Remember
the Solar Desalinator as described in my Geezam
blog article entitled “How to Make Distilled
Water using a Solar Desalinator”? Well, get your DIY (Do it yourself) brain
in gear as here comes the upgrade even Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz in Phineas and Ferb (2007-) could
have used to take over the Tri-State Area.
The idea
is to use what’s known as a Fresnel Lens that’s commonly found in Rear
Projection TV’s as described in the article “Fry an egg with a solar-powered backyard death ray”,
published March 11, 2013 5:33 PM PDT by Michelle Starr, CNET News.
A Fresnel
Lens is really a layer of concave lenses made of either Glass or Plastic to
provided increased magnification for an image but using a thinner, flatter
profile and often with a shorter Focal Length. For the visually inclined,
here’s a quick video explaining what a Fresnel Lens is; we educate you too as
well!
Hence
their usage in Rear-Projection TV in a magnification configuration and
lighthouses in a reverse configuration!You can purchase an old Rear-projection
TV – or even take on off someone’s hands - as most people are upgrading to LCD
TV’s and as such are trying to get rid of these big-back eyesores from their
living rooms.
You’ll
need:
1.
Same tools as used in the Solar Desalinator as
described in my Geezam blog
article entitled “How to Make Distilled Water
using a Solar Desalinator”
2.
A used and discarded Rear-Projection TV
3.
A Truck to carry the Rear-Projection TV
(gotta be prepared!)
4.
A Fresnel Lens
5.
Sharp Cutting Knife
6.
Safety Gear i.e. Shoes, Goggles, Safety
Gloves
The
instructions to getting a Fresnel Lens out of the Rear-Projection TV are pretty
straightforward:
1. Look for
ads in the newspaper for persons selling a Rear-Projection TV or you can place
and Ad saying you’ll buy one from them
2. Go to the
seller, pick up the Rear-Projection TV
3. Tear down
the Rear-Projection TV as per the video, making sure to secure the Fresnel Lens
4. Frame the
Fresnel Lens as per instructions in the video for later use in future projects
Once you
follow the instructions in the video, you’ve got your own personal Death Ray
with which you can play around with once you’ve found its focus, albeit be
careful not to let the kids near it, as it’s a toasty 2000 Degrees Celsius.
So what
can you do with your latest toy? Here are a Few ideas to get the Windmills in
your mind turning….
Upgrade the Solar Desalinator – more
Distilled Water Please
The
Fresnel Lens lends well to a simple upgrade of my previous Geezam blog article entitled “How to Make Distilled Water using a Solar
Desalinator”; replace the glass with the Fresnel Lens and make the Box
bigger so that the water inside is at the same distance as the focal Length of
the Fresnel Lens. This’ll require changing some of the dimensions for the Solar
Desalinator, but it’s well worth it, as it’ll make Distilled Water much, much
faster.
Solar Cooker – Impress
your Friends at the Cookout by Cooking Green
Best of
all, it can be an alternative to your outside grill or microwave. With a little
modification to the Solar Desalinator Design, you can make a Solar Cooker to
cook food, albeit you’d have to use Venetian blinds or other methods to control
the level of intensity of the heat generated from the focused beam of sunlight.
Solar Pyrolysis – Turn
Organic Waste into Liquid Fertilizer Oleum
Change
the material to Stainless steel for the entire body of the Solar Desalinator
and add a Vacuum pump to pump out air and you have a Solar
Foundry for Vacuum Pyrolysis. You can use it to melt anything that you want
reduced down to ash without it burning in oxygen, as all burning involves
oxidation, hence Pyrolysis.
The
advantage of having a Solar Foundry is that you can use it to make Charcoal or
even Oleum, which is an organic mixture made by decomposing organic matter to
its atomic constituents via heating in a vacuum. Thus organic material in the
yard such as grass or dead leaves can be reduced into Carbon, Charcoal (if you
do it slowly!) and Organic Oil or Oleum (if the organic material has a lot of
Long Chain Hydrocarbon Oil!) that you can reuse as Nitrate and Phosphorus rich
fertilizer.
This Solar
Foundry for Vacuum Pyrolysis is very similar to the Bio-Char Oven as described
in “Turning trash into treasure - Biochar oven makes
charcoal, bio-oils from backyard refuse”,
published Saturday March 16, 2013 by Glenda Anderson, Gleaner Writer, The Jamaica Gleaner.
It
was designed
by Executive Director Michael Barnett, an engineer and Dr. Sylvia Mitchell of
the University of the West Indies (UWI) Biotechnology Centre, with a group of
Level Two HEART-certified welding students doing most of the heavy lifting.
The design
modifications to the Solar Desalinator differ, however, in that its Solar
powered, as opposed to the BioChar Oven, which is powered using Fossil Fuels.
Also there is no smoke; all that is avoided as the decomposition takes place in
a vacuum without oxygen being present. Best of all it’s the perfect addition to
your Solar Powered Greenhouse as described in my Geezam blog article entitled “Solar Powered Organic Farming – Sustainable
Agricultural Development and Jamaica’s Food Security”.
Conclusion: Catch a Fire with Solar Death-ray
And you
though making this was a waste of time just to get a Fresnel Lens to melt a few
coins or glass bottles.
Remember
though safety first:
1.
Cover the Fresnel Lens when left in open Sunlight
with a Black cloth
2.
Avoid your kids and pets Catch a Fire Bob Marley
Style, with your Personal Solar Death-ray by making a yellow and black barrier
around your contraption; it is NOT a toy
3.
Always wear UV Goggles when working with the Death-ray;
the concentrated sunlight in a partial or Hard Vacuum can generate some serious
UV Radiation which is as harmful as looking at a Welder’s Torch
So there
you have it folks.
You can do
your part to clean up the environment by reusing an otherwise defunct
technology, that being the Rear-Projection TV. Via this project, you’re recycling
it to make an improvement to the Solar Desalinator and even a Solar Cooker.
Better yet, you can also make your very own Solar Foundry for Vacuum Pyrolysis
to make Fertilizer out of leaves and wood you’d otherwise burn.
Three
cheers for the environment all around as you harness the power of the Sun with
your new Fresnel Lens powered Death-Ray!
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