Cybermatrix1

Only I would expect the design would not be 3 dimensions as you asked but mostly all forces in one plane 😁

A cool. That is a known wide spread design. This is a very high force, I'm impressed. But it will come at a cost of displacement correct? We aim to make brickets for cooking fuels and we have a lot of groundnut shells. These groundnut or peanut shells have a a lot lignin so it is possible with wetted mass (softening)and perhaps heating with fire (lignine becomes like a glue at 200degC). After that the brickets are sundried. The bricket shape could be like icehocky pucks or at least the shape to cook with.

I think the wooden design is not that interesting to generate, but with a pellet release and refilling in one lever go (or two steps). That would be an interesting puzzle, yes?

I follow this person already for a while, very interesting things he come up with

For work in Malawi I am thinking of introducing a bricket press to make brickets from biomass. One person must pull a lever and a piston is pressing biomass into a cylinder and compresses it. The end of the stroke should be stronger and less fast. And with returning of the lever the pressed bricket or pellet is pushed out and new biomass is inserted. It can be an interesting design from scratch and nice context? It would be challenging to make it convenient for the person while large pressing forces are reached (5000n)

I like aluminium powder idea. And use the metal bar as heatpipe is a good idea. I would not see temperature as problem as most materials you mention can handle 800 deg. The idea is that you can draw energy from it thus cooling it. I think a molten salt chamber uses this combination of fast transfer and high temperature

It is an interesting these technologies you compare. Yes, a sand battery is in potential capable of storing higher temperatures if the source can generate these temperatures. We also have to look at the heat transfer that will seperate both energy buffers if seen from an application point of view. The heat transfer in sand is very low and this intrinsic insulation of sand begins to be very interesting when larger volumes are used. Water has a problem that it needs an extra insulation layer and larger volumes would be less interesting in comparison. However water is faster in exchange and is interesting as smaller buffer with shorter bursts and intake of heat.

Nice to see another project of you. I'll post my chicken coop project in near future as well

Good question on the low power of motors. Most of the low cost pumps have often DC brushed motors which do not need a controller to steer but uses a brush. Once there is not enough power (in the morning and evening) I think there will be a point where the power will be too low to overcome the torque and the motor stops. The centrifugal pump can still rotate easily compared to other types so I would expect the startup current will be low as well. Panels will deliver a constant voltage while the current will drop when light conditions are dropping. I think the simplest is to search for these aQuarium pumps (24/7 performance) on 12v but I doubt many cars/trucks have built in fishtanks ^^)

Glad to be of help. I think you can get away with a 12v pump as most panels of this power range are made for 12/24v. I suggest very simple centrifugal submergable pump with a bit of filtering around it and direct connection to panel. No inverter or battery, that would be way overkill in my opinion.

As an example case, if you need to pump from the pond nearby, 2m height difference and pump 0,25liter per second. ((0,25 *2 *9,81)/0,35)*1,33 = 18,6W ->20wp panel. I did not take into account the hose size butn0,25liter per second is not a lot. And every meter height difference added will add an extra 10W to the panel

I perhaps can help you with this. I'm working in a company that is helping smallholder farmers over the world to increase their crop yield. We used to start with a small hydropowered waterwheel but moved to solar due to the reach of the sun. I am the technical person that is sourcing pumps, solar panels, inverters etc for irrigation.

So far as I can read your question you don't need a lot of water and also not a lot of pressure. It is quite easy to calculate.

• Hydraulic power need (W) / efficiencies = electric power requirement (W)-> *1.3 = solar panel (Wp)

• Hydraulic power = 9,81 * height differencence of water (m) * liter per second you want to pump

• Efficiencies = centrifugal pumps are approx 35% eff so (hydraulicp/0,35) *1,33= panelsize

• halve a liter per second is sufficient for halve an acre (2020m2) of crops.

Please if you have more questions I would glad to be of help

Very interesting read. Time to make these sensory excursions open for public to understand the clouds physical existence.