solar, and you would need quite a lot of solar power to heat with a water heater element.
love the idea of a sand battery! But if I see your video, I can't help but thinking, where can I obtain my own aluminum mill, to make such georgeous products out of milled aluminum, for other projects and ideas?
Thank you for watching and commenting! There are many benchtop mills available that can be converted to CNC that would be perfectly capable of making these parts. I may invest in one here for the shop just to showcase some of our cutting tools we will soon be making for them. Stay tuned!
And it also has higher heat transfer rate... you might try a foundry supply company... zircon sand it also an option... I used to work in the foundry industry...
l'hiver dernier j'ai essayé un truc. positionner sur mon poele à bois une marmite en fonte de 20l remplie de sable. j'ai aussi introduit 3 modifications. j'ai ajouté sur mon poele 3 briques réfractaires. qui ont le même effet et intention que la marmite : augmenter l'inertie du poele Et j'ai aussi changé ma manière de faire du feu: l'intention étant de générer un gros volume de braises. donc allumer le feu avec une buche pour avoir un 1er lit de braise ensuite bourrer le poele de bois attendre que la flambée prennent laisser 20mn de flammes puis régler le ralenti un peu au- dessus de la valeur habituelle( quand le poele n'était pas trop chargé) afin qu'un peu plus d'O2 passe puisque le volume du poele est beaucoup occupé et que la circulation de l'air est un peu ralentie. résultat : avant j'obtenais une température en chauffe constante d'environ 20° (18° les jours de très grand froid) et une baisse nocturne de température. au petit matin la maison était à 16 ou 14 les jours très froids et il fallait attendre 1h pour que cela remonte suffisamment. j'utilisais entre 6 et 8 stères de bois. Avec la nouvelle méthode j'ai obtenu toujours 20° voir 22° et le passage de nuit à 18° et surtout j'ai utilisé 5 stères de bois et rechargé le poele 1/3 de fois en moins donc beaucoup d'économie de combustible et de travail.
If you live in the Forest you could just get some metal buckets with sand and put it in the bon fire with good insulation for 1 hour then bring it in your house and it'll last all night.
Have you though of maybe doubling the heating elements and Instituting a computerized cyclic power system. So that they are not in constant use ? That may extend the heating elements life span & could probably be done with an arduino uno without too much effort.
Hi There are 2 videos after this one and the form and elements have changed a bit. Going to be adding a PID controller very soon and will a new. Ideo. Thank for watching and commenting!!
Im not sure I went to a submersion type heater in video 3 for this heater, I like that a lot better than the PTC elements. Now I just have to install a controller. Thanks for watching!
Thank you for watching and commenting! Even though I have an somewhat extensive electronics background I am just learning about the diode chains my solar knowledge has been a bit limited so I am learning as I go. I welcome all comments and input 😊
I think the appeal of sand batteries is that you can heat them to extreme temperatures, I don't think your little thermistors can handle that amount of heat, so you could probably use regular dirt, for sand batteries hot air may be more applicable.
I'm a physicist and engineer, so I thought I'd ask if you have considered using a water vapor system where the vapor can be used to transfer the heat to the sand. That way you won't burn out the heating elements.
Hi, thank you for watching and commenting, there are 2 more videos after this one that show some evolution in my design, I am not opposed to any technolgy that will make it work better but as a rule I do want to keep it as simple as possible. I am not at all familiar with what you proposed but would like to hear more. I do not really like the sound of it though because the key to the silica sand, made up of mostly quarts is that it has to be completely dry to be effective, otherwise the heat is wasted boiling off the moisture. Many people I see experimenting with these just use plain old sand and it is not effective. Quarts is an excellent conductor of heat and I am using as a thermal conductor as much as I am using as a thermal mass. I think you mean adding another type of heat exchanger and that seems to complicated for this.
Are you selling any of these? I have a 800 sq foot basement storage area that gets cold in the winter. Would be great to add this to keep the water heater heatpump from going resistive.
Hi thank you for watching and for your question. As of now this is still in development and we are working on making it a viable, scaleable heater for different size applications. We will turn it into a product if the results are acceptable. We will have more videos coming soon showing our upgrades so stay tuned.
Hi thank you for watching and commenting! This version had a maximum temperature of about 250f that made it 2 the outside but there are 2 newer videos and it has been modified heavily. There will be another video coming soon I am adding a digital controller so stay tuned.
Hi, thanks for watching and commenting! The problem with mineral oil is combustion occurs at 500F and it likely turns brown and gummy at even lower temperatures so not really safe.
Will it shown as is in this video that was possible. But I have now upped the wattage making that not really possible, there are 2 updates after this video. Thanks for watching and commenting!
i cant image this doing much more then 1hour or so . i would think you would need at least 500-1000lbs of sand media to make it worth while and most likely really need at least a 1 ton or more . very cool machining and worksmen ship though . hopefully you plan to scale it up to a decent sand volume . can you put higher voltage and lower the amperage to be less stress on the heating pads ?
Cody, thanks for watching and commenting! There are 2 more updates on this heater on my channel. I am not only using the sand for storage but also for a thermal transfer media. The third video kind of shows best what this has evolved to so far.
I get that everybody is chasing the "Next Big Thing" but I have a legitimate question! How would a liquid mass (water / Glycol Water) compare for thermal storage?? As I see it, it would be much easier to move the "Heat" around to a different room with a water based system. I have even toyed with the idea of a "Cooling" system in the warm months using the same "MASS" for thermal storage. I am also considering just using AC power to power the "MASS" after the batteries have been topped off, and the dump load would then just be the AC circuits being controlled based on Battery SOC. Since any system I build and actually scale up beyond an experimental size, would include batteries, and inverters already!
@@ZacharyHolton But back to my point, how do you get the heat OUT of the sand?? vs Water / liquid is EASY to move around to the various places you need to utilize the stored heat. The whole "boiling" issue you mentioned is easily handled either chemically or via pressurization. Not to mention a liquid "Mass" can easily be cooled to store energy in the summertime, not sure sand would work well for that.
Sir, It appears to me as though Your modules are not being held tight enough in the heatsink, therefore causing the modules to fail. I come to this conclusion based upon the tracks in the heatsink compound. Those look like air pockets to me. Great idea and great video. Keep up the good work. Thank You, JR
Mark, not a bad Idea but I had to move past the ptc heating elements due to fundamental flaws, they are not really compatible with a sand based heater. I have 2 newer videos about this heater and 1 more coming soon, I have changed my approach a bit to make it better. Thank you for watching and commenting!
