I know this is an old video but in case anyone new pops through the comments a great way to heat this during the winter months would be a compost heating pile. Lots of options and designs for these online. If the pile is big enough I have no doubt that it would heat your digester similar to how you described wanting to heat it with the solar array. Best of luck everyone
TRM, you could use the waste heat from your generator and propane heater. A coil of tubing around the exhaust would provide waste heat to your digester.
Hi Jeff, Keeping the solar tubes inside the green house may not be the best idea (unless you strictly want to run just water). The best bet is to keep them outside and run with glycol. I found this video ruclips.net/video/CH8Z9nBrCBg/видео.html of solar tubes running in 25F air temps producing 138F in the manifold. In the video the man provides more data as he checks in on it throughout the day. Maybe you could do a split system one array running water to heat the fish water, and the other heating the digester. Cheers, Bill
Solar heating is a great idea. Adding thermostatic controls and a way to shut off the pump when the liquid is too cool or the sun going down/cloud covered would make it even more efficient.
Very interesting idea for a solar thermal application, I've installed/serviced a lot of solar thermal systems. If you have any questions I'd be willing to chat. I wouldn't recommend using pex tubing as your piping between the outdoor collectors and inside... It can't handle the high temperatures that collectors can produce during peak summer season or during system stagnation. Proper collector sizing/tank volume, and flow rates through the system should be considered, a simple delta-t solar controller with thermistors is the way to go. Obviously face the collectors due south in direct sunlight, and I'd recommend using cryo-tek 100 propylene glycol for freeze protection. Veissmann makes some really durable flat plate collectors that are super easy to install as well. I'm interested in seeing what you come up with!
I would suggest use MGV not DGV solar tubes. And definately 100mm instead of the 70mm option. The winter performance is awesome as I have them on my new house
Love your work... Your tank is acting as a heat sink. The ground is on average 55 degrees so you are chilling your anaerobic bacteria. Insulate around your tank. You also have a displacement problem where you have to move all the fluid in your tank to inject new material. Plus the pressure in the tank is pushing against your supply manure tube. So your tank is working like a well water house plumbing pressure tank. Change your tank design to use natural physics, where gravity works for you. If you have a greater head pressure in your feed pipe buoyancy would not matter. It would always find its natural level in contrast to the outflow level. and increase the gas pressure. You also dont need a thick slurry i would look at simple ways of removing straw from your live stock system. Straw has so little energy benefit for your digester
You can easily make a cheap system would that would work all year as long as there is sun. - Use black "Flexible Plastic Conduit", some playwood and heavy duty clear plastic. (Should be nax. $150 for 100m x 20mm) - Use two stadard sized playwood sheets lengthwise. - Cut lenghts of conduct thatt reach from top to bottom (about 20 lengts) - Use a thicker PVC pipe to feed water from the top and collect varmer water at the bottom The flex suface increase the amount of heat absorbed, and should it freeze they will work fine when the sun warms them up again. No leaking when I tested this setup. Make a box around the playwood and use two seperated layers (1/2 an inch) of clea heavy duty plastic to cover the box. Paint the playwood black and add a layer of insulation to the back. Tested on a sunny day in January this setup heated 25 gallon of water from 2 degree celsius up to 25 degree amd Norway has a less sun in the winter then Washinton state has. The setup was placed utside and the air temperature was 0 degree celsius. In the summer it will heat a lot more water up 30 degree over the air temperatur. A 100l on that was just recirculated got up to 50 degree over the air tempearture in a day. And with a single layer of rockwoll around the tank it lost about 20 degree over night.
Hi , why you didn't isolated your digester when you were building it.? I know you mentioned to heat your building, but it doesn't make sense to me , because you want a lot of heat inside your digester.
You could always use a thermostat and when the digester is up to temperature use the exces heat to heat the greenhouse (reduces gas use). Make sure that in the summer the system is either drained when you don't use it, or find a different use for that heat. Just make sure the system doesn't boil and becomes pressurised. (You could even preheat the ground for an eventual geothermal system, but then you lose the summer cooling capacity for that system)
What about some sort of magnifying lenses focused on your solar tubes to increase the heat value to them. Myth Busters polished some, I believe copper discs to try to set fire to a ship.
The solar tubes are capable of reaching 146C Well above the capability of water and glycol to deal with. You want something with a manual 3 way mixing valve to keep temps blow 90C (120C if your going glycol) that incorporates a radiant diffuser. The is the major failure points with evaporative designs is that they cook in the summer time and burst their manifolds. I only know of one manufacturer and its up in Calgary Alberta that has this sort of system available.
