Heat Operated Lightning System
Tushar Botuwar
Posts: 1
Hello All,
I had requirement of Lightning System which should work on Heat from system.
There is furnace which is continuously heating at temp around 400 Degree Celsius,so i want to use the same heat in order to glow light in furnace.
At the same time i want light to be ON when door is close and to be OFF when door is closed.
If anyone having any idea on heat operated lighting system then please share.
I had requirement of Lightning System which should work on Heat from system.
There is furnace which is continuously heating at temp around 400 Degree Celsius,so i want to use the same heat in order to glow light in furnace.
At the same time i want light to be ON when door is close and to be OFF when door is closed.
If anyone having any idea on heat operated lighting system then please share.
Comments
Or do you want to use the light from the furnace's heat source without conversion to electricity?
There are PIR sensors that will sense and measure heat from a distance.
Electrical generation from heat has traditionally been done by conversion to super-heated steam which drives turbines.
I cannot seem to comprehen why one would want to add lighting inside a furnace regardless of whether the door is open or closed.
Heat operated lighting systems.
A. a candle
B. a kerocene lantern.
It doesn't require a whole furnace to generate a few watts of light.
A furnace continuously at 400 C already has something glowing, doesn't it? Why not put a window to the chamber and use the light that already being produced?
Still, it's enough to boil water, make steam, drive a steam engine, to spin a generator to light the light.
Whilst at the same time driving a pump to put some water, under pressure, back into that steam boiler which a can then make steam, drive the engine....
After all that, detecting if the door is open or not should be trivial.
I mean, there's maybe fire in there somewhere right? he doesn't say what the heat source is, or how bright it needs to be.
You might be able to get enough energy from such a device to power a light. One problem with these generators (all generators using heat) is you also need a cold side to the generator. The cooler the furnace room is, the more power you can get from the thermoelectric generator. Using the thermodlectric generator would increase the amount of heat lost to the room.
My 1957-era gas floor furnace uses a thermopile to in the pilot light to generate 750 millivolts to keep the gas safety valve open. Basically a low-power solenoid keeps the valve open as long as the pilot light is on and heating the millivolt generator (AKA thermopile). If the pilot light goes out, the gas valve slams shut to turn off the gas supply as soon as it cools down (~a minute). I was always underwhelmed how little energy the thermopile put out. Never measured the current, but it must be pretty low. Your Wiki article also mentions low power output in the "limitations" section.
Their typical efficiencies are around 5–8%.
Possibly having a "cold" reservoir to route the heat to might raise the efficiency.
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Honeywell-Replacement-Thermopile-Generator-750-Millivolt-CQ200A/203186986
If you want a mechanical generator, forget the water/steam and use a Stirling engine.
If I were backpacking, I'd have to compare this to a solar cell on the top of my pack and see how much power I can collect vs how much I need, and factor weight in too.
Could you put a few thermopiles together and connect them to a Joule Thief circuit to power some sort of bulb?
in Siberia.