DIY Sand Battery! A "Sand Battery" Powered Fan and Air Heater! - DIY Air Heating! Hot sand pwrd fan!
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- Опубликовано: 8 фев 2025
- DIY Sand Battery! A "Hot Sand Powered" Fan/Heater! the fan has a TEG and produces its own electricity from the heat of the sand! all you do is place the fan on the "sand battery" and the heat runs the fan. the heat radiating from the sand is then blown into the living space. no electricity needed! sand-battery technology has been "in the news" lately. it will be interesting to see where it goes in the future. note that the last minute of the video shows lots of details including close ups of the fan motor and TEG chip, the manual is also shown in detail as well as the options for heating the sand (stove, oven, rocket stove, campfire, fresnel lens, (solar panel or wind turbine with a resistive heating element). if you like the video please rate, comment, subscribe and share it around 👍🙂
✔ Note: I'll be posting more on heating the sand with solar panels/wind turbines in future videos.
✔ A "TEG" is a Thermoelectric Generator. it's a small, flat, solid-state device that converts heat to electricity. a "close up" of it is shown in the last minute of the video. ~ desertsun02
Thank you so much for posting this, sand batteries are the way forward to heating up homes and keeping warm this coming winter. a straightforward and economical way of gaining heat when you need it. Everyone should try it. Very clever idea, it is a wonder this method has not been applied more commercially.
This heat method would be great for van living and tiny home living as long as ya had a heat source. Genius ideas👍
yes, indeed and thank you ✔🙂
Exactly what I’m looking at it for.
Great as always! These sand batteries are getting a lot of attention now. One thing you showed that I didn't think about was heating the sand with a fresnel lens. Thanks for the video!
hi and thanks! yes, that fresnel lens idea might really be something. it might be able to heat up a large pile of sand very quickly. the sand holds the heat a long time so you could tap into that heat for days.
@@desertsun02 and you can add salt and silica gel to sand
SO COOL! Glad you're experimenting with Sand Batteries. It's a promising technology for sure!
hi tom, yes i agree! if you didn't see my last video - it's using this fan with cast iron and a heat source for heating i think you'd like it too.
@@desertsun02 Thanks! Watching it now. Your videos are great! Keep going!
@@desertsun02 I am surprised this isn't incorporated into modern furnaces. Instead of just heating the air it could be heating the thermal mass of a sand battery. I would think this would provide a more efficient output. A radiator heater for example could be filled with sand and a copper wire not unlike a heated blanket. Heat up the sand mass for a short burst.
Well hello there. I was just researching solar air heaters, inspired by your vids, and look who shows up on my feed.
Very cool! 👍
A suggestion, if you don't mind.
To get a lot more heat where you want it, take a 5 gallon bucket (plastic Home Depot/Tractor Supply type utility bucket) and cut a good sized slot at the top of the bucket large enough to fit the pot through or drill a row of about 6-8 larger holes with a step drill bit just below the rim of the bucket. Go down an inch or so and do another row of holes. Place the bucket over the pot and fan as long as there's enough clearance. Voilá! You'll get a lot more heat down in the room where you want it. As long as the pot doesn't touch the bucket, the bucket won't get hot enough to make a problem. Don't trust it? Line the inside of the bucket with a layer of aluminum foil shiny side up. Works fantastic!
I can't believe you did a sand battery, that's really simple and cool. Thanks
Im drinking brandy and my mind is blown. The mad scientist strikes again.
I built a similar device for my outdoor patio using denatured alcohol as a heat source . Rather than go into details, these can store heat, the real question is how much and for how long. In a tiny enclosed area, it can help for a few hours before requiring a recharge. Sand batteries on a much bigger scale would be needed for a small house. They are great ideas for storage and realease of heat. Even generating electric, using multiple peltier devices .
Hey, I've looked at this before... gives a pretty cool option for someone to heat sand over a fire (or any other combustible) outside and bring that heat inside without fumes of any kind.
Peltier diode. They can be found in the fridge that can either remove heat or make heat. A lot of truckers toss their fridge after 3 months, the fan is designed to fail . Simple repair but the peltier diode can be used to generate electricity.
imagine insulating the bucket containing sand with glass wool or gasbeton, it would last way longer. nice idea and thanks for sharing!
hi and thank you!
Great video, I wondered what type of sand you are using? I heard it needs to be high in quartzite to be really effective.
Thanks for sharing this information.