More interesting is how to store summer heat for winter months. At a residential scale. Because winter sun is not enough even to heat water for shower (
@@overthinker1844 They can. Theoretically. However at my location winter means 4 months of a light rain. No wind (05-2.5m/sec), no sun (50Wt out of 550Wt)
So what if you were to throw a bank of thermopiles in that sand battery? Now not only heat but you can remove electricity from that little sand battery
Any oil would burn at the temps it is now capable of and gaskets would add expense and complication to the design, also sand stays warm longer and does not leak without a gasket. Thank you for watching and commenting!
Funny that you brought this up. Had this conversation with a friend earlier in the week and are currently attempting to acquire some. Thank you for watching and commenting!!
Hi thanks for watching and commenting! There are 2 more updates after this video, the 3rd one has a 750 watt submersion type heat element that has seamed to perform the best. The problem with the ptc elements is the cannot stand up to being used in a high heat environment without having the heat removed quickly, and I kept burning them out after a few days. I will have a controller to cycle the 750watt element on and off once it hits a preset temp so it will not run very often but be more efficient. New videos coming soon this fall.
@@dawidkujawski3340 I have taken them apart after failure to see but could not find the issue . Yes, they just stopped working. Also the resistance changes if you check it with a meter. Not an open circuit just higher and won't allow it to start heating
@@mvpmachine I suspect that this happens with heaters that have over 200 degrees Celsius - I wonder if the same happens to models that only reach 70-80 C.
@@dawidkujawski3340 from what I understand rapid heat removal is the key to the longevity of ptc elements so it was likely a bad choice for me to use on a sand battery heater but they are hard to find good info on, it seems you get clues here and there but no one really spells out all of the details about thier specs and usage. Most of what I see is they are used with a small fan and a large thin heat sink and that likely works fine as the heat is constantly dispersed. I would assume the fan speed is calculated to match the ptc element somewhat but the big factor is your starting temperature. I concluded they are way to low in wattage to do anything meaningful in cold temps.
As a question you have alot of thermal transfer on that, which makes me wonder if that is that the issue? ir the fit isn't tight enough, if it was a tighter fit you'd have better transfer? Just a thought..
This is my thought a lot of thermal paste isn't related for temperatures that high so once the thermal paste bakes. There isn't enough thermal transfer to the aluminum before the device bakes
Its hard to say but the fit on the actual thermistor to the flat aluminium tube it is supplied with is quite loose. I thought about removing that flat tube and making the pocket of the heat exchangers fit the thermistor ( or PTC element) more tightly, but to me the issue seems to be trapping too much heat in the enclosure. The sand gets too hot and cannot remove the heat fast enough so the PTC elements overheat. I may remake the heat exchangers to work from the exterior bottom of the unit to see what happens.
It is sealed in this unit so no airborne particles. Regular sand does not conduct heat well and any dampness will turn to clumps and steam in the unit and that's bad. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@mvpmachine I've noticed that none of these videos seem to have any actual data relating to surface temps and if it can actually heat a room. I'm wondering if you used a 55 gallon drum, ran a copper coil through it, and used it as a pool heater, if you built it inside an insulated shed, could you use the shed as a sauna as well. Nice little DIY spa.
I there is wind power available, pass a law making the electricity supper cheap between 1:00 and 4:00 am to heat up all the residential sand batteries.
@@mvpmachine I'm in DFW, a Cowboys fan. After suffering for decades we still don't have a good team. We have Jerry and a lot of superstars. I do not expect us to go to the superbowl until Jerry is gone.
I tried this on a small scale for a cat house. Entirely ineffective at least in my location. Something like trying to heat up the ocean by peeing in it.
@@mvpmachine Yes, but since you are running this on solar, do you really care how much energy you are using? In fact, I'm looking to accomplish a few things: 1) Setup an energy storage of heat for the winter months. 2) Use solar to feed that storage system. 3) Get paid for doing it but not from pumping it to the electrical grid where I have to sign a contract with my local government. Instead, I want to get paid by a distributed network for mining crypto. So, I was thinking of how to store the energy from the BTC servers while I store the money at the same time, and just pay back the server investment over time by saving on my energy bill and also diversifying my capital investments.
@@jd01665 It sounds like it could work but setup cost is going to be huge and it is not a sure thing as crypto has proven to be a bit risky. I would thing proving the crypto model you are thinking of would be the first step then after that works using the heat could be invested in with the profits. Waste heat is the best use for a sand battery.
When Ukraine rebuilds, it’s a great opportunity to revamp energy infrastructure with smaller scale energy production. They could be a model for the world
I dont think sand batteries are very useful in home use. The only advantage of a sand battery is the very high maximum temperature (if you need high temperatures in an industrial application). For home use hot water tanks or phase change materials (paraffin) are better by weight and by volume and will have lower losses because of the lower temperature difference.
I intend to find out. Going to finish this and give it a try. 1 or 2 More videos are upcoming. You commented on the first of 3 videos. Adding a PID controller coming up next. This is not intended to be a typical sand battery where mass and super high temps are needed. It is as currently configured a room baseboard style heater that uses silica sand as a thermal transfer media and a buffer, using as little power as possible. Thanks for watching and commenting!
2 cubic meters of sand at 500F (260C) will hold enough heat to provide my large Montana home on the coldest day (24 hrs). But if I had enough solar (12kW current) to resistance heat that much , I'd rater use 1/3rd the panels/system and run a $3500 heat pump. Sand battery is only good if you are scavanging waste heat from an engine or wood stove exhaust. Economically, it doesn't make sense to build such a system unless the waste is there already. Storing, heating and transferring water is a lot easier. Lower temps (safer) and off the shelf (cheep) parts. Heat pump heat tge water all daycwhen tge sun shines to heat house all night. About 400 gallons at 175F start temp (at 7PM) is enough for a Montana night.
