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Ali Pourahmad's Inventions | Category: New inventions in the world | Related: Scientific discoveries and technological inventions
Thermal power plant using magnifying glass and sunlight | Thermal power plant using convex lens
◉ Invention: Thermal power plant using magnifying glass and sunlight
◉ Inventor and Patent Owner: Ali Pourahmad
◉ Category: New inventions by inventors
◉ Introduction and objectives:
In this article, we will briefly explain the invention of a new thermal power plant using magnifying glass and sunlight to create steam.
Let's imagine that for any reason, electricity production on Earth completely stops, then what parts of human activity do you think will stop as a result? A realistic answer could be: "The entire cycle of activities in all scientific, cultural, economic, political, and . . . fields will stop completely." In fact, posing this question and answer is the best way to express the vital importance of electricity production and its inseparable connection with today's human needs. Now, if we combine this inevitable need for electricity with the environmental consequences of its production, which is caused by fuel emissions from power plants, we will face another serious and more important issue, which is the necessity of producing electricity but without causing environmental pollution. A challenge that humans have been trying to find various solutions to overcome for decades.
Electricity can be produced in various ways, but when we decide to produce it at high voltage and in large scale, we will face a deterrent factor in choosing the type of power plant fuel. In simple terms, between creating environmental pollution and generating electricity in large scale using fossil fuels, we can only choose one option. Without a doubt, fossil fuels have a better ability to powerfully and continuously operate large turbines and generators than other renewable fuel methods. Compared to small hydro, wind, or solar power plants, large fossil fuel thermal power plants have much higher efficiency and effectiveness in producing and storing electricity for use. However, in recent years, with the rapid increase in global temperatures and environmental degradation, the role of fossil fuel power plants as the primary culprits in ozone layer destruction by emitting greenhouse gases and destructive substances (ODS) has become more apparent, which makes the need to avoid using environmentally polluting fuels even more important.
◉ Invention: Thermal power plant using magnifying glass and sunlight
◉ Inventor and Patent Owner: Ali Pourahmad
◉ Category: New inventions by inventors
On the other hand, the use of nuclear fission of uranium or other heavy elements in nuclear power plant reactors due to the high costs of construction and maintenance of this type of power plant, the production of radioactive waste, the very high and catastrophic risks of radioactive fallout for human health in the event of possible accidents, as well as the dependence on uranium as a non-renewable resource whose extraction causes irreparable damage to the environment, has made the use of nuclear power plants in all countries of the world economically and security inadmissible. And most governments prefer to provide more than 75 percent of their electricity production through fossil fuel thermal power plants. This important concern at the global level led me to design the idea of building thermal power plants to produce electricity without using polluting fossil fuels such as coal, fuel oil, or natural gas.
As with other ideas I have presented so far in the field of clean energy production, this time I again used the free and clean forces of energy production in nature. In the design of this power plant, I succeeded in designing a thermal power plant by using sunlight in a different way than current thermal power plants or solar panels. In this new thermal power plant, there is no traditional solar panels to produce heat or burning fossil fuels to convert it into electrical energy, but instead I directly used sunlight as the main fuel similar to the function that occurs in thermal boilers, which I will explain in the technical description section how this new power plant works.
◉ Invention: Thermal power plant using magnifying glass and sunlight
◉ Inventor and Patent Owner: Ali Pourahmad
◉ Category: New inventions by inventors
Fortunately, in recent years, everyone's interest in using new and clean energies has increased significantly, which shows global understanding and attention to the important issue of preventing environmental degradation. However, the challenge of the efficiency of renewable energies such as wind, hydropower plants or solar panels has slowed down the pace of movement in this direction. However, the effort to achieve high efficiency in clean energy production is increasing every day, and my idea and plan are also one of these efforts to achieve the highest efficiency and production of electricity without using fossil fuels by using natural forces. Undoubtedly, this idea has a very high potential for generating electricity, especially in hot and dry sunny areas or combining it with current fossil fuel power plants.
◉ Technical description of the invention:
In this thermal power plant, I used a large convex lens to create very high heat as a steam generator. In other words, in this design, by focusing the sun's rays on the heat generator's sink pipes, the water is converted into compressed steam and, passing through the turbine, causes the turbine shaft to rotate powerfully and ultimately the generator to work to produce electricity during the day. It is clear that the highest efficiency of electricity production by this power plant is during the period of suitable sunlight, but to use electricity energy during the night, the daytime production can be stored in new generation power plant batteries. This solar power plant can contribute greatly to reducing the use of fossil fuels, increasing the life of other power plant generators and increasing the output voltage produced by participating in the combined cycle of other power stations. In this way, by operating this power plant to generate electricity during the day, we can put the generators of other power plants on rest, and at night, by restarting the other power plants, this combined cycle can continue.
