Fraudulent Claims in Renewable Energy
For those who like to debunk fraudulent claims in renewable energy, here’s a thing of real beauty. It’s a device that uses solar energy to boil (thus purify) 5000 liters of water per day.
How big would that have to be? Well, let’s start with how much heat would be required to bring 5000 liters (= 5000 KG) of water (specific heat = 4200 joules/KG°C) from 30 to 100°C (delta T = 70°C). That’s 1.47*10^9 Joules = 408 kWhrs/day. If solar panels have an efficiency of 25% and a capacity factor of 20%, you’ll need about 400 square meters or 4400 square feet, or about 3 times the size of the average home roof. All this ignores heat losses and the extra heat required to maintain 100+°C long enough to kill the bacteria.
The video depicts a device a tiny fraction of this, purifying water for the people of Africa, and solicits investment on Indiegogo. Fraud.
Craig,
Why do you bather debunking these obscure little devices while ignoring all the exciting real developments in clean energy taking place every day?
Why not revive your true calling? Forget all the negative political activism and join the rest of us in helping promote the adoption and investment in one, (or a number) of the wonderful new technologies emerging to benefit the economy and environment?
By using new technology, I’ve been able to halve the cost of raising cattle in Australia (including water usage). Soon our cattle and sheep will emit 90% less methane!
Jemena Corp will pioneer using old gas networks as storage units for Hydrogen gas made from surplus Solar and Wind energy. Clean(er) coal projects are becoming very advanced in India and China. Canada has amazing new technology in, cement, concrete and construction materials using coal by-products to reduce emissions and improve material production.
Six different projects are entering trial stages to eliminate ocean plastic contamination by natural bio-logical means. (one works by turning plastic into plankton food!
We are trialing drought resistant vegetables requiring 70% less water. (not yet successful).
In the UK we’ve just discovered a huge deposit of methane seeping from an old quarry adjacent to our estate. We purchased the old quarry and surrounding land as a land restoration project some years ago with the intention of rehabilitation. Now we shall explore the possibility of using the energy profits from the methane to rehabilitate on a much grander scale.
There are so many amazing advances, why concentrate of small negatives?
Craig,
A few points here:
First: we agree this is fraud.
Second, and perhaps an even greater sin: it is stupid. It’s Rube-Goldberg absurdity to have a system designed to use 15-20% efficient solar panels so as to generate electricity that you will then convert into heat. Solar energy is predominately thermal already, and to convert ultra-majority of the remaining energy into thermal heat all you need is black paint.
Third: It only takes ~1 minute at ~75 C to kill bacteria. At 100 C it takes less than a second. It’s been a while since I mazed melomel (hobby level, few dozen gallons per year.. a long time ago), but I think I remember the pasteurization schedules. I didn’t like to cook the must, so I tended to go for several hours at ~55 C.
Fourth: I was ready to defend the company, since you were implying that they were boiling the water for a long time… and in my head I knew that direct solar thermal was ~100% efficient heating and you didn’t need to fully boil the water or leave it heating for a long time… and I clicked on the link.. and not only do they indeed claim to use PV panels, they also claim that their device desalinates water “without all of those expensive filters”… So they are going a step further and claiming that they are distilling the water. You actually understated the degree by which this claim is fraudulent, and you significantly under-estimated the amount of energy they would require.
“Perhaps an even greater sin: it is stupid.” LOL. Never thought of it that way. 🙂