Fabulous research, ACT, and so generous to share. Josh is a great presenter, the graphics and models are great and the range and richness of results is awesome. I;ll now search for an update on this Channel. :-) I'm interested in solar focus on a heat pipe and evaporation via plate heat exchanger - a garage DIY project. Lots of ideas and inspiration - many thanks!
I've been pondering on a closed loop thermosyphon using compost as a heat source. The compost piles stays fairly steady at 150F for a prolonged period of time. I thought to just circulate water with a pump but I hadn't considered using a two-phase medium. Now I wonder if circulating methanol would work.
@@kynknaturals I haven’t needed to try it. Just keeping a compost pile in an insulated cold frame with the water tank does plenty. Apart from that I have so much waste heat from charcoal production that reclaiming more from the compost hasn’t been a priority.
Is this going to result in a calculator tool or a spreadsheet? It would be interesting for people without skills in finite element analysis to be able to compute how much work they can get out of a system based on area, or piping heights and diameters.
Earlier in the video, you mentioned mass flow rate drops as power increases beyond 400W in the model; but later in the experimental vs model results, the mass flow rate shows the opposite trend as power changes from 500W to 1000W, can you please explain that?
That's a great question! The reason for this is that in the initial modeling the system fluid charge was allowed to vary with changing power. The assumption was that during operation, the liquid column would always back up right to the outlet of the condenser. In other words, the driving liquid head is constant across all of the powers. This approach works well for system design, but in a real-world system the charge must be fixed - as it was in the experimental and second modeling results. Hopefully this helps explain it a bit. Two-phase loop thermosyphons can be tricky to wrap your mind around sometimes.
We've wrapped up our first round of testing on the larger system with good results. Everything trends well with the model (Temp, Pres, Flow Rate) although there are still some differences as are to be expected when using empirical correlations. Eventually, we will be releasing more details.
Fabulous research, ACT, and so generous to share. Josh is a great presenter, the graphics and models are great and the range and richness of results is awesome. I;ll now search for an update on this Channel. :-)
I'm interested in solar focus on a heat pipe and evaporation via plate heat exchanger - a garage DIY project. Lots of ideas and inspiration - many thanks!
I've been pondering on a closed loop thermosyphon using compost as a heat source. The compost piles stays fairly steady at 150F for a prolonged period of time.
I thought to just circulate water with a pump but I hadn't considered using a two-phase medium. Now I wonder if circulating methanol would work.
Your temperatures are in the range for a methanol heat loop thermosyphon, and materials-wise, copper or stainless should be compatible. Good luck!
@christophersmith8014 did it work? I too wish to use this principle for compost heating.
@@kynknaturals I haven’t needed to try it. Just keeping a compost pile in an insulated cold frame with the water tank does plenty. Apart from that I have so much waste heat from charcoal production that reclaiming more from the compost hasn’t been a priority.
Is this going to result in a calculator tool or a spreadsheet? It would be interesting for people without skills in finite element analysis to be able to compute how much work they can get out of a system based on area, or piping heights and diameters.
If a power storage system is introduced in the loop as a sand thermal battery how much would the system change and is it scalable to add such battery
Earlier in the video, you mentioned mass flow rate drops as power increases beyond 400W in the model; but later in the experimental vs model results, the mass flow rate shows the opposite trend as power changes from 500W to 1000W, can you please explain that?
That's a great question! The reason for this is that in the initial modeling the system fluid charge was allowed to vary with changing power. The assumption was that during operation, the liquid column would always back up right to the outlet of the condenser. In other words, the driving liquid head is constant across all of the powers. This approach works well for system design, but in a real-world system the charge must be fixed - as it was in the experimental and second modeling results. Hopefully this helps explain it a bit. Two-phase loop thermosyphons can be tricky to wrap your mind around sometimes.
So how is that larger loop coming along?
We've wrapped up our first round of testing on the larger system with good results. Everything trends well with the model (Temp, Pres, Flow Rate) although there are still some differences as are to be expected when using empirical correlations. Eventually, we will be releasing more details.