Turning roads into solar collectors
The possibilities of creating solar energy from asphalt seem a bit far-fetched, but researchers at Massachusetts' Worcester Polytechnic Institute are looking into a way to do just that. By discovering the hottest layer of asphalt (it turns out, it's two inches below the surface), these researchers are trying to find ways to make it even hotter by painting an anti-reflective coating and adding in some highly thermal-conductive quartzite.How would this help conduct sustainable electricity? Well that's the key to this whole thing. They're trying everything from laying a series of flexible and highly conductive copper tubing, to utilizing an un-named "highly efficient heat exchanger" in hopes of picking up the intense heat for use in power generation. Of course there are still so many unanswered questions with all of this, but if these WPI researchers can pull this off successfully, it may be a cheap way to gather solar energy for the masses.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-19-2008 @ 2:07PM
8pozzum said...
The life expectancy of typical asphalt mixes is between 5-10 years (around here anyway.) After that, it is either milled up, or over-layed, both of which will change the depth or damage the system. I'd love to see this work, but I don't expect to see this ever materialize in the real world.
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8-28-2008 @ 9:29AM
john said...
I have been dreaming of this I hope it would work we have so many roads also, what are the effects of the black roads on weather are they causing global warming also??? does any body have any info on this? could we paint the roads a lighter color to reflect some of this heat build up? just asking..
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9-22-2008 @ 6:40AM
Total Solar Energy said...
all roads lead to solar power :)
http://www.totalsolarenergy.co.uk
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