I think that the idea isn't terrible but I also think you are adding all sortf of additional losses. Sand batteries are great for storing heat that was caputered by a device designed to capture heat. For example, if you had cooling circuit on the back of your solar panels (some copper tubing on the back running to a small tank with a pump) and route that cooling system through the sand then you'd be storing heat while allowing your solar panels to run more efficiently (colder = better) and thus, for example, charge a battery bank. In your setup, you ignore all the heat the solar panels are receiving anyways, use the already poorly converted electricity the solar panels provide to power heating elements that in turn have to heat the sand. It's not impossible but it feels that by moving funds from electric heating elements to something that actually captures the heat and pumps that around (creating basically a heatpump in the same way the radiator on a car works, instead of dumping the heat into the passing air you dump it into the sand) you'd get much better efficiency and more/better energy storage.
Adding an extreme amount of plumbing to a solar array is heavy, complicated, expensive, and prone to failure. The point of the sand battery is that it's cheap and simple.
@@Snerdles I understand when you are coming from but nobody said anything about having to use an insane amount of plumbing (my solar panel cooling was just an example). I understand wanting something to be cheap but if it fails to do the job proper it's not just cheap, it's useless, especially when talking about something like heating to survive a winter. A simple solar heater (just a box that is painted with matt black on the inside) will do a better job in cloudy weather to charge a sand heater then using a solar panel for it's electricity. To each their own but when I invest time and money I'd want the best possible performance at the lowest possible price, not just the lowest possible price.
@@pyramidsinegyptsolar panels warm up to 50-60 °C depending on where you are. Where and when you need heating, you would be lucky to see 30 °C at the panels on a sunny day. I have had temperature logged on my panels in Finland for a year or so. Water has basically an limit at 100 °C. Sand batteries are shit at those levels compared to just storing the energy in water. Sand battery has its strenght at higher temps, like >400 °C, where you could "easily" get by resistive heating aka electricity directly. Small stuff (like an oil drum of sand and "only" 200 °C) would work if the days are really sunny, but the nights are colder. Might even be sufficient for a few rainy days, depending on the heated volume and insulation. For seasonal storage in a cold climate you would need something like 20 foot containers full of sand with couple foot of insulation around them to hold ~500 °C in for several months. Can't have water directly for heat exchange, so it needs another stage, probably with air as an medium between the battery and central heating etc. It would become pretty complicated quite fast.
Thanks for watching and commenting! The problem with water is the boiling point would make a bomb with this heater sand can work up to much higher temps.
@@mvpmachine Pressure relief valve. Pressurized water boils higher, and even higher with additives. Sand has a way lower limit as far as amount of heat it can store per pound. Water is dramatically higher, although sand never freezees, and doesn't need to be pressure regulated. Each has a place, just letting you know.
Britain had these 65 years ago, but they were way more sefisticated than these ugly monsters, they were extremely well insulated with a fan that circulated the hot air out when required via a wall thermostat, they heated at night when electricity was half price.
I understand but this is a scalable prototype have to get the inner workings right first. Also using the silica sand as a thermal transfer media and buffer, so not entirely about thermal mass with this. Thank you for watching and commenting!
Cool Idea - BUT: When compared with water, sand really isn't a good storage. When you compensate for the Volumetric benefit of sand (higher density than water), you need to heat the sand ~3x as hot as the water to get the same amount of stored energy. But with 200°C you are at a good starting point - from there it's getting better the hotter :)
Loved that you referenced Robert :)
I really like his channels!
Loved your dog! 😍 Thank you for sharing. What you are doing not only saves money but think about no smoke, no cleaning chimneys, being able to cook on the surface, run copper tubing inside to heat water. The possibilities are endless. I will be waiting for your next videos.
Thank you for watching and commenting!! I will have some new videos out soon, I will.be adding a digital controller. The dog likes to see himself in my videos he knows to watch for himself at the end now when I play them at home after editing 😄
I used my original wood stove a Jotul , filled up dried beach sand x 5 ptc elements and it works great!! I put mine directly into the sand and made a huge difference keeping my living room nice and warm 🤙
Nice have the ptc elements lasted for you, I had issues with all of them only lasting 4 to 7 days I think because not enough heat dispersion.
I was going to do the exact thing for my greenhouse! Wow so how much solar watts and what elements did you use?
I used 24 gage Nichrome wire with two 29 volt solar panels and builders sand in large terracotta pots. Worked great with heat left one after being outside on 40 degree nights. They can be very simple.
I really like the look of this and hope you get it scaled in. I am building a tiny camper and was looking at different sand batteries for heating it.
I think it would be great for a well insulated camper. For 96 watts it throws some impressive heat but still needs work. Thanks for watching!
Put a modded square C shape pipe on top with 2 tiny dual TEG wood stove fans in the pipe heat collector on top the battery to collect and blow out the heat. In a power outage you plug into a solar battery during a stormy low solar. You could come up with a similar sand battery that could run on alcohol stoves in a long term power outage, with copper piping inside to transfer heat from the alcohol stoves.
Hi check out our 3rd video of this on our channel, have done a similar thing to what you suggested. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Amazing aluminum welding and milling. Well done.
Nice diy work to get a prototype!
The solid state heating elements are probably cooking themselves to death due to the heat exchange rate becoming too slow over time as the surrounding sand gets hot and newly generated heat has nowhere to go for dissipation.
NOTE: no matter how good the design/build, the physics of solar pv generated electric heat via solid state conversion is going to top out at some fraction of total solar panel array generation capacity, which at best is a little over 300 watts per panel for a few hours of usable sunlight per day during the winter months. Consider that the heat content of one gallon of fuel oil roughly equals that of 41 kWh of electricity, and a typical home uses around 2-8 gallons of fuel oil a day depending upon square footage, insulation, outdoor temperature, and thermostat setting. That translates to 82kWh per day to 328kWh per day of electricity, although a fuel oil furnace is likely 80-90% efficient. Taking an average of 246kWh per day for an average house during winter and dividing by 6 hours of usable sunlight per day during the winter season, you would need a solar array of around 41kW to heat the house! And that, theoretically, would leave the sand batteries fully depleted after every day. To have stored heat available in the sand batteries to start a new day you would need an even larger solar array. (This is why the currently deployed sand batteries mostly use industrial scale waste heat from commercial sources that are probably burning fossil fuels.) Still, small scale sand batteries are a worthy experiment, and there are other possible sources of energy to use to charge them with heat energy. Looking forward to seeing what you learn along the way.