This is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time! Next time I go to Pensacola Beach I'll have half a dozen of these little fans with me lol! Seriously though very good video Brother. Thank you for sharing. Thumbs up ~John
It seems there are safety trade offs with any kind of "DIY Heating". I'm curious as to what the optimal mix of safety and efficiency will be with this. I guess you could super heat the sand with a blow torch for 15 minutes vs adding a heat source below (as in your other recent video). Both approaches may have safety concerns, but I suspect one is more efficient than the other. I guess a good goal woudl be to get 6 to 8 hours of heat, to last all night. Hopefully more experiments will validate all this! Nice work!
hi. another idea: if you wanted to heat the sand for free (and quickly) (in an on or off-grid situation) you could use a fresnel lens. might be able to get a big pile of it hot super quick (and it would store the heat a long time).
@@desertsun02ow fast would the sand get sitting in the hot dessert sun? I would think pretty fast in a metal container especially with a solar oven type set up around it. No
Omg! That is so amazing!!!
0:42 How long did it take to heat the sand and with what did you warm it up? Can imagine that it cost a lot of fuel before it started to radiate heat. So...what's the input-output ratio? Thanks for the inspiration.
The source of the heat is important. If you are using a stove top then you are likely paying more than it is worth. If you are using a wood stove, Fresnel lens, parabolic solar dish or a fire pit for the heat then it probably isn't as expensive. I picked up a double barrel wood stove to burn refuse. This would give me free heat and a way of getting rid of paper waste.
I don't know for sure, but it looks like you have now invaded the family kitchen. I hope your wife has a good sense of humor...
This is perfection.
thanks
This has to be my favorite/most plausible long-term grid-down scenario heating system! Using butane is great for short-term but nothing beats burning some firewood under a pot of sand and then transporting it inside to warm the family! Is this heating fan model your personal recommendation for in-house heating?
a pot of sand over the fire to heat it sounds good. i was just sitting here thinking of putting a 50-pound bag or two of sand in a metal wheelbarrow (or similar) and heating the sand with a fresnel lens. (then bringing it inside where it can release the heat). it's just a thought. i haven't thought it through. i don't really recommend any fan in particular. i do like the ones that start at 122F (50C) though. some have a higher starting temperature.
Very interesting , thanks for sharing , God bless !
you're very welcome 🙂
If you added a layer of tea lites below the pan, would that last all night? Maybe 6 or 8 of them sitting in a deep dish pizza pan?
hi. it sounds like a good idea
Seeing this makes me wonder if sand could be used to store thermal energy on a much larger scale-I.E. with use in thermal updraft towers. A large vat of sand, perhaps one acre in circumference and many feet deep, or many smaller deep vats covering the same area, heated by solar panels, encased with a tower 100-200 feet high, topped off with a horizontal air turbine generating electricity both during the day and with stored thermal released at night.
To the sand heating options list add a "Sun Oven". Which typically get up into the low 300F on sunny days. Even as a means to "preheat" the sand, it will lessen the amount of energy required to bring the sand up to the desired temperature. Another means of heating the sand is to put the metal container on a bed of hot charcoal.
Once heated, there's heat loss through the sides of the pot, whatever the material as shown and at the surface of the sand not covered by the fan's plate. Placing the sand filled container in an insulated container, (like a cooler stuffed with towels) will lessen heat loss. Covering the top of the sand with a thick towel or better yet rock wool insulation with a cut out section so that the fan plate still makes direct contact with the sand will further lessen heat loss and extend the time that the sand battery continues to operate optimally.
I like your sand battery. My elderly great-aunt said that in the 30s she lived on a farm and they had no electricity and ran a fan on a flame called the "Lake Breeze fan". I looked it up and it's a stirling engine fan. She said that she found it strange that a flame would keep them cool in the summer. A stirling engine fan does the same thing as your stove fan, uses heat for air movement. Do you think your sand battery could be modified so that the fan would keep the air cool instead of heated?
The stove fan is a Sterling motor fan. During the summer you don't need a sand battery if you could put the fan on a hot metal table, etc. It only takes about 105°F to get one going. I use one quite often.
@desertsun02, That's a great looking fan that you've got there! Where did you find that one??
hi there. i got it on amazon. i just went back to look for it and it looks like it's being promoted by amazon. they might have sold a few extra.
So I have a good supply of fire brick. I'm thinking I might stack a dozen on my little wood stove to help hold heat.
That would do the same thing wouldn't it?
Yep. Just be careful you don't melt your stove. I'm not joking. Steel melts way before fire brick does.
