I am curious to know if any organization ever ran a trial project where they used solar energy and human power with no other energy inputs to manufacture solar panels from unrefined oxides and such.
It might be possible. Maybe.
300mm square, glazed ceramic tiles as a substrate...no problem. Similar tiles have been made with 2000 year-old technology using nothing more than clay and firewood (a form of solar energy).
Sputter coated or vapor deposition aluminum grid might be a problem because separating the metallic aluminum from the bauxite is extremely energy intensive and the process pukes when there are energy interruptions...which happen at night with solar power.
So maybe zinc is vapor deposited and copper or silver electrolytically plated on the zinc spiderweb to increase it current capacity. Zinc requires far less energy to refine than aluminum does and vaporizes at a lower temperature.
Then amorphous, doped silicon. I am 90% sure that carbon has a greater affinity for oxygen than silicon so you could load charcoal and silica flour and heat it up with electrical resistance but the final product would be very dirty and not pure enough for solar panels. Need to work on that one. Maybe blowing super-heated carbon monoxide from the charcoal bed through the silica flour would make elemental silicon that was pure enough for solar panels.
Then another layer of amorphous silicon doped with a different trace element to make an N-P junction.
Another grid of vapor deposition zinc followed by electrolytic beefing up with copper or silver.
Then a glass cover (plastic is a petrochemical) to toughen the device against acid rain, bird poop and mechanical wear from blowing sand.
Finally, some way to rack the panels. Maybe wood. That is a product of solar energy. Then wiring.
I am just curious.
I expect solar panels could be produced using nothing but 'renewable energy'. I also suspect that the volume of panels produced would never reach a level that would be economically sustainable. At least not with the current level of technology. Modern society enjoys amazing luxuries made possible by the economies of scale. But economies of scale require utterly massive amounts of energy available on demand. Neither solar nor wind are good at delivering energy on demand. Those using those technologies must either wait on the sun/wind or have massive battery storage available.
ReplyDeleteTheoretically yes, but I suspect in practice it isn't.
ReplyDeleteHydro power, then wind power, would be the easiest to build from scratch.
Even semiconductor plants have trouble with solar panel designs; the purity and thickness requirements alone would be essentially impossible to meet without modern machinery.
The better idea would be to use something like a solar oven to heat a low boiling point fluid to run a steam engine to generate electricity.
While I own an ever-growing solar array, many solar powered kits and gadgets and have homebuilt solar food dehydrators and such (yes, I'm a solar geek) the manufacturing of it requires massive power-hungry inputs.
ReplyDeleteLook at the mining and refining of the materials alone.
Solar requires oil or nuclear power many times the current production level.
Ya know, along these lines of thought, I became interested in fresnel lenses, and toyed around with some old ones I sourced off old projection TVs at the town dump.
ReplyDeleteMelting any coinage was no problem on a sunny July day in WesternNY. The one that impressed me was an old master lock. Sat there all day, never moved? About 5 PM I went to move it out of the driveway. The body of the lock dribbled off the brick I was using as a crucible... completely melted away revealing the mechanism inside.
I can envision some crude channels for pouring liquid or even rolling out warmed metal into thin wires.
The chemistry will be the obstacle to your plans methinks.
I don't think solar will ever play a useful role in a small scale grid down environment . We will be relying on local sources such as abundant firewood in my area . I'm thinking wood gasifier , steam power , and of course the old wood stove we still depend on . You can still buy old steam engines around here at local farm auctions and we have several guys driving around with gasifiers in the back of there F250's . They haunt the Amish sawmills for cheap scraps of wood . They smell good going down the road when they burn Wild Black Cherry and it is one of their favorite woods for a gasifier . Puts out lots of clean gas .
ReplyDeleteI doubt there will ever be a solar powered solar plant. The efficiencies are simply not there. It was once said that it took more energy to make a solar panel than it would ever convert in it's entire lifetime. That may or may not be true today, but it is probably close.
ReplyDeleteMuch like there are no ethanol plants that use ethanol as a source of energy. They all use natural gas for the distillation heat.
Joe, not sure how you do it but just before I saw this solar post I viewed a tube vid on using old cd's to make a solar panel(I won't demean myself by giving a link, the channel was called hidden technology). If you do happen to go there don't bother watching the vid. It soon becomes obvious that it;s fake. Do however read the comments. They are split almost evenly between "thanks I'll try this" and"folks snorting milk out their noses in disbelief. some of the milk ones are pretty good.
ReplyDeleteJoe... John Brother here. I've been fascinated with solar panels and solar power for quite a some time. I always had a theory if it's possible to replicate the production of power like plants do. As the following definition states:
ReplyDeletechlo·ro·phyll
/ˈklôrəˌfil/
Learn to pronounce
noun
a green pigment, present in all green plants and in cyanobacteria, responsible for the absorption of light to provide energy for photosynthesis. Its molecule contains a magnesium atom held in a porphyrin ring.
What are your thoughts.
Har, har, har. I am a believer.
DeleteWhile it might be possible that our current population is within the "carrying capacity" of Mother Nature un-assisted by fossil fuels is seems improbable that we have the social structures in place that will allow us a smooth transition.
You might want to look up "crab bucket phenomena"