In outback Queensland there is a small town called Birdsville, it has a electricity generation plant that is driven by hot bore water using a refrigerant to drive a turbine.
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Refrigeration generated electricity
Sep 05, 2012
2 Replies
This really isn't "new"... it was done in the 1970's as a demonstration project by Honeywell. They got their heat from solar panels.. and powered a Freon 11 turbine.. made about 3kw of electricity, and powered a recip compressor using Freon 22 for air conditioning. It was completely self contained, once the sun was up.
The "lab" was in two 40 foot over-the-road trailers.. The solar panels folded down over the top and side of the trailers.. and the energy storage (20,000 lbs of rocks in big water tanks), generator, the turbine cycle and the "arkla" absorbtion unit were in the other trailer.
Made enough AC power and airconditioning to "freeze people out" of both trailers and run a slide show, plus all the instrumentation, on a normal Florida sunshine day. In fact, if you didn't use the heat it would cause the solar collectors to boil.. causing all sorts of problems.
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It was quite different, as they were using a different heat source, IE hot water, available 24 hours a day, it is a commercial venture that supplies power to a town.
It is interesting that the system you described was made way back in 1970
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