◉ Invention: Thermal power plant using magnifying glass and sunlight
◉ Inventor and Patent Owner: Ali Pourahmad
◉ Category: New inventions by inventors
It should be noted that, in particular, solar radiation is at its strongest and most effective in all sunny regions of the Earth between 10 AM and 4 PM, because the sun's rays hit the Earth at a more direct angle and during these hours the amount of atmosphere required for the passage of light waves is minimized. Also, the intensity of ultraviolet radiation is very high, which is known as one of the harmful factors for human health because the atmosphere cannot scatter and repel ultraviolet radiation during these hours. The peak intensity of solar radiation is around noon, when the sun is at the highest point in the sky, because solar thermal rays pass through less atmosphere at this time and lose less heat and energy along the way. The permeability of solar radiation to the Earth's atmosphere during the mentioned period is exactly the advantage and strength that can be relied on to achieve energy production, so I used this natural potential in the design of this thermal power plant. Although in certain weather conditions and in some dry and always sunny climates, this time period increases in the hot summer season and we can use the high thermal efficiency of solar radiation even between 8 AM and 5 PM, but usually the best time to use powerful solar radiation is between 9 am and 4 pm, especially in dry and hot regions.
◉ Invention: Thermal power plant using magnifying glass and sunlight
◉ Inventor and Patent Owner: Ali Pourahmad
◉ Category: New inventions by inventors
By using sunlight, we have a free natural potential for heat and warmth. Although the temperature of the radiative, convective and atmospheric regions of the sun varies from 7 million degrees Celsius to 5500 degrees Celsius but the heat of solar radiation alone cannot cause the steam pressure cycle in the boiler to move because of the severity of their weakening after traveling a long distance and the passage of photons and electromagnetic waves through the earth's atmosphere so we need to create steam pressure to rotate the turbine blades. For this purpose, I used a water tube system to convert water into compressed steam. In the new system that I designed, instead of using fossil fuels to heat the water pipes, I used the concentration of the heat waves of sunlight on a spiral sink to increase the temperature exponentially. This sink, covering the spiral tubes, is actually the place where the process of converting water into steam (similar to what happens in other steam boilers of thermal power plants using fossil fuels) is carried out by relying on the very high temperature of concentrated sunlight. To concentrate and increase the intensity of solar heat waves and bring it to maximum thermal power, I used a very large special lens (a convex lens with a large diameter) in the design of this thermal power plant.
By using this very thick convex lens and refracting the solar radiation to a convergent focal point, we can dramatically increase the heat intensity and heat penetration to over 500 degrees Fahrenheit, bringing the water in the spiral sink to boiling point and then to condensed steam in less than a minute. This increase in heat intensity and light focus on the spiral sink occurs due to the passage of light from the density of the air into the variable density of the convex and thick lens, which leads to a sharp change in the speed and direction of solar radiation towards a focus, which is actually the refraction of light. When sunlight reaches the stage of refraction and focusing on a focal point, its power and heat generated are hundreds of times greater than in the case of normal radiation, and the greater the radius and diameter of the convex lens, the more powerful the convergence with an extremely hot focal point is achieved, which can bring liquids to a critical temperature in the shortest possible time to become superheated steam. Also, to better control the increase or decrease in the heat produced by the lens, I designed this large convex lens on a rotating movable base with flexible mechanical arms that can be adjusted in height so that if the vapor pressure increases too much, we can change the focal point's focus distance on the spiral sink by changing the height of the lens to increase or decrease the heat.
◉ Click on any of the gallery images below to enlarge:
To achieve the boiling point temperature of the water inside the heat sink tubes, the tubes must be made of an alloy that has the highest thermal conductivity, and since copper is an excellent conductor of heat transfer and penetration, so it can be used as a suitable heat exchanger by receiving very high heat from concentrated solar radiation and bringing the water inside to the critical boiling point in the shortest possible time. The melting point of copper is 1085°C and the high thermal conductivity of copper transfers heat quickly along with other features such as resistance to corrosion, biofouling, compression and thermal expansion, which is why this metal was used in the selection of the pipe alloy. Copper pipes have relatively warm water inside them, which is pumped by two pressure pumps from the steam boiler converted into hot water and the main storage tank, as a partial water supply.
◉ Invention: Thermal power plant using magnifying glass and sunlight
◉ Inventor and Patent Owner: Ali Pourahmad
◉ Category: New inventions by inventors
Since the convex lens is circular, the focal point of heat also hits the radiation surface as a circle with a smaller radius. Therefore, to increase the thermal contact area of the focal point of light refraction, I have placed the copper pipes containing hot water in a spiral on the heat sink. Using this method, the maximum contact area of the concentrated radiation heat with the copper pipes is achieved, and the water inside the pipes is quickly converted into steam in the shortest possible time, and then the compressed steam enters the turbine blade chamber to rotate the shaft. In order to perform descaling or possible damage caused by the extremely high temperature of the thermal lens, which leads to deformation of the copper pipes, the spiral sink needs to be inspected periodically and, if necessary, repairs or replacement of parts for better performance. For this purpose, two entrances are mounted on both sides of the spiral sink connected to the solar lens for technical inspection by specialists, as well as the possibility of easy separation or replacement of damaged parts.
