By
Mark Ollig
As
your humble contributor writes this column, there is still abundant snow on the
ground, and the calendar says we are nearing the end of April.
Hopefully,
when you read this, the snow will be a memory, as the temperatures become
warmer.
The
warmth we receive from the bright sunshine has yours truly wondering where we
are these days with utilizing the sun to provide us with energy.
I
was surprised to learn, even though our planet is some 92 million miles away
from the sun, we are still receiving about 85 trillion kilowatts of constant
energy from it. This kind of energy would be comparable to the energy realized
from burning 1,150 billion tons of coal in one year.
Looking
back to 1954, Bell Telephone Laboratories developed the first workable solar
cell using a silicon wafer, which converted the sun’s energy into electricity
via photovoltaic processes.
Today,
nearly 60 years later, comes some exciting news from the clever folks at IBM.
With
a grant from the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation, the scientists
and researchers at IBM Research, Airlight Energy, and other organizations, are
working together on developing a High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal system
(HCPVT).
Instead
of using traditional solar panels to generate energy, IBM is building a
futuristic- looking, large parabolic dish-like solar-receiving concentrator,
strongly resembling one of those huge Very Large Array (VLA) satellite dish
receivers seen out in the remote plains of New Mexico.
“The
design of the system is elegantly simple,” said Andrea Pedretti, chief
technology officer of Airlight Energy.
“We
replace expensive steel and glass with low-cost concrete and simple pressurized
metalized foils,” he said.
This
solar parabolic dish will use a micro-channel liquid-cooled photovoltaic
thermal receiver to keep the component chips from overheating.
Its
parabolic curvature will be covered with many individual, rounded mirrors.
The
solar-collecting dish will use a tracking system to control and maintain an
optimal position in relation to the sun.
The
sun’s rays will reflect off the dish’s mirrors and onto a collection of
micro-channel liquid-cooled receivers embedded with triple-junction
photovoltaic components.
The
HCPVT system will be capable of concentrating solar radiation 2,000 times,
while using 80 percent of it for useful energy purposes.
IBM
said this system would convert total collected solar energy at a cost three
times lower than similar solar energy collection systems.
The
HCPVT will be using small one-by-one centimeter component chips, which will
provide power at a rate of around 200 - 250 watts per chip, on an average
sunny, eight-hour day.
The
intense heat generated onto the chip components inside the solar parabolic dish
will require them to be water-cooled.
IBM
decided to use the Aquasar hot-water component cooling method it uses in its
SuperMUC supercomputer.
It
is integrated inside the supercomputer to cool its components.
Aquasar
circulates water using low pumping power at temperatures of around 140 degrees
Fahrenheit through a number of small microchannels directly over the
supercomputer’s processing chip components.
This
same Aquasar system will also be used for cooling the component chips in the
new solar energy-collector parabolic dish.
Without
this cooling, the component chips inside the parabolic dish would melt.
By
means of a thermal driven adsorption chiller (a device which converts heat into
cooling), the HCPVT system will be able to provide air conditioning.
In
addition, fresh water will be created as a byproduct in this system.
Instead
of being discarded, the side-heated water collected from the system will be
used for creating drinkable water.
This
side-heated water will be used to heat salty water passing through a
distillation system. From there, it will be vaporized and purified.
Each
day, the distillation system will generate an estimated 16 gallons of drinkable
water per 10.76 square feet of the solar dish’s receiver area.
It
is thought a large, solar energy collector parabolic dish tracking array system
would produce enough drinkable water to supply the needs for a town.
Scientists
foresee HCPVT systems bringing sustainable energy, and fresh drinkable water to
remote locations around the world, including the southwestern United States.
IBM
says it would only need 2 percent of the land area in the Sahara Desert to
supply the world’s energy needs using an array of these powerful, solar
photovoltaic energy concentrators.
Will
this become the future means of providing a cost-effective and viable system
for harnessing energy from the sun, while also supplying drinkable water?
The
first High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal prototype system is now being
tested at the IBM Research laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland.
To
see what IBM’s impressively large, solar energy-collector parabolic dish will
look like, go to http://tinyurl.com/c5q4qnf.
