Advancing Thermodynamic Architecture

Current architecture doesn’t consider the thermal opportunities for buildings, not only areas of high solar gain, but more important in a desert where to draw cold from and to store this for use during the day. Thermal fluids store therms, units of heat or cold, at twice the capacity of water, specific heat of 1.0, standard thermal fluids are 2.0 or twice the thermal storage capacity, don’t freeze until -43C/-45F, haven’t quite started to boil at 300C/600F.

So, to keep a home cool in summer, areas of lower temperatures can be used as a source of cold to store it, using insulated pipettes to move thermal energy from source to room. Cooling power can be obtained using ice-house ammonia refrigeration systems, the propane refrigerator of the rural past uses this system which takes heat to produce the changes for creating cold. This heat is quite easy to get from a dish solar collector, cloudy climates using more collector area than the Sonoran Desert.

Then, with some insulated tanks and thermal fluids, an entirely solar-powered space heating and cooling system is straightforward to produce. This moves the major power demand of the house off the grid, using solar-thermal instead of electricity gains orders of magnitude in efficiency over the grid system, no energy transformations are required in the solar-powered system, the heat or cold is used as-is, very little waste heat is created so minimal impact on global warming versus the grid, no contest.

To remove space heating and cooling at the residence eliminates outside power inputs and makes using PV’s, photo-voltaics, able to produce the electricity in a more practical way, being able to store enough in reasonably sized battery arrays to maintain for the daily cycle.

The residence still has these thermal needs to handle: Hot water and heat for laundry and cooking. A way to supply these with natural energy systems is to store 300C/600F during the day, that’s enough to burn the bacon, have instant boiling water on tap and other features not as easily available to electricity or gas. This concept requires a new series of product lines of appliances that will on the outside look identical to existing ones, the difference being the use of a thermal fluid to cook, heat or dry something, or, having the cooling power to refrigerate and make ice.

This then frees the PV-battery system from all thermal needs for the home including major appliances, so much so that having the battery capacity to run electronics, small appliances and lighting becomes very practical, thus the home can be totally off the grid and constructed having an identical look to existing homes if desired.

There is no reason to have a wire to the grid, the use of thermal energy directly doesn’t involve electricity, there’s no economic reason for a homeowner to put up more PV’s than they need just to spin the dial for a few bucks, and, if you’re not on the grid they can’t bill you. A homeowner is far greener with a diesel generator run on biodiesel for big ampere needs like running shop equipment, PV-battery systems are not good for high amps, so this is considered in the home, with the engine’s exhaust heat co-generated into the thermal system of the home.

A need in industrial design is a recognition, then, of the need to engineer all these methods and products. A major system needing full-cycle design is what goes into the sewer, all of that “waste” is a source of nutrition to grow the biomass to produce biodiesel with, this worth about 3-gallons a day per person in the home, thus supplying a transportation fuel by living in the home, a miniaturized version of the centralized supply process.

A personal note, without exception everyone the designer has described this to wants one of these homes!

So, the market for them is there, homeowners are fed up with captive-market, parasitic capitalism where every watt adds to the profit of others and you don’t get a dime’s worth of value for a buck. Current pond-algae biodiesel sells for $1.75/gallon in California local to where it’s made in biodiesel stations, this product pollutes the planet 40% of what gas-ethanol does, 60% is a big reduction in harmful emissions, and the fuel is made from “waste”.

The waste-stream includes solids, and if exploited by technology instead of ignored can produce other useful oils that have market value. At the end, the pressed cakes are rich, organic soil amendments that help the idea of self-sufficiency in food on any lot by digging them in, enhancing soil and plant growth, and, the waste processing purifies the water as the biomass extracts the nutrients, treated at the end and recycled water becomes another self-sustaining possibility if you have the systems in the home to purify and recycle onsite, the building design capturing run-off.