🙂 I have learned quite a bit along the way. This project is explained a little better in the 2 videos that follow this one, and 1 more coming soon. It might seem the title for this was a little bit click bait but not my intention and it depends on your heating needs and I do explain that as best as I can. Thank you for watching and commenting! Please watch for my upcoming videos on this project it may change your opinion
The issues you are having with the smaller heating elements:
1: heat saturation of the sand vs component durability.
These smaller heating elements don't like being run at their upper limits for too terribly long.
2: Heat transfer through the heat exchanger isn't happening fast enough.
3: Aluminum is a good material but it needs some help in this configuration.
Copper foil sandwiched into the interior of the heat exchanger (possibly wrapped onto the sides) should increase the thermal transfer rate sufficiently.
4: Heat charging the sand.
Heat transfer from the heat exchanger to the sand media can be enhanced with the addition of copper powder mixed thoroughly with the sand.
I haven't directly experimented with any quantities nor generated any data point's personally. I would think that it would be a safe bet to start at .5% by volume and go from there.
5: Fine stainless steel mesh could be used to create a higher content copper % core for greater thermal transfer to a lower % bearing copper sand mix including sand with zero copper powder added.
Hope I helped even a little bit Sir. Please do post a follow-up video. I'm curious to see how everything works out!
~Daniel
You are correct, I have since switched from PTC to an immersion style element (there is a newer video ) Coming next is a PID controller. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Love this. A man enjoying and sharing the journey. Im constantly impressed by clever people looking to create clever solutions. Keep the videos coming :)
Warren, thank you for watching and for your comments! There are 2 more updates for the heater after this video on our channel it is a work in progress and a final update coming soon.
@@warrensmith8518 STUPID people use the SAME adjective in the SAME SENTENCE.
Hi this looks great, I've got a off grid property in Ontario and have to bring in drinking water in 250 gallon totes well insulated on a trailer. this can safely keep my tanks from freezing in the winter with no maintenance and not touching my camp power. I'm keeping this on hand
I have a friend with a 4ft x 4ft x 4ft well house he wants one badly as soon as I get the details worked out, it should keep it from freezing. Thanks for watching, and commenting!
You can get heating cable it's water proof it's used in greenhouses as well as tanks for snakes etc They're really cheap £20 for 3 m and 12V float it just below the surface and it'd stop it from freazing
My Thermal Battery is my basement, which is insulated underneath and outside. It's *120 tonnes* of concrete. The house has a lot of passive solar gain (~24m^2), and a fan pulls the hot air into the basement. Relatively cheap to heat all winter, in Canada, with high electricity rates.
That sounds like a great set up! I will be doing something similar with a four season gazebo that I am planning to build this spring
Cool! Maybe instead of puttin half sand put a temperature cutoff in heat sinks. So if you hit set temps it'll cut off & cool down. Then when its low enough it will turn back on? It'll also conserve some energy that can go into your solar batteries while its cooling.
Not a bad idea, thank you for watching and commenting. I am exploring all options and that is a possible solution
The best machine is no moving parts. Use AC 110 volt electric oven coil powered directly from 130 volts DC from the panels... OFF-GRID SOLAR MIKE goes thru the math and explanations et al
I build 55 gallon drums for our sand batteries that we sell and install here in Massachusetts i have one heating my 3200sqft home and dont use water heater elements its the worst idea use oven elements and exhaust piping for success and hook it all up to solar panels in parallel to a pid unit that feeds ac and dc voltage so in winter if solar is lacking on your property you can heat it with grid power also safely
That sounds impressive you have anything online so I could look at yours? Thanks, Tim
BUY some PUNCTUATION, GODDAMMIT!!!
Do you have a website or FB page
@@Tryp-j9dhahahahahaha! That’s just mean… 😂
@@ds19dsfnyes, am interested to know more too.
Fantastic, great job! I was thinking on a larger scale if copper tubing could be coiled inside and run cold water in, hot water out..... I am looking for ways to heat hot water other than using solar with battery backup. I love this concept. I plan to use an old wood stove to heat my greenhouse but will use sand and heating elements with the solar panels, love all these great ideas and inventions, keep them coming. :) I am just editing to add, this could also work as a cook stove!
Thank you for watching and commenting. The possibilities seem kind of endless and any heat source would work to a certain degree. I chose electric for the higher temps it's capable of producing. More videos are upcoming.
I seen designs that uses a heating element for electric hot water tanks. Some use the common household 120v heating element. Some use the 12v heating element from RV and campers
Nice video! =) I founded the company in Finland that you are talking about. =)
You are awesome, I hope your company is flourishing! The world needs somewhat simple common sense solutions like yours. Thank you for watching and commenting! I am a big fan!
@@mvpmachine Thank you so much! :D We will do our best!
Какво става колега? Няма ли вече евтина енергия от съседите? Кой ви накара да се хванете на хорото на губещите? Е, това е политика, аз не разбирам от нея. Моята препоръка е да използваш една много стара технология- газификация на биомаса, но да я използваш за преработка на биомаса и домашни отпадъци! В интернет има достатъчно информация за такива инсталации! Бъди здрав и се грижи за семейството!
@@valerigeorgiev5615 I disagree, biomass gasification requires a ton of investment and work, collecting materials maintenance compared to sun, wind, , waste electricity and sand. All the things we are given free. I don't own a farm an don't want to spend hours searching for biomass and feeding the troublesome monster . I've seen them and am not impressed.
And how efficient is to store summer heat for the winter?
Small systems that store heat over the day are small and cheap, but energy collected in winter is expensive.
So, how much costs a big system, able to store heat all the summer and return it during the winter?
Let say that I use 1Mwhour during whole winter for heating. A 10 or 15 kw solar array plus some regular electric boiler to preserve the heat for the night may provide enough heat. Reducing the amount of panels to a half or a third and replacing them with a sand heat battery will be cheaper?
I assume that at bigger level efficiency will be better. For example at city level. But then such a system would be better built underground, the rock being the insulator. Almost a geothermal thing, replacing the depth as heat source, with summer heat storing. Speculating on this direction I feel that the sand solution may be a niche one, for intermediate sizes.
something worth looking into is using 24v elements directly wired to a 22.5v open circuit solar panel. super simple.
Very nice work. Looking forward to seeing the evolutions.
