With all this freezing cold temperatures gripping our continent, I was thinking about what good is the cold and how can we turn that negative of the bitter cold into a positive. I thought to myself, if we can put a man on the moon, surely man has found the ability to harness these freezing temperatures to create electricity. We have in a few ways mastered how to create electricity from fire, and wind, and the sun, and the natural flow of water, BUT, what about the cold and ice. So this post is dedicated to exploring the idea of creating electricity with the cold temperatures.
First lets look at what has been created to harness electricity with the use of fire. The following is a picture of a camp stove that creates power from the heat produced by the fire. It is costly and in my opinion only produces a minimal amount of power. But it is a good attempt, and a start.
This little light uses just a tea light candle and it can create 70 Lumens which is not too too bad for a lighting source. Again costly, but a good start and will in time see a reduction in price.
They have also come up with a concept that uses a pan that is heated whether its a burner on a stove that is fuel powered or a fire pit. Again costly and a valiant effort.
Norway and Siberia are some of the coldest places on this planet. Although where I live I feel like I live in the coldest part of the globe, however, Siberia and Norway have more of a constant temperature that is colder over the course of the entire year. Norway has discovered that if they took the constant temperature of the cold waters deep in their larger rivers and produced electricity from the constant cold 8 degree C water. The system is called the Drammen Heat pump. This is the river that produces this power.
How the Drammen heat pumps work
Water from the fjord at 8C is used to heat liquid ammonia at four times atmospheric pressure (4 bar), till it boils at 2C and evaporates
By increasing the pressure to 50 bar, the evaporated gas is heated to 120C
The gas is then used to heat the water in the heating system from 60C to 90C (the water goes out of the plant at 90C and comes back in at 60C)
Once the heat has transferred to the water, the ammonia gas changes back into a liquid state
The process begins again
This ability to create power has given many scientist something to think about, and expand upon, for the purposes of small scale homesteads and farms. Many of us have a constant water source close to our farms and homesteads. OR how about the concept of having a pump create a constant flow of water like a waterfall so the water does not freeze, flowing into a reservoir and the cold water of the reservoir can be used to create the power. Think about it folks, lets start thinking outside the box and help ourselves and use such a nuisance of a resource and make it a positive.
Happy "Power source" trails Folks
Sources:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-31506073
https://www.lehmans.com/product/joi-heat-powered-led-light/for_the_homesteader
https://www.altitude-sports.com/products/biolite-biolite-basecamp-llll-blt-bca?gclid=CjwKCAiAhMLSBRBJEiwAlFrsTgibUMDr_Qw0qpgGHMfm7mLwUrjaBrxUTGO4gk0CEaNPpgWc_pMnHRoCsd0QAvD_BwE
Maybe they could hook something up to my shivering body and that would create electricity. Haha!
Funny you say that, they have actually found away to create power from body heat.....or in your case lack thereof...LOL
Wait if that is true I need to get my husband to make something similar for me. My freezing feet and hands could warm up the house. :D
How do you keep coming up with all these crazy ideas?
It is the difference between input temperature and output temperature. It is what all engines run on.
Take a copper wire, put one end in a fire and the other end in a snow bank and electricity will flow.
The problem with these above ideas are that we are using a low grade heat or cold source. And that is exponentially harder then using say, gasoline which burns very hot and ambient air temperature.
Agreed. Just hoping that someday someone will be able to take the concept and harness it on a smaller scale for a single home or homestead
The reality is that there is energy all around us.
We will have free energy devices as soon as we will stop turning them to war.
Until then, there are many sources of energy around us.
Stirling engine?
Yes exactly, however on a smaller scale.
You can have a small stirling engine, biggest problem is its noisy.
Very interesting! I am amazed to hear about such idea to generate electricity from on coldness not heatness which is just opposite...If this ideas really works then it can change the way we think on producing energy in order to solve energy crisis which world will soon face. Great Post
I was thinking about how scientist suggest that there is a mini ice age coming, and how we can still survive using the greatest resource from it. Thanks
I love the concept of using a gas, heated and cooled which causes linear flow that can be pushed through a turbine for power. It's easy to create a closed system that saves all the gas too.
That's exceptionally invention.......never heard of it before......@gardengirlcanada
This was very informative article
Super article @gardengirlcanada! I actually hadn't heard of cold-power before. Interestingly, the river which runs beside our yurt is also the coldest water in our watershed. I wonder if we could double it up with the hydropwer? wouldn't that be great!
You were right about the tea light powered lamp being expensive. Still super cool.
The technology you were describing where they harness the river water is also interesting. It is very similar to normal heat pump technology although they are creating electricity instead of heat I guess.
My brother occasionally installs heat pumps in more expensive houses to make heating using electricity more efficient. The heat pumps are basically air conditioners that work in reverse and pump heat in rather then out. You can generate almost 3x the heat using a heat pump as you could just running a normal heater.
I love this idea, especially since it gets so cold here and if the power goes out we've got no water until it comes back on. I'll have to get my husband to read this post and see if he can rig up something to put into our pond. :D
I never knew about these because where I come from, we dont need things of these manner because we here cold as folklore. Great post and very educating!
Very interesting. I had not across Drammen heat pumps before. It will be interesting to see how this develops.