Students at Rensselear Polytech are designing a solar-powered pasteurizer that can be used by village farmers in Peru. The sun heats water to boiling, and the hot water is used in a HTST (high temperature short time) pasteurization system. This will allow village farmers to obtain certification to sell their dairy products at market. Solar [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Solar’
Introducing our Solar Hot Water System
Our new facility houses a 150-gallon vat pasteurizer with which we have begun to make cheese. Fresh cheeses must be pasteurized, which means raising the temperarture of the milk to 145 degrees and holding it there for 30 minutes. Heating 150 gallons of milk by 110 degrees requires a lot of energy.
In order to cut our heating costs, as well as our environmental impact, we installed a solar hot water system. The system incorporated used solar panels that someone gave us for free. Instead of spending thousands on a commercial heat exchanger and storage tank, we elected to build our own using the principles (if not exactly the plans) we found on BuildItSolar.com.
Solar Progress
Our solar hot water system for the new cheese room is coming along ever so slowly. I built a coil of about 90 feet of 3/4″ copper pipe as a heat exchanger to preheat the water we use for washing. I’m no plumber, but surprise! No Leaks! I also constructed a rack of PVC plastic [...]
Solar Dairying
The United Nations FAO offers this analysis of solar-powered dairy projects. Their conclusion: It’s feasible, but not cheap. Note that, in 1981 dollars, a cheese facility of the size we’re building would cost over $150,000. That’s over $355,000 in 2008 dollars. Using innovation, used equipment, comparison shopping, and just plain Yankee frugality, we’re putting ours [...]
Installing the solar panels
Despite today’s chilly weather, I finished installing the solar panels today. I bolted the frame to the roof, with 1″ spacers to keep the frame from actually contacting the shingles (and trapping water). I connected Pex tubing to each inlet and outlet of the panels, because there isn’t enough room to reach the connection once [...]
Renewable Energy: Urban & Rural
(A warehouse in Los Angeles covered in solar panels.) Ed, an urban dweller in Arizona, writes: Looking at your web site, I was struck by the difference between urban and rural approaches to solar hot water. You can make anything, put it wherever you want, and its appearance is governed only by your own aesthetics. Where we live we are [...]
Solar Resources
As we continue our development toward solar hot water heating for the new cheese facility, I’ve found a couple of very interesting resources: This page tells how to make a solar water heating panel for under $5. Yes, you read that right. It’s not of sufficient volume to heat a house, but it’s an interesting [...]
Simple (And Cheap) Solar Hot Water – Part 3
How much does a batch solar heater cost? That’s a question I can answer, because I built one for use in our cheese facility. I started with a tank from a doscarded 30-gallon propane hot water heater. Freecycle is great for stuff like this. I stripped off the exterior metal and the insulation, wire brushed [...]
Simple (And Cheap) Hot Water – Part 2
(Builditsolar photo.) So, how does one build this “miracle” of solar heating: the simple and cheap “batch” heater? It turns out there are plenty of plans out there. For starters, a simple “solar shower,” in which water in an inner tube or bucket is heated for personal use, is one of the simplest forms. But [...]
Simple (And Cheap) Solar Hot Water – Part 1
(ByExample.com image.) A couple of weeks back, I posted that our experiments in renewable energy had been expensive. I also voiced a desire to find projects that are not just renewable, but cheap and reliable as well. Here’s one: the “batch” solar hot water heater. “Batch” simply means that the water is heated in a [...]