Thank You!!! More videos coming soon
Thanks for sharing 🙏 - I was thinking more in terms of a large thermally insulated sand pit in the garden area with electric heating elements and water tubing to feed my underfloor heating. At the moment I am discharging any excess energy from the PV into conventional electric heaters and I don't see much of a difference from using a small sand accumulator which would take a longer time to reach the desired temperature but would in turn continue to be effective for hours and hours when perhaps it's non required.
This is awesome! Thanks for sharing the info! Only a prototype but it looks super polished. I’m excited to see what you turn it into!
Edit: Oh I see you have more updates since this one. I'll have to watch those too now :)
Thank you!! More updates coming soon, stay tuned
1:22 OMG, your hand and arm are enormous !! ...Oh, the Sand Battery is much smaller than I was expecting. I thought it was about 4-feet long.
Yes this is a small scale prototype that can be scaled up once proven out, thank you for watching and commenting!
'Desert sun 02' has also made plenty of these with different ideas and parts. I'd recommend an aluminium pot filled with sand and perhaps a thermostat, but on a cold day who cares right?!
I like in your idea the tube being flat as you could use it to heat things on top like a stove. Was also going to say that heat rises, but given you have an aluminium conductor shouldn't be much of a problem reaching the sand. Maybe you could sandwich these to make array's. Nice build.
I tried the buckets it is hard to get meaningful heat unless your are in the desert 😏. It is a good way to test the theory but a bad way to get heat. In my opinion it must be contained so you can control the heat more effectively. By containing it you allow the entire volume of sand which in my case is pure silica which it mostly quarts a very effective heat transfer media, to entirely heat up and transfer that heat to the outside. I have 2 other follow up videos to this one where I have made some considerable modifications to help the heat come out but still get the sand benifits. Thank you for watching and commenting!
Remember aluminum has a low boiling point and best not used indoors!
build box between house wall so one side is out in cold -30C and half is inside so the thermal heating thing works
Detroit fan? Ugh yuk! Great video! Go Pack Go!
Bury these like septic tanks, to get past potential neighborhood association objections.
Easy money.
Every new house in Europe, US, NZ and colder developing countries.. should have sand battery under floor to reduce their enormous fossil fuel usage ??
I could not agree more! Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@kenyahawkins2472 IN the HOUSE, DUMBBELL!!!!
@@Tryp-j9d ring your own dumb bell.. if small house and big sand battery better to be as low as possible so heat rises
@@kenyahawkins2472 It’s WAAAAAAAAAAAY COLDER OUTSIDE, DUMBA$$!!!!
Haven't looked into where you are at with this so what I say might be a moot point. What I've noticed in transferring heat is that the least amount of times you can transition the better. So this would be going from electrical into the metal into the sand back into the metal and then finally into the air which is transitioning five times. My recommendation would be to find an electric element like others have said and instead of using any medium use it to heat the air. That would be the most efficient way. If you're looking to delay and diffuse I would allow the heated air from the element to run across a sand filled tube that would retain heat longer. In short, think of a normal electric baseboard heater with a design similar to yours suspended above it that is absorbing the heat until it reaches capacity
Hi there are 2 newer videos after this one and another coming soon. Thx for watching!!
That's a very nicely made project! Could you mount the thermistor to the inside wall of the tubing? That way half of it is transferring the heat directly to the air and the other half is transferring it to the sand. This might keep operating temps a little lower and improve the life expectancy. Great concept and implementation!
That could work out. I have kind of lost my faith in them because of failures. There are 2 more videos on this project and another forthcoming, I have taken a new approach and think it will work better. Thank you for watching and commenting! And stay tuned!
@@mvpmachine I'm pretty sure Robert Murray Smith mentioned the melting point of solder. They may be getting too hot for the solder joints and that's where the failures are possibly occuring. I liked your design, nice and clean build. I hope you've got it worked out now. I haven't looked for a newer video yet. Thanks for taking the time to share your hard work.
Nice job. You need a feed back circuit that modulates the current to the element based on the temperature of the grease.
Hi, thank you for watching and commenting! That is coming soon, going to be installing a pid controller. In a few weeks and will post an updated video.
@@hillwooky It’s called a THERMOSTAT, DUMBBELL!!
Xcellent , re: "400-degrees" & _Aging of the components_
If the heaters ARE capable of "baking" things. I suppose the Connections/Leads are (maybe?) the weakest part of the design? So I suppose for *_Longevity's Sake_* Those parts have to be pritty rugged? (but I supposed you've already thought of that)
This is a really Nifty build. It's seems actually *Very BulletProof already* This thing COULD Last for _years_ with no moving parts. if only the elements can Last Longer. Xcellent Concept
Thank you for watching and commenting! I am continuing to improve this design so stay tuned!
thanks so much for showing us your project
Thank you for watching!!
You may want to try a DC Immersion Heater, they should last longer.
@@rkeantube The HEATER does NOT store the BTUs, DUMBBELL!!!!
I think it would be interesting to try and somehow merge this with a solar thermal system with one of those evacuated tubes. They're quite a bit more efficient since you're keeping the heat as heat rather than having the losses of using electricity as a middleman.
It for sure would work just a lot more investment in the system would be required. I want to build a Gazebo and have those evacuated tubes on top for in floor heat for winter of course using sand for a thermal mass. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Im new to all of this and getting invested in the whole sand battery idea, how would a water heater element or a stove heating element work in something like that?
I have heard of people doing that if you look at Robert Murray Smiths Channel in the UK he tried that: www.youtube.com/@ThinkingandTinkering I wanted something low current so I could power it from solar, and you would need quite a lot of solar power to heat with a water heater element.
love the idea of a sand battery! But if I see your video, I can't help but thinking, where can I obtain my own aluminum mill, to make such georgeous products out of milled aluminum, for other projects and ideas?
Thank you for watching and commenting! There are many benchtop mills available that can be converted to CNC that would be perfectly capable of making these parts. I may invest in one here for the shop just to showcase some of our cutting tools we will soon be making for them. Stay tuned!
And it also has higher heat transfer rate... you might try a foundry supply company... zircon sand it also an option... I used to work in the foundry industry...
