1000 liter IBC Tote for thermal storage

[pressurepro]

http://www.hooversolutions.com/poly-tote-tanks.html


The ones with the cage around them are very thin and a are basically considered "one way" or one time use totes...that's why they are so readily available used and cheap....for something more substantial look at something like the APR type of tote...new ones are kinda pricy but u can get used non certified "out of date " ones pretty cheap...and will last you years. Guaranteed....I have many of them that I use for chemical storage that are 12 yrs old +....just tryin to help.

[LowGear]

Here in Hawaii these puppies regularly sell for $200 a pop.  I wish I could figure out something to ship into the islands that I could use these for.  They sell for about $100 back in Seattle, Washington.

Casey

[glort]

Here in Hawaii these puppies regularly sell for $200 a pop.  I wish I could figure out something to ship into the islands that I could use these for.  They sell for about $100 back in Seattle, Washington.

Casey

Unfortunately I could go pick up a truck load for free here in Sydney. They used to go for good money and the brand new unused ones are still around $150. On fleabay etc they are advertised for around $50. There are a lot of places that get them and when the contents are used up they just want the things out the way. They seem to be getting more popular so I don't see the price going up any.

  I have 9 here. 1 I store rainwater in for the garden, 1 spare and the other 7 have WVO in them.

As far as Light and one way goes, I have had the eldest 3 for 5 years and apart from one cracking at the top from UV exposure, they are all fine. I have them with the 15mm pipe type cages and I have them with the wire. The plastic tanks seem the same in all of them excepting slight manufacturer differences in taps etc.

I found a great way to decorate these and protect them from the sun. The Wifes climber plants  love the cages and have really gone to town on them. Keeps the sun off them which is good for the plastic and settling the oil and makes them look attractive to the Mrs. Good all round.

[Jens]

7 have WVO in them.

So how old is your oldest WVO and how do you keep it from going bad ?

[veggie]

I found that not all toes are the same. Some have thicker plastic than others and the quality of the 2" valve at the bottom varies greatly.
Some have a good quality ball valve and others have a plastic butterfly valve which is made for "one time" shipments of bulk goods to mfg. and food plants.
The opaque "see thru" toes seem to have a thicker plastic than the solid white units.
I have a couple of the solid white ones which originally carried windshield wiper fluid and the plastic is notably thinner than the opaque one that I have.

veggie

[veggie]

7 have WVO in them.

So how old is your oldest WVO and how do you keep it from going bad ?

More relevant thread here...
http://www.microcogen.info/index.php?topic=3235.0


MobileBob,
I like your idea about foaming the outside of the tank. Adding an R10 skin to a tote would certainly go a long way to holding heat.
Im not crazy about the sand method. I would be concerned about moisture or humidity getting absorbed. Or any accident spill or leak would be impossible to clean from the sand.
The moment it gets wet it becomes a conductor of heat rather than an insulator.
I will look into those two part foam kits.

veggie

[glort]

7 have WVO in them.

So how old is your oldest WVO and how do you keep it from going bad ?

Well now you have created a new thread, I'll post the answer I had written there.

:0)

[veggie]

So, the idea is to have an insulated tote linked to 5 evacuated tube solar panels (Max output = 13,000 btu/hr) to create a large dump for low level heat.
On winter days when the sun is gone (or daylight is short) I still need to add some heat so that my draw from the electric grid is kept to a minimum.
This is where a changfa generator can help.
(My listeroid could do the job too, but I think the changfa is better suited to auto-starting and cramped spaces.)

Co-generation can provide electric heat via a heating element in the water storage loop, and engine coolant heat can be exchanged into the 1000 storage tank.
A fairly simple system really. The biggest challenge is constructing a reliable stop/start control system with the appropriate shutdowns and logic.
An easy task for you microprocessor dudes on the forum, but a bit of a challenge for me.
Well, the winter is long and I have a keen interest to figure this out.
Being that I already have most of the components sitting idle (solar panels, tote, Changfa diesel, heat exchanger, etc...) it makes a lot of sense to put this stuff to work and save some real dollars.
I am sure I will have lots more questions to the various experts on our forum as the project progresses.

veggie

[Jens]

This was exactly what I had planned (except not via a tote). A couple of solar heat panels on the roof and a large low heat storage container in the basement. The only difference was an additional tank for high heat storage. The low heat storage was to be used for house heat and the high heat tank was to be used to assist with domestic hot water. Thumper would be used to heat the high heat tank and heat would be spilled to the low level tank once the high level tank was at maximum.
The thinking was to also allow switchover of the solar heat into the high level tank during the summer (or make the low level heat tank into a high level heat tank). We have lots of solar energy in the summer and need no house heating but domestic hot water is still required in the summer.
The start/stop setup was a big issue for me and even though automation was planned it never happened. The biggest problem was the inability to start Thumper reliably.
That was probably another reason why I abandoned the whole thing - it's hard to get motivated to go out into the cold and dark to start up the engine and go back out 4 hrs later to shut things down.