As can be seen in the computer simulation (video at the end of this article), the water cycle for generating electricity in this thermal power plant consists of 6 main sections and a number of sub-sections. In this thermal power plant, water first flows from the main storage tank, which is located at the highest elevation of the other tanks, to the hot water tank located next to it in the required and controlled amount. The internal temperature of the hot water tank is very high due to the entry of hot condensed water from the steam boiler, and this internal heat causes the temperature of the water entering the main tank to rise rapidly. This increase in temperature helps the water to reach the boiling point and turn into compressed, dry steam more quickly after exiting the hot water tank and entering the pipes connected to the sink.
◉ Invention: Thermal power plant using magnifying glass and sunlight
◉ Inventor and Patent Owner: Ali Pourahmad
◉ Category: New inventions by inventors
The water removed from the hot water tank is pumped by a pump to have more pressure to enter the spiral sink tubes and also to help increase the speed and pressure of the steam movement towards the turbine. After being pumped and increasing the pressure, the water enters the spiral tubes of the heat sink. The spiral tube alloy is made of copper, which causes the very high concentrated heat received from the solar lens to quickly and completely penetrate the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the water molecules. After entering the copper pipes of the sink, the hot water is subjected to very high temperatures from the concentrated solar lens radiation. This heat, between 9 AM and 4 PM, which are considered the peak hours of sunlight in sunny areas (areas close to the equator, desert areas, highlands, coastal areas), raises the temperature of the spiral sink to more than 500 degrees Fahrenheit and as the heat penetrates into the water molecules, compressed steam is produced. The resulting steam then enters the turbine chamber to rotate the impellers and shaft from the other side of the sink outlet.
Below the steam turbine, a vertical synchronous generator is mounted in the center of the two columns of the station to connect the turbine to the generator to transfer torque without energy loss and on a straight vertical line. The turbine shaft is directly connected to the generator rotor so that after the turbine shaft rotates, the torque force is quickly transferred to the generator and leads to the rotation of the rotor and the production of electricity. As can be seen in the video of this invention at the end of the article, all the equipment is located outdoors to better understand the operating cycle of this power plant, but in the final design, we can place the spiral heat sink and solar lens in an open environment exposed to sunlight and the turbine and generator assembly in a chamber so that dust and other environmental factors do not affect the operation of the generator and turbine.
◉ Invention: Thermal power plant using magnifying glass and sunlight
◉ Inventor and Patent Owner: Ali Pourahmad
◉ Category: New inventions by inventors
In the process of how this power plant works, after rotating the turbine blades, the compressed steam exits the other side of the steam turbine and goes through copper pipes with the help of a suction pump to the steam cooling boiler to be converted into condensate. As shown in the images in this article, the cooling boiler has 4 hot steam excess pressure outlet pipes (2 pipes at the top and 2 pipes at the steam inlet) and 6 window filters for cooling and lowering the internal temperature of the steam boiler. After entering the closed chamber of the boiler with a temperature much lower than the heat sink, the compressed and hot steam molecules lose their energy and the speed of movement of the molecules decreases and they come closer to each other. In this situation, the water vapor molecules, as they come closer to each other, experience physical cohesion and form water droplets. These formed water droplets move towards the tank located at the bottom of the boiler due to their mass weight and the presence of gravity and form condensation. The resulting water is again discharged from the end of the boiler tank and pumped towards the hot water tank to continue the steam production cycle.
The electricity generated by the high-voltage generators of this thermal power plant is regulated by voltage optimization transformers and then distributed by transmission to the output lines to the consumption centers or stored during the day in new generation batteries located in the power plant to compensate for the imbalance of production during the night. By using this combined cycle, especially in areas with very hot and scorching climates, it is possible to avoid any problems during peak demand for electricity consumption in the summer seasons or temporary reduction in production due to the withdrawal of other power plants from the electricity production circuit. Undoubtedly, this auxiliary power generation capability is of particular importance and high efficiency in the summer season of tropical and sunny regions.
◉ Invention: Thermal power plant using magnifying glass and sunlight
◉ Inventor and Patent Owner: Ali Pourahmad
◉ Category: New inventions by inventors
Like other inventions, this invention also has the potential for further development and optimization, and its commercialization can make a significant contribution to reducing environmental degradation.
End of article//
◉ Video of New thermal power plant using magnifying glass and sunlight / Category: Inventions by Ali Pourahmad
◉ Animation creator of this video: Ali Pourahmad
◉ Music composer of this video: Ali Pourahmad
◉ Narrator: Ali Pourahmad
◉ Language: English
◉ Subtitles: None
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