[RE-wrenches] Oil Heating/ Solar Thermal

Luke Christy sgsrenewables at gmail.com
Mon Jun 10 10:45:19 PDT 2013


Jeremy,
We did a Solar Thermal project several years ago to heat feedstock oil for a local biodiesel plant (profiled in the Apr/May 2012 issue of Home Power). The system has worked really well  We used a pressurized glycol system with a coiled tube heat exchanger in an atmospheric tank for heat transfer.  I would echo Mac's comments about using glycol in the collectors instead of oil. A water/glycol mix is a much better heat transfer fluid than oil, doesn't have unknown corrosion potential, and in addition you can use off-the shelf solar thermal components for the collector loop. We used standard harp-style collectors for the array, and were able to use fairly inexpensive mild steel for the fabricated atmospheric oil heating tank. A key design consideration for collector array sizing is that oils have much lower specific heat capacity than water. Thus it takes less energy to heat a specific volume of oil to a given temperature vs. heating the same volume of water. How much oil needs to be heated on a daily basis? Seems like it could be a lot if the application is for an asphalt plant.

-Luke Christy

NABCEP Certified PV Installation Professional™: Certification #031409-25 
NABCEP Certified Solar Heating Installer™: Certification #ST032611-03       
CoSEIA Certified PV Installer 

Solar Gain Services, LLC
PO Box 531
Monte Vista, CO. 81144
SGSRenewables at Gmail.com
719.588.3044
www.sgsrenewables.com



> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2013 13:16:37 -0600
> From: "All Solar, Inc." <allsolar at scswifi.net>
> To: "'RE-wrenches'" <re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org>
> Subject: [RE-wrenches] Oil Heating / Solar Thermal
> Message-ID: <7B236FEB7531473E9F6E26805F771854 at SrvcTagGV13VB1>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Thermal Wrenches,
> Has anyone ever heated an oil tank with thermal collectors?  
> Specifically, I wonder if the oil itself can be pumped through the collectors ( drainback or otherwise ) 
> This is for an asphalt batch plant.....
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> 
> 
> All Solar, Inc.
> Jeremy and Amy Rodriguez
> 1463 M St
> Penrose, CO 81240
> www.asolarelectric.com
> Phone 719-372-3808
> Fax 719-372-3804
> Email allsolar at scswifi.net
> Email allsolar at live.com


   










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