Jeremy, We did a Solar Thermal project several years ago to heat feedstock oil for a local biodiesel plant (profiled in the Apr/May 2012 issue of Home Power). The system has worked really well We used a pressurized glycol system with a coiled tube heat exchanger in an atmospheric tank for heat transfer. I would echo Mac's comments about using glycol in the collectors instead of oil. A water/glycol mix is a much better heat transfer fluid than oil, doesn't have unknown corrosion potential, and in addition you can use off-the shelf solar thermal components for the collector loop. We used standard harp-style collectors for the array, and were able to use fairly inexpensive mild steel for the fabricated atmospheric oil heating tank. A key design consideration for collector array sizing is that oils have much lower specific heat capacity than water. Thus it takes less energy to heat a specific volume of oil to a given temperature vs. heating the same volume of water. How much oil needs to be heated on a daily basis? Seems like it could be a lot if the application is for an asphalt plant.
-Luke Christy NABCEP Certified PV Installation Professional™: Certification #031409-25 NABCEP Certified Solar Heating Installer™: Certification #ST032611-03 CoSEIA Certified PV Installer Solar Gain Services, LLC PO Box 531 Monte Vista, CO. 81144 sgsrenewab...@gmail.com 719.588.3044 www.sgsrenewables.com > > Message: 1 > Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2013 13:16:37 -0600 > From: "All Solar, Inc." <allso...@scswifi.net> > To: "'RE-wrenches'" <re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org> > Subject: [RE-wrenches] Oil Heating / Solar Thermal > Message-ID: <7B236FEB7531473E9F6E26805F771854@SrvcTagGV13VB1> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Thermal Wrenches, > Has anyone ever heated an oil tank with thermal collectors? > Specifically, I wonder if the oil itself can be pumped through the collectors > ( drainback or otherwise ) > This is for an asphalt batch plant..... > > Thanks in advance! > > > All Solar, Inc. > Jeremy and Amy Rodriguez > 1463 M St > Penrose, CO 81240 > www.asolarelectric.com > Phone 719-372-3808 > Fax 719-372-3804 > Email allso...@scswifi.net > Email allso...@live.com _______________________________________________ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address & settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules & etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
