Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I want to build one here.... but danged lack of money keeps interfering. It's on the list, after a pond based AP system.....

Steve, I've got to get the article and read it. If they were using a chiller system, they would still need to remove any ambient humidity in order to make the percieved effect of cooling to be greater. But my understanding from the reporting was that it was not unlike a block of ice with a fan blowing across it. (They might have used the same reporter to explain the system as the one that showed up to report on Mr. Turnbull's visit to Peace Lutheran College.)
Kevin

I found four articles, I haven't checked them out, but I think they are what I am talking about. Two are from news services and the other two .

www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/07/24/ice ... index.html

www.enn.com/greenb.html?id=1357

electronics.howstuffworks.com/ice-block-ac.htm

gadgetopia.com/post/5996

Hope these give you a little more info on the idea of using ice to cool a building.

I'll look for info on companies producing propane or ng/ammonia refridgeration/freezing units. I am sure that a solar collector should work, provided it can raise the ammonia to the point it is capable of providing the desired cooling effect.

Kevin

You may have to go to the enn.com site and search archives. When I checked it out, it would not give me the page. It came back as "Page no longer available."

The gadgetopia site gave me a similiar problem.

Kevin

Years ago I bought plans for a ammonia ice maker that was used for camping /fishing trips(to pack fish). It was 1 oxygen bottle and one propane bottle connected with a pipe and two valves. The propane bottle was 2/3 full of water. Ammonia was absorbed into the water. To run it you opened a ball valve and set the big bottle in a camp fire for a little while. When the temp of the large bottle started to rise that meant all the ammonia was removed. The ball valve was then turned off and the setup was removed from the fire. Next the oxygen bottle, now full of ammonia, was placed in a plastic bag and into a 5 gallon bucket. Then a small needle valve was opened. Within a couple hours you had a large chunk of ice. After making 10 of 15 gallons of ice the process was started over...

When some water got in the oxygen bottle you just fliped it up side down and drained the water back to the larger bottle.

Sounds like the icy ball, Dan.

I was reading the pdf file on the ice maker and it seems like there should be some sort of switching mechanism such that when the storage tank fills it should trigger a mechanism to "turn off" the parabolic mirror.

It adds a layer of complexity, but allows for multiple cycles of ice making within a day.

Since the parabolic mirror is pretty much a half-barrel, it could be rotated around the salt tube axis to present the back of the mirror to the sun.

I haven't worked out all the details and am slight afraid it will be a Rube Goldberg machine

Tamo, you can turn off the mirror by pulling a tarp over it. This will also initiate the ice making cycle.

In the design in the PDF the mirror is aligned east west i think so that tracking is not required, only seasonal angle changes.

If you covered the mirror and ran a trough of water that would speed it up a lot. We are looking at doing it here at our appropriate technology school but its a challenge to source a lot of the stuff. and We need to raise 500 or more bucks for it.

steve, sure you could. but it's not automagically

ahhhh yess, but the beauty of the solar ice maker is that it requires NO electricity NO moving parts, NO user intervention. automagic = failure points and reliance on spare parts

What good is a fool proof system if you can't break it by tinkering?

i catch myself doing that all the time. i'm learning to like simplicity. its a hard lesson.

Hi, that pdf link seems to be dead again... here is the new one http://www.free-energy-info.co.uk/P13.pdf if this is dead again the next time somebody wants it, I found "STEVEN Ice Maker" to be an effective search in google for it.