My friend is trying to get it from a local foundry he deals with. It sounds like it could be a good idea!
l'hiver dernier j'ai essayé un truc. positionner sur mon poele à bois une marmite en fonte de 20l remplie de sable. j'ai aussi introduit 3 modifications. j'ai ajouté sur mon poele 3 briques réfractaires. qui ont le même effet et intention que la marmite : augmenter l'inertie du poele
Et j'ai aussi changé ma manière de faire du feu: l'intention étant de générer un gros volume de braises. donc allumer le feu avec une buche pour avoir un 1er lit de braise ensuite bourrer le poele de bois attendre que la flambée prennent laisser 20mn de flammes puis régler le ralenti un peu au- dessus de la valeur habituelle( quand le poele n'était pas trop chargé) afin qu'un peu plus d'O2 passe puisque le volume du poele est beaucoup occupé et que la circulation de l'air est un peu ralentie.
résultat : avant j'obtenais une température en chauffe constante d'environ 20° (18° les jours de très grand froid) et une baisse nocturne de température. au petit matin la maison était à 16 ou 14 les jours très froids et il fallait attendre 1h pour que cela remonte suffisamment. j'utilisais entre 6 et 8 stères de bois. Avec la nouvelle méthode j'ai obtenu toujours 20° voir 22° et le passage de nuit à 18° et surtout j'ai utilisé 5 stères de bois et rechargé le poele 1/3 de fois en moins donc beaucoup d'économie de combustible et de travail.
Nice work! Thermal mass is a beautiful thing, we all should have been doing these things years ago. Thank you for watching and commenting!!
Have you considered using the heating element for a hot water heater?
Yes if you look at our 3rd video, I have switched to an immersion type heater.
If you live in the Forest you could just get some metal buckets with sand and put it in the bon fire with good insulation for 1 hour then bring it in your house and it'll last all night.
Have you though of maybe doubling the heating elements and Instituting a computerized cyclic power system. So that they are not in constant use ?
That may extend the heating elements life span & could probably be done with an arduino uno without too much effort.
Hi There are 2 videos after this one and the form and elements have changed a bit. Going to be adding a PID controller very soon and will a new. Ideo. Thank for watching and commenting!!
I wonder if it’s a better idea to use resistance wires for heating instead of these PTC heaters like other videos show on you tube.
Im not sure I went to a submersion type heater in video 3 for this heater, I like that a lot better than the PTC elements. Now I just have to install a controller. Thanks for watching!
HI, just a suggestion, what if you had much finer fins on your heat exchanger. It would transfer heat a lot better.
Or a solar oven. Or solar cook top. Tip of an ice berg. Simple diodes will work up to 105C. Lots of room for cost reductions,
Thank you for watching and commenting! Even though I have an somewhat extensive electronics background I am just learning about the diode chains my solar knowledge has been a bit limited so I am learning as I go. I welcome all comments and input 😊
I think the appeal of sand batteries is that you can heat them to extreme temperatures, I don't think your little thermistors can handle that amount of heat, so you could probably use regular dirt, for sand batteries hot air may be more applicable.
It has evolved a little since this video there are 2 newer ones and at least 1 more coming soon. Thank you for watching and commenting!
I'm a physicist and engineer, so I thought I'd ask if you have considered using a water vapor system where the vapor can be used to transfer the heat to the sand. That way you won't burn out the heating elements.
Hi, thank you for watching and commenting, there are 2 more videos after this one that show some evolution in my design, I am not opposed to any technolgy that will make it work better but as a rule I do want to keep it as simple as possible. I am not at all familiar with what you proposed but would like to hear more. I do not really like the sound of it though because the key to the silica sand, made up of mostly quarts is that it has to be completely dry to be effective, otherwise the heat is wasted boiling off the moisture. Many people I see experimenting with these just use plain old sand and it is not effective. Quarts is an excellent conductor of heat and I am using as a thermal conductor as much as I am using as a thermal mass. I think you mean adding another type of heat exchanger and that seems to complicated for this.
Are you selling any of these? I have a 800 sq foot basement storage area that gets cold in the winter. Would be great to add this to keep the water heater heatpump from going resistive.
Hi thank you for watching and for your question. As of now this is still in development and we are working on making it a viable, scaleable heater for different size applications. We will turn it into a product if the results are acceptable. We will have more videos coming soon showing our upgrades so stay tuned.
so how big of an area can you heat up with that? also whats the top temperature it reaches? in terms of the heat it radiates
Hi thank you for watching and commenting! This version had a maximum temperature of about 250f that made it 2 the outside but there are 2 newer videos and it has been modified heavily. There will be another video coming soon I am adding a digital controller so stay tuned.
Nice , thanks for posting !
Thank you for watching!
How about sand coated with a little mineral oil? Just a thought
Hi, thanks for watching and commenting! The problem with mineral oil is combustion occurs at 500F and it likely turns brown and gummy at even lower temperatures so not really safe.
Nice build!
Thank you Budman!!
Sorry if it was explained, but are you saying you can wire the solar cell directly to these types of heating elements? No inverter or anything needed?
Will it shown as is in this video that was possible. But I have now upped the wattage making that not really possible, there are 2 updates after this video. Thanks for watching and commenting!
i cant image this doing much more then 1hour or so . i would think you would need at least 500-1000lbs of sand media to make it worth while and most likely really need at least a 1 ton or more . very cool machining and worksmen ship though . hopefully you plan to scale it up to a decent sand volume . can you put higher voltage and lower the amperage to be less stress on the heating pads ?
Cody, thanks for watching and commenting! There are 2 more updates on this heater on my channel. I am not only using the sand for storage but also for a thermal transfer media. The third video kind of shows best what this has evolved to so far.
I get that everybody is chasing the "Next Big Thing" but I have a legitimate question!
How would a liquid mass (water / Glycol Water) compare for thermal storage?? As I see it, it would be much easier to move the "Heat" around to a different room with a water based system. I have even toyed with the idea of a "Cooling" system in the warm months using the same "MASS" for thermal storage.
I am also considering just using AC power to power the "MASS" after the batteries have been topped off, and the dump load would then just be the AC circuits being controlled based on Battery SOC. Since any system I build and actually scale up beyond an experimental size, would include batteries, and inverters already!
Water boils at low temp and Sand doesn’t, and sand retails heat way longer
@@ZacharyHolton But back to my point, how do you get the heat OUT of the sand?? vs
Water / liquid is EASY to move around to the various places you need to utilize the stored heat. The whole "boiling" issue you mentioned is easily handled either chemically or via pressurization. Not to mention a liquid "Mass" can easily be cooled to store energy in the summertime, not sure sand would work well for that.
