| My solar air heaters
| My drainwater heat exchanger | My solar setup | My biodiesel experiments | My lighting projects
| Links to information | Home | This web page is designed to promote the idea of GETTING OFF OIL NOW in particular and hydrocarbons in general as soon as possible. I believe it is of the greatest importance to do this as fast as we can. I will post information on every method I can find to save energy or get it from the environment or store it for later use. I will post real life information about the things I have tried and how they worked. Check back often as I already have a fair amount of information to post. Update 08/20/08 I have over 3000 miles running biodiesel and all seems well. It certainly does smell nicer. I never got the blob of black goop in the primary filter that I hear so many people talk about. This probably means that the previous owner took good care of the car. Update 05/07/08 Last night I finished installing the new Viton fuel hoses which are resistant to biodiesel. Tonight I pumped 16.5 gallons of B100 biodiesel into the tank on top of the remaining diesel and drove the 19.1 miles home from the biodiesel station. I calculate I have a mix of 78.6% biodiesel in the tank right now. Here we go. Update 05/13/07 I have added a page that shows my low voltage lighting projects around the house that use my solar setup for power. Update 04/28/07 I have finished my drainwater heat exchanger installation. There is a link to the installation page on the links page or use the one below. My drainwater heat exchanger installation My Solar Air Heater with Solar Panel Mounted on Top. This is an excellent way to get heat from the sun into your house so you don't use as much oil, natural gas or electricity. This one pictured here will get me a 25 degree difference between intake and output temperature on a sunny day. Click the link below the picture for more information about solar air heaters. This is just one example of things that can be done by the average individual. I built this box and the
test box on the solar air heater page. I am a terrible carpenter so if I can do it then almost anyone can. I chose this
because it is simple and efficient and it was something I could do now to help reduce my oil consumption. While this one may
not have made a big difference this year to my oil consumption, I learned alot and will continue to improve and expand this
project. Since my main objective is to get off oil, making heat is my first priority. Please send any comments or questions to: © 2005-2008 B. McGowan
However, a complete system that can extract energy from the environment no matter what the weather conditions is important. As an example, it is not always
sunny enough to make heat using the solar box but if it is windy, as it often is when it is not sunny, electricity can be
made with a windmill. This electricity can then be used to charge batteries, make heat with electric heaters, and hopefully
make hydrogen to store for use later by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using a process called electrolysis.
Storage of energy collected to be used later is also important. While batteries can be charged with extra power and it is
good to have some of that power immediately available as electricity, that will only get you so far and batteries are made
from lead and sulfuric acid which are not very environmentally friendly substances.
Hydrogen is much more environmentally friendly and no more dangerous than natural gas. It can be burned as is to make heat just like in a gas heater or stove, used
to supply a fuel cell to make electricity or burned in an internal combustion engine to turn a generator of some sort like a
lawnmower engine hooked to a standard car alternator or even in your car to increase your gas milage.
You may think generating hydrogen is hard to do but I learned to do it in 8th grade science class and was making small amounts of it in the basement tonight before I wrote this. It is not as hard
as you may be led to belive.
Biodiesel is another form of energy that is produced from vegetable oil from crops such as corn, soy and canola just to name a few. It can also be made from waste vegetable oil from deep fryers at local resturants making
it very efficient since it actually gets used twice. Home heating oil and diesel are the same and can be replaced with
biodiesel with almost no modifications to existing equipment. This could help reduce oil imports by a substantial amounts and
the money would go to our farmers which would help our economy instead of the people we get it from now that "don't
particularly like us very much".
I intend to share information on all of these methods and how to combine
them into a complete system and automate it so you don't have to baby sit it. My links page will help to explain these
different ideas and give you links to places where there is more information and equipment. Check back often as I am
constantly experimenting and posting results.
The link below goes to an information page. Here I put links for Windmills, Biodiesel and Hydrogen (soon). These are all things I am going to try if I'm not already working on them. As usual there is more to come.
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