I'm not sure it's a good idea having the solar heater array inside Hab1, the condensation on the poly might diffuse the infrared from the sun...water vapour affects the IR massively. might be better off outside even though it would be exposed to lower air temps.
use a mathematical formula to track the sun dont use a light level sensor. The suns position in the sky is predicable every day of every month, check out www.suncalc.net
You've probably got enough Parts on your electronic bench to build a Tracker for that panel you're talking about getting but you need to make it vertical and horizontal when you get in there run us a video on Scribble on your chalkboard show us what you're thinking
This is of topic from todays video,, but I was wondering if you could build a chopper that you could hook to the pto on the tractor or possibly an external motor to process all the compost... kind of like a coffee grinder on steroids...
That is a most interesting concept and I understand the basic concept as you describe it but how do you control it from going into overdrive it in the summer months when you may not need much, if any, heat in the digester and no likely need for heat in the house? Some sort of alterable/adjustable shading / screening?
efficient low amps to drive hydraulic / servo pumps vs wound motors? a thought for direction to follow .wont the manure create heat itself after its warm enough to start microb action?
if you vacuum tube you dont need to move all the panels just move the tube, but normally what i do is put some on the left side tuned to the east and on the right facing west like (/) (/)(-)(-)(-)(-)(\)(\). also dont use the solar hot water directy, bufer it using some kind of water tank and then just mix the hot water at the right temperature for the methanogesis 38ºC, when calcule the the amount of hot water you will need in a day and multiply by 1,5 to get the water tank size and you will be fine ...
I know this is an old video but in case anyone new pops through the comments a great way to heat this during the winter months would be a compost heating pile. Lots of options and designs for these online. If the pile is big enough I have no doubt that it would heat your digester similar to how you described wanting to heat it with the solar array. Best of luck everyone
TRM, you could use the waste heat from your generator and propane heater. A coil of tubing around the exhaust would provide waste heat to your digester.
Burn wood... digester can't eat wood but fire can... old setback fire
Thank you for educating. What's the name of the machine.
Hi Jeff,
Keeping the solar tubes inside the green house may not be the best idea (unless you strictly want to run just water). The best bet is to keep them outside and run with glycol. I found this video ruclips.net/video/CH8Z9nBrCBg/видео.html of solar tubes running in 25F air temps producing 138F in the manifold. In the video the man provides more data as he checks in on it throughout the day. Maybe you could do a split system one array running water to heat the fish water, and the other heating the digester. Cheers,
Bill
Solar heating is a great idea. Adding thermostatic controls and a way to shut off the pump when the liquid is too cool or the sun going down/cloud covered would make it even more efficient.
0:36 fight or flight response
Very interesting idea for a solar thermal application, I've installed/serviced a lot of solar thermal systems. If you have any questions I'd be willing to chat. I wouldn't recommend using pex tubing as your piping between the outdoor collectors and inside... It can't handle the high temperatures that collectors can produce during peak summer season or during system stagnation. Proper collector sizing/tank volume, and flow rates through the system should be considered, a simple delta-t solar controller with thermistors is the way to go. Obviously face the collectors due south in direct sunlight, and I'd recommend using cryo-tek 100 propylene glycol for freeze protection. Veissmann makes some really durable flat plate collectors that are super easy to install as well. I'm interested in seeing what you come up with!
2 6'dia cylinders does not equal a 12'dia. A=pi*r^2. While, yes, surface area controls your thermal transfer, it's the volume that generates the heat.
Could someone clarify for me. Are we heating the digester or is he heating the building? I was under the impression that they generated a ton of heat?
I would suggest use MGV not DGV solar tubes. And definately 100mm instead of the 70mm option. The winter performance is awesome as I have them on my new house
Love your work...
Your tank is acting as a heat sink. The ground is on average 55 degrees so you are chilling your anaerobic bacteria. Insulate around your tank. You also have a displacement problem where you have to move all the fluid in your tank to inject new material. Plus the pressure in the tank is pushing against your supply manure tube. So your tank is working like a well water house plumbing pressure tank. Change your tank design to use natural physics, where gravity works for you. If you have a greater head pressure in your feed pipe buoyancy would not matter. It would always find its natural level in contrast to the outflow level. and increase the gas pressure. You also dont need a thick slurry i would look at simple ways of removing straw from your live stock system. Straw has so little energy benefit for your digester
You can easily make a cheap system would that would work all year as long as there is sun.
