REALLY interesting to see that in a really cold -29C winter windy day, these tubes may rise the water temperature close to a boil on the tube's interior, while keeping the tube's exterior ice cold !!!! Evacuated tubes are the solution for thermal solar collection. Groutaone: These tubes may be sold with a rear sunlight reflector to heat the tube on both front and rear. This would be interesting to test the same tube tested with a such reflector. And guys, Groutaone's last comment is of prime importance: These tubes are designed to be run DRY ! Using water in them will eventually shatter the glass by water freezing in nighttime or by thermal shock.
these work because the light energy can travel through the glass, heat the black tube but the black tube cannot sink the heat through the vacuum(insulation) between the two glass tube. Hence the term vaccuum tube.
Veikra Thanks for the reply! I should've been a little more clear in my statement I guess. I understand the basic workings just was currious on design and assembly. I didn't know that it had a bulb at the bottom like Groutaone had shown. Or how the flow of heated solution actually worked. :) Thanks for the reply though!
I've being heating my home with evacuated solar water heaters and water to water heatpump for about 7 years now.. my heating cost are about $150 per year average ( I live in a zone 2 area - average winter temps -18C i see regularly -40C for at least 1-2 weeks out of the year ) - i watched some of your video just thought you you be curios on my experience, I put 7 kw of evacuated solar panels on my house ( equal to my heat pump size). to control over heating during the summer I put a flat plate heat exchanger on my ground loop for my heat pump. once my buffer tanks and domestic hot water tanks ( 500 litres) reach my maximum temp the solar heat is directed into the ground ( which is a bonus as it also improves the efficiency of the heat pump in the beginning of the winter as the ground is much much warm then it normally would be
Grouta- about 10 years ago I read the original SolarMax design team was also working on a nightime infrared tube so heat could be produced 24hrs. Not sure if that went into production or not.
Those are pretty neat. WSE out of Saskatoon sold them or ones like them when I looked at them a couple of years ago. The ones I looked into didn't have the copper insert. I just couldn't pencil them out though, natural gas is just so reasonable out here yet.
Cool video, excuse the pun,,, the wind gives you added, WIND CHILL Factor, hence ice remaining on the glass surface, it's the main killer and if you brake the wind with glass or such, you may get even higher heat results, Thom in Scotland.
These are designed to use without water inside them, I suppose they would produce hot air out the top but normally they have an aluminum sleeve inside and a long copper insert (not shown) to transfer heat to a collector which is also not shown in this video.
zack wopat My boiler was using sunflower seeds for fuel, lots of mechanical components that require maintenance and upkeep, got tired of it, wanted something more user friendly and less costly to operate
Mount a few of those on the roof n' have a well insulated tank to hold the water for a radiant floor heating system. Would kinda suck when its cloudy, or at night. :P
This kind of heating works well with floor heat, using the floor as a heat sink till the next day. Electric solar panels will make about half power on a raining day so I would like to test this on a cloudy day.
Good news is they are, on grid or off grid heating can easily be done like this, I would need about 150 tubes to heat my shop, works well with floor heat or by using a heat storage tank. A small sun solar system could be used to run the circulating water pump and you are ready for a power outage
Hey another cameo of that awesome wall clock. The ability to boil water gives us some idea of the sun's power, even as low in the sky as it is in Canada. If only we could harness and store the energy of mother nature. "Store" being the operative word.
That's cool, I did not know that. But we humans can't store it as fast or in quantity on the scale I'm getting at. Like lightning, or an entire thunderstorm. I mean, how much energy does the atmosphere release for just one minute, during an F5 tornado?
these tube are a good exemple of clean simple solar energy that mass production could bring into every home and lower dependance on overtaxed utilities
Science is expensive I'm trying to use the technology to build a plate with natal on one side and glass on the other side and vacuum in the center and cover your house with them I bet you can get free heat in the day time could save a lot of your heating bill