While the technology is wanting, centralized systems that perform these processes are straightforward steps to follow, miniaturizing them and engineering in adequate self-maintenance such that taking care of the system is akin to keeping a pool’s water balanced and clean is the goal for simplicity. In any case if this is done then much of the food required by the residents can be put in as crops, intentionally designed into the buildings and site, with all of these design criteria satisfied the residence becomes a refuge of a most fundamental kind, a residence with the maximum real value in a home.

It’s a change from a burden that taxes the wealth of the nation, allowing that value tax to be the profit basis for a parasitic form of capitalism, compare that to a real home, a refuge from the world where the basics of living are provided by the far more sustainable, full-cycle engineering and design these homes represent.

My designs incorporate all of these features, they bring together thermodynamics and common sense using the daily solar cycle to gain the heat, cold and electricity needed, storing directly heat and cold in thermal fluids, they require no conversion of power so are very efficient thermodynamically, and by removing all thermal needs from using electricity, PV-battery systems become very practical in terms of how many amp-hours of storage are needed in batteries, a generator for intermittent heavy current loads ends any dependence on the grid using a direct generation of the power and not steam as a method whose theoretically maximum efficiency is then onl’y 40% of the heat used to boil the water to dry steam, so on that alone natural systems are over twice as efficient as using grid power unless co-generation is used to capture and use that waste heat at the power plant, requiring piping to end uses, in the world there are very few power plants using co-generation so it’s not statistically significant on the grid.

The structural design of my buildings is composite, with the primary method using contemporary concrete and foam wall systems, adjusting the position or thickness of the insulation or wall width to adjust how much thermal-mass stores energy for maintaining the comfort zone with the least energy inputs for the design temperature differential, a principle demonstrated by some adobe homes that stay cool all summer without air conditioning. This simple construction system can then be adjusted to any room’s needs, a thermal transfer built-in to move the heat-cold from sources to rooms that by locations require inputs.

Thus, the home is built using a thermal view, choosing concrete over wood to leverage the thermal-mass to advantage where a wooden home can’t in order to maintain the comfort zone with the least energy. The advancement of these strategies will bring new economies based on a high value in return for the capital investment in a home, versus today where homes of any price have very little real value because they require so many external energy inputs, mainly due to housing having become a money game, something having nothing to do with creating a self-sufficient refuge, a home that is engineered to give a fair deal. Instead, homes are a rip-off, pay-by-the-watt economy that is best described as parasitic, if not horrendously inefficient from a thermodynamic view where entropy rules what happens, lose it and it’s lost when it comes to heat or cold, you never get it back again.

Current research is focused on roof and ceiling systems, the transfer of heat build-up in these a most important thermal source to recycle within the structure. The high differential in temperature is part of keeping the comfort zone without using much energy. Also, using forced-air is about 13-times less efficient than using a fluid to move thermal energy around, hence the growing popularity of “ductless” systems and the use of fluids in these designs.

Another important facet considered is how simple thermal fluid flow is to understand and use, like electricity, a diode ó one-way valve, power ó thermal expansion. From this analogy comes the relationship of expansion to flow, this natural consequence of a temperature differential allows passive transfer of the energy, few pumps are needed in complete systems, recent research is on designing “flow amplifiers”, using solid-state power harvesting techniques?

The variety of processes and methods needed to construct one of these “habitat” or “refugia” homes is not a big list of unknown technologies, yet remains rather much unfunded, obviously the antithesis of current captive-market, parasitic energy-for-profit games.

Therefore, an intent of this paper is to challenge the AIA and engineers involved in architecture to use and apply thermodynamics to structures such that thermal energy is never supplied by electricity, using direct inputs of sunlight or solar-thermal transfer for a building’s thermal needs instead of converting electricity for a thermal end use.

Hopefully all this will spark debate and create actions that lead to a more unbiased assessment of the actual profit to society of wasting so many precious non-renewable resources pall mall until there’s literally nothing left, why not look ahead and profit from the move to a sustainable design agenda and funding climate? The principles, methods, processes and strategies described reveal an integrated look at architecture, a thermal analysis so blatantly missing from current design standards.

