The Solar Hot Air Generator

We are the most technologically advanced country in the world despite the influx of hi-technology products from Japan, Korea and China. Because despite what they send over it's a good chance that the original patents were held by American inventors or research people. However, what these countries do is take our stuff, improve on it and send it back.

This goes for energy efficient inventions like the photo cell and the hydrogen cell. However, except in the space program where power is need beyond the realm of our electrical grid these technologies have been largely ignored.. That is, until oil went over $140 a barrel. Now every one is back-peddling. However, here's little invention that came around at the right time.

This is a cheap little device invented by some older fellow who lies by the sea in the northeast involves soda cans. He took the bottoms and tops off a hundred soda cans and soldered them end-to-end in stacks of 10. He placed these stacks in a box just shallow enough to hold them and attached the bottom of the first stack with the bottom of the second stack with a "U-shaped" vent pipe. He did the same with the top of the 2nd stack and the top of the 3rd and so on until he had all the cans in series. He spray painted the cans and pipes flat black. Then he placed a glass panel from an old sliding door on the box, which covered it all.

Now, with a big hole drilled in the panel casing over the very first can and one below on the far side below the last one he then attached a dryer hose in each hole so that if you hooked a vacuum cleaner on one end you could feel the suction on the other.

He positioned the entrance and exit pipes on the side of his home facing south and cut holes in the side of his home big enough to accept the flexible dryer pipes. Then he mounted the whole panel with the glass-covered panel on the side of the home so that the two pipes would go into their respective holes. On the upper hole he mounted a small fan.

Here's how it works: When the sun hits the panel the flat black paint absorbs the heat and this heat is kept inside the panel by the :greenhouse effect" of the glass pane. The continuous stacks of cans connected to each other by the "U" pipes heat up and the small fan draws this heat into the home while the cooler air from the home is drawn into the lower pipe.

Is it practical? Well, the old fellow has his 2 sons helping him build hundreds of them for market. Of course now he has tools to streamline the process but the guts of it is still soda cans. His units are rated for 10,000 BTU's.

BTW: He gets $2500 a pop for the panels - a lot more than taking the soda cans back to the recycle depot.