A DC water heater element works good too
Sir,
It appears to me as though Your modules are not being held tight enough in the heatsink, therefore causing the modules to fail. I come to this conclusion based upon the tracks in the heatsink compound. Those look like air pockets to me.
Great idea and great video. Keep up the good work.
Thank You,
JR
Cooper shims instead of heat sink grease?
Mark, not a bad Idea but I had to move past the ptc heating elements due to fundamental flaws, they are not really compatible with a sand based heater. I have 2 newer videos about this heater and 1 more coming soon, I have changed my approach a bit to make it better. Thank you for watching and commenting!
OFF-GRID SURVIVAL MIKE has an alternative ideas using 110 volt AC oven circular elements with maths theories and different iterations
Where did you get the small heat exchanger?
Hi George I made it here I have a CNC mill.
More interesting is how to store summer heat for winter months. At a residential scale. Because winter sun is not enough even to heat water for shower (
Thermal solar panels can generate more than enough heat for hot water.
In winter time
@@overthinker1844 They can. Theoretically. However at my location winter means 4 months of a light rain. No wind (05-2.5m/sec), no sun (50Wt out of 550Wt)
Nice, if you have room, I would use water Solar heated. WAY more efficient.
So what if you were to throw a bank of thermopiles in that sand battery? Now not only heat but you can remove electricity from that little sand battery
Do you hook straight to solar panel?
What's the advantage of using sand vs oil?
Any oil would burn at the temps it is now capable of and gaskets would add expense and complication to the design, also sand stays warm longer and does not leak without a gasket. Thank you for watching and commenting!
You could use chromite sand which has a much higher thermal mass
Funny that you brought this up. Had this conversation with a friend earlier in the week and are currently attempting to acquire some. Thank you for watching and commenting!!
what about using a heating element from a hot water tank?
Great setup, great idea!
Thank you!!!
You could use one ptc plate 20cm long 220 watts
Hi thanks for watching and commenting! There are 2 more updates after this video, the 3rd one has a 750 watt submersion type heat element that has seamed to perform the best. The problem with the ptc elements is the cannot stand up to being used in a high heat environment without having the heat removed quickly, and I kept burning them out after a few days. I will have a controller to cycle the 750watt element on and off once it hits a preset temp so it will not run very often but be more efficient. New videos coming soon this fall.
@@mvpmachine How do they burn out? does something fall off or do they just stop heating?
@@dawidkujawski3340 I have taken them apart after failure to see but could not find the issue . Yes, they just stopped working. Also the resistance changes if you check it with a meter. Not an open circuit just higher and won't allow it to start heating
@@mvpmachine I suspect that this happens with heaters that have over 200 degrees Celsius - I wonder if the same happens to models that only reach 70-80 C.
@@dawidkujawski3340 from what I understand rapid heat removal is the key to the longevity of ptc elements so it was likely a bad choice for me to use on a sand battery heater but they are hard to find good info on, it seems you get clues here and there but no one really spells out all of the details about thier specs and usage. Most of what I see is they are used with a small fan and a large thin heat sink and that likely works fine as the heat is constantly dispersed. I would assume the fan speed is calculated to match the ptc element somewhat but the big factor is your starting temperature. I concluded they are way to low in wattage to do anything meaningful in cold temps.
As a question you have alot of thermal transfer on that, which makes me wonder if that is that the issue? ir the fit isn't tight enough, if it was a tighter fit you'd have better transfer? Just a thought..
This is my thought a lot of thermal paste isn't related for temperatures that high so once the thermal paste bakes. There isn't enough thermal transfer to the aluminum before the device bakes
Its hard to say but the fit on the actual thermistor to the flat aluminium tube it is supplied with is quite loose. I thought about removing that flat tube and making the pocket of the heat exchangers fit the thermistor ( or PTC element) more tightly, but to me the issue seems to be trapping too much heat in the enclosure. The sand gets too hot and cannot remove the heat fast enough so the PTC elements overheat. I may remake the heat exchangers to work from the exterior bottom of the unit to see what happens.
really cool
Thank you!!!
Regular sand is fine. Silica sand is dangerous because it is so fine it gets in your lungs.
It is sealed in this unit so no airborne particles. Regular sand does not conduct heat well and any dampness will turn to clumps and steam in the unit and that's bad. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Bravo..........graphite ...or soap stone ...it can go 1000 degree......run water tubes through......love the stuff......multi heat sources.....cheers
Yeah got to connect those units straight to the aluminium and delete the heatsink
Thank you 🙏
Nice stuff.
Thank you!!
Seems like this could provide stable heat for a chicken coop.
I would think so depending on the temp outside. Thanks for watching!
@mvpmachine I've noticed that none of these videos seem to have any actual data relating to surface temps and if it can actually heat a room. I'm wondering if you used a 55 gallon drum, ran a copper coil through it, and used it as a pool heater, if you built it inside an insulated shed, could you use the shed as a sauna as well. Nice little DIY spa.
Nice job
Thanks for watching and commenting Ross!
I there is wind power available, pass a law making the electricity supper cheap between 1:00 and 4:00 am to heat up all the residential sand batteries.
I concur! Thanks for watching and commenting!
No wonder the dog looks bored and disinterested, he's a Detroit Lions fan. Lol
Oh come on now we finally have a really good team after suffering for decades
@@mvpmachine
I'm in DFW, a Cowboys fan. After suffering for decades we still don't have a good team. We have Jerry and a lot of superstars. I do not expect us to go to the superbowl until Jerry is gone.
I tried this on a small scale for a cat house. Entirely ineffective at least in my location. Something like trying to heat up the ocean by peeing in it.
😆My design is evolving and becoming more useful, There are 2 newer videos after this one and another coming soon. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Looks nice. Why not use bitcoin mining servers? Then you will be using the heat and also getting BTC?
Wouldn't the server use a ton of power though, kind of the opposite of what I was going for. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@mvpmachine Yes, but since you are running this on solar, do you really care how much energy you are using? In fact, I'm looking to accomplish a few things:
1) Setup an energy storage of heat for the winter months.
2) Use solar to feed that storage system.
3) Get paid for doing it but not from pumping it to the electrical grid where I have to sign a contract with my local government. Instead, I want to get paid by a distributed network for mining crypto.