- Use black "Flexible Plastic Conduit", some playwood and heavy duty clear plastic.
(Should be nax. $150 for 100m x 20mm)
- Use two stadard sized playwood sheets lengthwise.
- Cut lenghts of conduct thatt reach from top to bottom (about 20 lengts)
- Use a thicker PVC pipe to feed water from the top and collect varmer water at the bottom
The flex suface increase the amount of heat absorbed, and should it freeze they will work fine when the sun warms them up again. No leaking when I tested this setup.
Make a box around the playwood and use two seperated layers (1/2 an inch) of clea heavy duty plastic to cover the box. Paint the playwood black and add a layer of insulation to the back.
Tested on a sunny day in January this setup heated 25 gallon of water from 2 degree celsius up to 25 degree amd Norway has a less sun in the winter then Washinton state has. The setup was placed utside and the air temperature was 0 degree celsius.
In the summer it will heat a lot more water up 30 degree over the air temperatur. A 100l on that was just recirculated got up to 50 degree over the air tempearture in a day. And with a single layer of rockwoll around the tank it lost about 20 degree over night.
what are your thoughts on using geothermal pipes or even a heat pump?
Hi , why you didn't isolated your digester when you were building it.?
I know you mentioned to heat your building, but it doesn't make sense to me , because you want a lot of heat inside your digester.
the objective was to keep the digester inside of the hab so it could stay warmer in the winter
Surly once you get the digester up to temp it should self heat shouldn't it.
You could always use a thermostat and when the digester is up to temperature use the exces heat to heat the greenhouse (reduces gas use). Make sure that in the summer the system is either drained when you don't use it, or find a different use for that heat. Just make sure the system doesn't boil and becomes pressurised. (You could even preheat the ground for an eventual geothermal system, but then you lose the summer cooling capacity for that system)
What about some sort of magnifying lenses focused on your solar tubes to increase the heat value to them. Myth Busters polished some, I believe copper discs to try to set fire to a ship.
Could you also use the solar tubes to help keep the solar array clear too?
Project for 2018 Project in May
The solar tubes are capable of reaching 146C Well above the capability of water and glycol to deal with. You want something with a manual 3 way mixing valve to keep temps blow 90C (120C if your going glycol) that incorporates a radiant diffuser. The is the major failure points with evaporative designs is that they cook in the summer time and burst their manifolds. I only know of one manufacturer and its up in Calgary Alberta that has this sort of system available.
I'm not sure it's a good idea having the solar heater array inside Hab1, the condensation on the poly might diffuse the infrared from the sun...water vapour affects the IR massively. might be better off outside even though it would be exposed to lower air temps.
use a mathematical formula to track the sun dont use a light level sensor. The suns position in the sky is predicable every day of every month, check out www.suncalc.net
You've probably got enough Parts on your electronic bench to build a Tracker for that panel you're talking about getting but you need to make it vertical and horizontal when you get in there run us a video on Scribble on your chalkboard show us what you're thinking
This is of topic from todays video,, but I was wondering if you could build a chopper that you could hook to the pto on the tractor or possibly an external motor to process all the compost... kind of like a coffee grinder on steroids...
That is a most interesting concept and I understand the basic concept as you describe it but how do you control it from going into overdrive it in the summer months when you may not need much, if any, heat in the digester and no likely need for heat in the house? Some sort of alterable/adjustable shading / screening?
efficient low amps to drive hydraulic / servo pumps vs wound motors? a thought for direction to follow .wont the manure create heat itself after its warm enough to start microb action?
Evacuated tube solar thermal works well outside during winter - just use ethylene glycol for the thermal transfer.
Would a tapered screw like a extruder not force the bio mass into the digester?
use epoxy on connevtions to keep water out
evacuated tubes are round and they dont need to be pointed directly at the sun. ie no active controlled movement needed.
aliexpress has some good deals on evacuated tubes.
Boy that’s a great idea. I thank the subscriber.
if you vacuum tube you dont need to move all the panels just move the tube, but normally what i do is put some on the left side tuned to the east and on the right facing west like (/) (/)(-)(-)(-)(-)(\)(\). also dont use the solar hot water directy, bufer it using some kind of water tank and then just mix the hot water at the right temperature for the methanogesis 38ºC, when calcule the the amount of hot water you will need in a day and multiply by 1,5 to get the water tank size and you will be fine ...
Sounds like a good idea Jeff... :)
Love the idea.
Might work here on earth, just might