Relativistic Molecular Levitation - Boundary-Layer Manipulation

Relativistic Molecular Levitation - Theory of Boundary-Layer Manipulation
by Tom Mallard, Independent Researcher
Reno, NV, December 5, 2010, All Rights Reserved

From a patent in 1964 on, there has been work done relating to the viscous boundary-layer in the atmosphere, a more difficult medium than liquids to use ions for propulsion or drag-reduction, the latter being my main interest for initial research, with propulsion later after learning about drag reduction. The original patent dealt with low-orbit, ionosphere in altitude flight so the fluid medium had an ample supply of ions to play with electromagnetically, although low-density so intended for near orbital velocities.

But to be useful to commercial flight a way had to be found to produce the ion proportion in the air flow for magnetism to be effective in the stratosphere or lower down. The idea was using an EMF wave down the vehicle in a Newtonian sense accelerating the molecules aft in enough mass volume to produce thrust at a practical level.

A recent patent in 2006, #7,017,863 B2, was based on a similar concept I authored in 1987 and sent to the Air Force’s Wright Aeronautical Laboratories in 1988 to let them evaluate, this was only part of a system proposed and they determined that, “it does not contain any innovative approaches …”, that used high-frequency to ionize the air near the surface, then, using EMF in a surface structure to reduce drag. To create a practical system requires it to be lightweight enough physically to not need a new airframe or wing certification if the existing commercial fleet worldwide is to be considered.

A close examination of the recent patent has key issues to attain a high efficiency for the system, this as stated to reduce drag initially with that empirical knowledge the basis for propulsion systems. It appears that the patented system operates up to about 15% reduction in aerodynamic drag over a plain wing, not bad yet the equation is cost-weight versus efficiency gained, for the commercial market it can’t weigh too much, going light usually drives up cost and that is compared to fuel burned per flight.

Regardless, my recent investigations, calculations and analysis led to what I feel is a discovery, enough to sign & date the initial draft on July 7, 2008, this a continuation of research into the same concept sent to the Wright Labs and patented 28-years later, the revisiting of the problem went on to examine things at the molecular level where sub-atomic forces overcome all those of the normal outside world.

The first finding of this research path came from an examination of the Compton Radius of the Electron, a real distance in space noticed for decades in physics labs. What was that? A scan of physics texts had left me wanting, so I began to have the hunch it was a captured photon, calculating it out at 99.999999% of the speed-of-light, the equations work out to the Compton Radius, almost exactly.

That was stunning to me, yet gave me insights for drag reduction, the next idea was to find a distance where sub-atomic forces exceed the outside world, the Van der Waals Radius or Distance is that distance where a molecule is “stuck” to the surface by sub-atomic interactions, and that is in reality the actual cause of shear in the boundary-layer, molecules stuck to the surface by being within this distance.

Thus, the importance of this conclusion is that although a molecule is repelled from the surface there’s too much time between EMF wave fronts and too many molecules “snap back” to allow high efficiencies in drag reduction if the frequency is too low, something the prototype system demonstrates.

Exploring that with math, an immediate finding implied that frequencies exist that would allow creating areas that repel molecules being ionized when approaching the surface in a flow, and this at quite a low voltage. Other findings suggest a system that can self-excite to operational power by the strong couple to the ions being affected.

My current research is into semi-conductor material concepts that can fulfill the overall needs of weight-cost versus actual reduction in drag to manufacture these systems for retrofitting current aircraft, anticipating drag reductions in the range of 30% at minimum, the calculations suggest drag can be eliminated entirely without much power, making lift a matter of angle-of-attack at high velocities but this is unnecessary for commercial flight.

While wings were the first surfaces considered, turbine and helicopter blades, including wind-power turbines, and, flow regimes for rocket engines, ventilation ductworks, even canals could benefit from this technology once it is developed into practical systems having costs low enough to change aviation, this as a first step toward a new level of boundary-layer manipulation and control that both saves fuel and brings a new era of performance to aerospace vehicles, we’ll see how it goes.