Hi, would there be something like that but in reverse. I mean that the fan will turn on when it needs to cool. so instead of placing it on warm sand, place it on cold sand, or between ice cubes.👍
With a Sterling motor like in this fan it works off of a significant temperature differential. In simple terms, no, you can't do it like that except for maybe with something well below freezing, like -125°F or more.
Try black sand or lava pea gravel.
Have you calculated your BTU input vs BTU output ? Seems to me like the loss ratio would be very high.
These are already being used on a large scale to store heat energy for months at a time (Google them) so I doubt they are that inefficient or they would be using something else. Also, in this case and like the one I am going to be using in my van, if you heat it using a free source, like a campfire, solar, etc. then it does not matter. I am sure there are going to be losses as there are always losses when storing energy. The trick is to minimize them as much as possible and, use free heat sources that are available. To me, this is a safe way to heat my van with wood. Heat outside, bring stored heat inside and have no issues with moisture like propane gives you and no fumes or CO or oxygen depletion so I do not need to have a window cracked which let's in cold air, etc. I just have to see if this is worth hauling around all that heavy sand. I won't know until I give it a try. www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a41869336/sand-battery/
@@OverlandOne this is exactly what I am going to try to do. How did it work out for you? going to be in a minivan. How many quarts did you use? Did you use the fan or just keep a lid on and let it give off heat?
@@danib6541 Sadly, I have not had the time to experiment with it yet. I have been on the road for 5 months now and, it is very cold where I am camped. It was 16 degrees F last night with a 20 mph wind. I bought a chinese diesel heater last week and am I glad I did. I have the unit outside under a rain shield and I am bringing the heat in through a 3" hose I drilled an access panel for. I ran it 16 hours straight last night and it used less than a gallon of diesel. I can usually get 2 nights from a tank. I have not given up on the sand battery, just put off my experiments until spring. Let me know if you try it and how it works.
@@wyochild7908 Don't they both suffer from mental illness ? Not sure how that affects BTU output.
Kinda what i had in mind
I wonder if someone will use a TEG to power a water pump to give the TEG the ability to cool itself. I bet it could work seeing this TEG is just using air instead of water to cool itself.
The ambient temperature surrounding the top heat sink is usually enough to keep the cold side cool enough to work with the applications it was designed for. Using cool water couldn't hurt, though, if done right. I was thinking along the same lines but powering a small water pump to run a mister for a misting fan.
How long does it take to heat the sand and how long will the sand release heat?
Maybe try using a Dutch oven to help with more heat retention.
True, perhaps a cast iron dutch oven.
hi. i just ordered one of those a few minutes ago. i'll be trying it
Wow is there an upper limit to how hot you can get the sand?
hi. i'm not sure of the limit (other than the fact that sand melts at about 3090F (1700C) and turns to glass around 3200F. note that the fans limit is about 350C (662F). if you were extracting heat from the sand (say with steel tubes) you could probably heat the sand to 1500F or more
How can u use heat from sand to make electricity to power things like phones or 12 v appliances? Do u have videos on that I couldn't find.
hi. i'm working on using the teg chips more directly with the hot sand but have mainly run teg fans to this point. stay tuned for vids in the near future.
How warm does it get? And will it heat a room no furnace. How practical is it. Thank you for your video.
hey there. it gets very warm (but it will vary - depending on how hot you get the sand). i heated the sand to 350-400F. one neat thing about this is you oould scale this up to any size. i just had an idea of using 1 or 2 50-pound bags of sand (and heating the sand with a few resistive heating elements, hooked to a few solar panels). you could heat the mass of sand during the day *and 50 or 100 pounds of it might produce heat for a few days
You can heat a small room with these to a good degree, but it needs to be in an enclosure. Up above I made a lengthy reply about using an inverted 5 gallon bucket over the top with holes drilled in it. I've heated my garage this way.
@desertsun02 Thank you sir. I really appreciate what you’ve done here. I am working on my own. Im going to order the parts.
Can i use a 12 volt rechargeable battery also i found a 12v car water heater immersion heater element can i use that.
hi. if the 12v rechargeable battery is a deep cycle battery then it should work good to power the 12v ptc elements. you could also use a 12v LiFePO4 battery. water heating elements will not work to heat sand though. you'll see videos online saying that you can, but you can't. all water heating elements need to be in water or they will stop working.
Im in Ireland. Where can I buy the supplies for this online? Thanks
i'm not sure. maybe other commenters could help you. possibly amazon or ebay?
Can I use any Heat fan? Or do I need a specific one
hi. most of them should work. i always buy the ones with a starting temp of 122F(50C).
This would be an excellent source of dry heat which would be perfect for my area. Heating with Propane and Natural gas gives off too much moisture.
