Sea Furnace

People who know me know I am writing a book ( or books) for Barnaby called 'Lord Beardsmore'.

The original idea was that I expect Barnaby to match my levels of dyslexia . I wanted to write something which would be interesting for a dyslexic to read.

Part of this was a number of strongly visual technologies which serve as spaces for the adventure to continue. For example we have a fight scene on an airship. We have a chase on hydrofoil boats. Things are more complicated by the fact that the world is a slightly alternative version of the 1930's. This restricts how advanced the technology can be.

Last night I came up with the concept of a huge solar furnace. It was partly inspired by http://www.stirlingenergy.com/ and the Engergy innovations page at http://www.energyinnovations.com/tech.html


The solar furnace concept I have come up with is a large parabolic mirror. This mirror floats in a lake or a protected part of the ocean. One of the places I see this is Ceuta - an ocean city visited in the first book.

Imagine a huge bowel floating in water. The inside of the bowel is mirrored and focuses the sun's rays on to a central point. This point can either be a stirling engine generator or a very high temperature furnace. One problem with all solar furnaces is to make something which moves with the sun and does so cheaply enough. With the sea furnace buoyancy tanks fill with air or water to shift the center gravity of the furnace and so move the furnace its self.


While thinking about this I realized that if the central focus of the sun's rays where surrounded by secondary collectors then the air in the secondary collector would expand when heated by the sun moving off the center of the primary collector. The secondary collector would then be plumbed to the buoyancy tanks so that as the sun's rays moved for the central point then the appropriate buoyancy tank would fill with air. This would tilt the solar furnace back to the correct position to focus the rays of the sun on the primary collector.

I like this concept in that it has no moving parts - nothing to wear out and go wrong.

The sea furnaces ( or lake furnaces ) tend to heat Sun-salt ( 60% sodium nitrate and 40% saltpeter ). This creates a liquid salt at 565 C which can be stored ( in a hot tank) and used to generate steam later. The sun-salt can also be used to fuel chemical reactions. Direct high temperature heating would be used to smelt iron and other metals - the French Heliostat reaches 3800 degrees Centergrad ( hot hot hot ).

So In Beardsmore's 30's universe I like a huge array being used by the heavy industry in Ceuta. Makes you wonder what dangers you could get into. The dangers would be similar to the Man with the Golden gun and Sahara. Perhaps I can think of something better.



Wonderful link to a home page on heilostats - http://www.redrok.com/main.htm

Finally found a link to the french site http://www.imp.cnrs.fr/foursol/index.shtml