So, I was thinking of how to store the energy from the BTC servers while I store the money at the same time, and just pay back the server investment over time by saving on my energy bill and also diversifying my capital investments.
@@jd01665 It sounds like it could work but setup cost is going to be huge and it is not a sure thing as crypto has proven to be a bit risky. I would thing proving the crypto model you are thinking of would be the first step then after that works using the heat could be invested in with the profits. Waste heat is the best use for a sand battery.
Any new updates ?
Hi the video you commented on was the first of 3, there are 2 more after this one, and one final update coming soon.. Thanks for watching!
When Ukraine rebuilds, it’s a great opportunity to revamp energy infrastructure with smaller scale energy production. They could be a model for the world
Lol they have no money for that. They gonna burn oil and coal putting even china to shame. Mark my words.
I dont think sand batteries are very useful in home use. The only advantage of a sand battery is the very high maximum temperature (if you need high temperatures in an industrial application). For home use hot water tanks or phase change materials (paraffin) are better by weight and by volume and will have lower losses because of the lower temperature difference.
I intend to find out. Going to finish this and give it a try. 1 or 2 More videos are upcoming. You commented on the first of 3 videos. Adding a PID controller coming up next. This is not intended to be a typical sand battery where mass and super high temps are needed. It is as currently configured a room baseboard style heater that uses silica sand as a thermal transfer media and a buffer, using as little power as possible. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Excellent
Thank you!
2 cubic meters of sand at 500F (260C) will hold enough heat to provide my large Montana home on the coldest day (24 hrs). But if I had enough solar (12kW current) to resistance heat that much , I'd rater use 1/3rd the panels/system and run a $3500 heat pump. Sand battery is only good if you are scavanging waste heat from an engine or wood stove exhaust. Economically, it doesn't make sense to build such a system unless the waste is there already.
Storing, heating and transferring water is a lot easier. Lower temps (safer) and off the shelf (cheep) parts. Heat pump heat tge water all daycwhen tge sun shines to heat house all night. About 400 gallons at 175F start temp (at 7PM) is enough for a Montana night.
I think that the idea isn't terrible but I also think you are adding all sortf of additional losses. Sand batteries are great for storing heat that was caputered by a device designed to capture heat. For example, if you had cooling circuit on the back of your solar panels (some copper tubing on the back running to a small tank with a pump) and route that cooling system through the sand then you'd be storing heat while allowing your solar panels to run more efficiently (colder = better) and thus, for example, charge a battery bank.
In your setup, you ignore all the heat the solar panels are receiving anyways, use the already poorly converted electricity the solar panels provide to power heating elements that in turn have to heat the sand.
It's not impossible but it feels that by moving funds from electric heating elements to something that actually captures the heat and pumps that around (creating basically a heatpump in the same way the radiator on a car works, instead of dumping the heat into the passing air you dump it into the sand) you'd get much better efficiency and more/better energy storage.
Adding an extreme amount of plumbing to a solar array is heavy, complicated, expensive, and prone to failure. The point of the sand battery is that it's cheap and simple.
@@Snerdles I understand when you are coming from but nobody said anything about having to use an insane amount of plumbing (my solar panel cooling was just an example). I understand wanting something to be cheap but if it fails to do the job proper it's not just cheap, it's useless, especially when talking about something like heating to survive a winter.
A simple solar heater (just a box that is painted with matt black on the inside) will do a better job in cloudy weather to charge a sand heater then using a solar panel for it's electricity. To each their own but when I invest time and money I'd want the best possible performance at the lowest possible price, not just the lowest possible price.
@@pyramidsinegyptsolar panels warm up to 50-60 °C depending on where you are. Where and when you need heating, you would be lucky to see 30 °C at the panels on a sunny day. I have had temperature logged on my panels in Finland for a year or so.
Water has basically an limit at 100 °C. Sand batteries are shit at those levels compared to just storing the energy in water.
Sand battery has its strenght at higher temps, like >400 °C, where you could "easily" get by resistive heating aka electricity directly.
Small stuff (like an oil drum of sand and "only" 200 °C) would work if the days are really sunny, but the nights are colder. Might even be sufficient for a few rainy days, depending on the heated volume and insulation. For seasonal storage in a cold climate you would need something like 20 foot containers full of sand with couple foot of insulation around them to hold ~500 °C in for several months. Can't have water directly for heat exchange, so it needs another stage, probably with air as an medium between the battery and central heating etc. It would become pretty complicated quite fast.
Would be great to have a big one of these near your wood furnace to help stabilize the heat from wood.
I agree so many options and it is just common sense low technology. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Water holds significantly more heat than sand
Thanks for watching and commenting! The problem with water is the boiling point would make a bomb with this heater sand can work up to much higher temps.
@@mvpmachine Pressure relief valve. Pressurized water boils higher, and even higher with additives. Sand has a way lower limit as far as amount of heat it can store per pound. Water is dramatically higher, although sand never freezees, and doesn't need to be pressure regulated. Each has a place, just letting you know.
Seems like heating a room with a lightbulb
In the form it is in in this videos it is about like that but there are 2 newer videos and it has evolved a bit. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Britain had these 65 years ago, but they were way more sefisticated than these ugly monsters, they were extremely well insulated with a fan that circulated the hot air out when required via a wall thermostat, they heated at night when electricity was half price.
nice idea but it looked to me like you've got too much heatsink paste on there, should be a very thin layer for the best heat transfer.
more thermal mass man
I understand but this is a scalable prototype have to get the inner workings right first. Also using the silica sand as a thermal transfer media and buffer, so not entirely about thermal mass with this. Thank you for watching and commenting!
Cool Idea - BUT: When compared with water, sand really isn't a good storage. When you compensate for the Volumetric benefit of sand (higher density than water), you need to heat the sand ~3x as hot as the water to get the same amount of stored energy. But with 200°C you are at a good starting point - from there it's getting better the hotter :)
Anyone else wake up every night screaming in terror? Just wondering
No. Europe decided no to purchase Russian hydrocarbons. Russia didn't cut them off.
😅heat rises,Try heating from the bottom.
FYI: European countries cut themselves off, Russia didn't do it.
Da, Ivan.
Er,em, er,em er,em
Insane waste of money. Where are the numbers?