If you are building moisture with a gas system, you may have a carbon monoxide leak. My dad had a trailer heated with propane wall heaters there was no fresh air intake, the walls were dripping with water. Lucky that place didn't kill him.
If you leave the sand in a solar evacuated tube for the day, it will get real hot.
interesting idea, i'll have to think out it. i recently bought some of those
@desertsun02 if you check out, greenpowerscience "evacuated solar tube implosion solar water heater thermal storage"
he's using it for a different reason but you can see that it'll heat the sand throughout the day.
So how long did it end up running for? Ya think you could leave it unattended without ever catching fire?
hi. since it's just a metal container, sand and a stove fan, it seems like there's nothing that could catch on fire. (none of the 3 items are flammable). about the run time: the fan slows down so slowly over time that it's hard to say when it gets to the point of not being effective. i think the fan ran about 45 minutes total using the smaller tin and well over 2 hours with the big pan. i picked the fan up (off the big pot of sand) once or twice when it was running (to show it running from the back), so i'm not sure how long it would have run. it will depend on the exact heat of the sand, the fan that you use, possibly the heat of the air to begin with etc.
How 🤔❓do you heat the sand?
hi. all sorts of ways. a few ways would be fresnel lens, parabolic dish, solar oven, resistive or ptc ceramic heating elements, various off grid stoves, even a campfire or rocket stove. on grid ways would be stove top, oven, or heating elements.
Which metal is best for these batteries?
I mean the copper used inside the bucket.@@desertsun02
i generally only use copper when i use it inside the bucket but aluminum might work well too.@@PakiNewsNetwork
How efficient is this?
hard to say... if you heat the sand with solar panel/wind turbine power (hooked to resistive heating elements) you can heat sand essentially for free. fresnel lens might work great too. sand holds the heat for a very long time. i had been hearing about sand batteries recently so i decided to build one (simple one). you could also heat sand over fire (or rocket stove) and get heat for hours at a time. i've heard that very big sand batts can hold heat for weeks at a time (even a month). i'm curious to see how the technology advances.
@@desertsun02 dude compost heat storage also lasts long
@@xgymratx That is a chemical reaction instead of storage isn't it?
@@lorenbush8876 no. It's literally the sand absorbing heat through contact and radiating it out via infrared radiation.
whre do i get one? what wuld yu recommend.
Get a pot, sand from the hardware store and a heat powered stove fan anywhere they sell wood and pellet stoves or Amazon.
Link to the fan?
Where do you get a "TEG"?
hi there. if you want to buy them separately, they sell them on amazon. (but note that the fan comes with it already "installed"). i've bought a couple of them (the TEG's) with motors that match for some experiments
Does it cause any toxic fumes?
hi. nope. it's just sand.
Hi Desertsun02 I commented on your DIY flowerpot heater mentioning I had sent en email quick qestion. Just trying to touch base with you regarding that video. LMK if you want me to re-send it? Tank you so much!
You need mini steam turbine to generate electric
Molten Salt Thermal Storage Tank - 570 celsius. 🔥😅🔥
Paraffin wax is a better heat storage than sand
Why exactly?
I made one last month and had spill of super hot sand. There i realised that transporting 200-300°C sand is out of the question. WAY too dangerous.
So my conclusion was:
Get a 45 gallon barrel.
Fill it with dry sand. Inserting 2 coils of soft copper, and a oven heating resistance. One coil is to use to add heat. The second coil to use to remove heat. The resistance to use electricity from solar panels.
On the top a simple "oven thermomètre" so I can judge where i am, heatwise.
The barrel to be highly insulated.
THAT will be my sand battery.
It's along the lines of what the Finnish people did. Which worked.
Walking about, pouring super heated sand is out.
Having a sand battery on top of a wood stove is also ok. It's the moving of it that's dangerous.
You are right that Finnish people mention something like a "closed air loop system".
Question though: how do you "add heat" through a soft copper coil?
And - how to add enough heat through that copper coil, to increase sand temperature to 200-300 degrees?
@@user-g111 good point.... :-)
My thinking was to use the summertime sunshine heat to continuously circulate either hot water or hot air and the second coil to pass my cold water through and warm it up.
But you're right the sand temperature when above 100°C would boil the water to steam.
So you mentioned the air used in Finland and that's the way they've gone, because....they're professional
All the same, I bet there will be "home kits" that we can buy or have installed
Sterling.
Hi @desertsun02 can you help me with my previous question?
hi, i just saw your question, and it is now answered.
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