[veggie]

The only ones on the forum that I am aware of are Jens, Ronmar, and Gino who have had operational CHP diesel systems up and running.
If there are others, please pipe in.
Gino had a couple of 165 gallon containers twinned together as a thermal store. (Similar capacity to a tote).
It would be interesting to hear how that system is working after a few years in operation.

Ronmar, what size is your thermal storage tank?

veggie

PS: Jens, with solar panels AND a small diesel you may not have to run the engine so much.
Your system is built and waiting for panels (and maybe a different engine).
Any desire to revive the system?

[Tom Reed]

Pipe! The cooling loop on our cs 6/1 is piped into the hydronic system in the floor of our house. It works real well. I just tee'd into the upper and lower lines to the storage tank.

[Jens]

PS: Jens, with solar panels AND a small diesel you may not have to run the engine so much.
Your system is built and waiting for panels (and maybe a different engine).
Any desire to revive the system?

I have sold all my WVO tankage and the hot water storage tanks have been disposed of. Solar panels were planned but never implemented. I believe that there would be little overlap between the two as we are perpetually cloudy in the winter.
Yes, I am REALLY itching to start anew with some system modifications but I believe reality has kinda thrown a monkey (actually gorilla) wrench into the works. Health concerns have me rationalizing what I should or should not do and at the moment all efforts are directed at my sail boat.

[glort]

Just on the heat side of things, if one wasn't running the engine for power and the solar panel/ tubes didn't have sufficient solar input, What about using a home made waste oil burner?

I set one up with an old gas water heater. I took out the gas burner and sat the thing over the oil burner and it worked very well.  I had no problem BOILING 100L of water in under an hour with the thing and that was pretty much just with the small burner Idling.

For fuel control I bought a small pre-built electronic on/ off timer from fleabay. It controls an electric car pulse type fuel pump. I set the on off times on the timer so the burner does the output I want you could get it down to the precise KW just by measuring the fuel flow.  It would also be easy to set up an auto shutoff with a thermostat connected to a relay that de activated the fuel pump and blower when the storage tank reached temp. With the appropriate sighting of the fuel tank and a small start up tank with Kero or some other non freezing fuel for those in the god forsaken cold, the fuel could easily be kept liquid or melted after initial start up to keep up with demand just from the exhaust heat or water returning before the HE.

I have run my burners from a cupful of diesel to start with and then heated solid lard and run the burner flat out  from melting that as I went.


My idea was to plumb up a bunch of 200L drums under my house and heat them up and let the heat escape up through the floor. I was also going to use the 200KW heat exchanger I got from an Olympic pool and use that to heat my backyard pool and insulate the top of that with some styrofoam and tarps and use that as the thermal storage bank.  I figure I could fire the burner every few days and then just circulate the water from there.

In any case, you can store and use the heat how you want but a Waste oil burner would be close as possible as nothing to run, give all the heat you wanted, ( and I do mean ALL!) be simple to build and save wear and tear needlessly on an engine. You can use WVO, WMO, tranny fluid, solid fat.... whatever is liquid or will melt, whatever you have around and can get free supply of.

Depending on the size of your home and the frozen hell hole you live in, such a burner would probably only need to be run at 5Kw or so which is a walk in the park for anything like this. Even if you wanted 50KW, still no problem at all. you just need to get an amply sufficient Heat exchanger. A car radiator or 2 would laugh at that output and if stacked on top of one another provide a pretty efficient way of transferring the heat as well. 


Another thing that may be a workable layer of insulation on an IBC is perarlite.  You could build a box around the outside of the cage, fill the inside with pearlite and it would work its way into all the nooks and cranny giving a first layer of insulation. You whatever you want on the outside and you are there.  Expanded concrete slabs ( Hebel) also has excellent thermal insulation properties and could be used as part of some sort of structural feature as well.

[veggie]

http://www.hooversolutions.com/poly-tote-tanks.html

The ones with the cage around them are very thin and a are basically considered "one way" or one time use totes...that's why they are so readily available used and cheap....for something more substantial look at something like the APR type of tote...new ones are kinda pricy but u can get used non certified "out of date " ones pretty cheap...and will last you years. Guaranteed....I have many of them that I use for chemical storage that are 12 yrs old +....just tryin to help.

Been looking for these APR toes but they as rare as Hen's teeth !
Perhaps more popular in the USA. Not much in Canada.

veggie