What to do with excess electricity? Any neat things to produce?

Hi,

I'm curious to know if any of you would have ideas on any good projects that would use excess electricity from a microhydro/solar installation. I'm planning a permaculture/cottage lifestyle and would like to see if there are any ways to make a small income producing something useful to the chem enthusiasts.

My place will be off-grid, and would not be able to sell back the excess electricity to the power company. I'm fine purchasing or making equipment to efficiently produce something useful!

So far I've come up with:

1) Chrome/metal plating of various items for crafts or perhaps specialized industrial parts.

2) Metal purification or separation.

3) Metal production. Sodium? Potassium? I've read through the posts here and this seems quite fun as well.

4) Production of various useful compounds like nitric acid etc.


Any specific compounds/chems that you can think of that would be interesting in this situation?

Thank-you!

ps, I've posted this in technochemistry since it involves electrochemistry, but please feel free to move it if its better in a different category.

How much excess electricity are we talking about?
If you had enough you could source yourself an induction heating machine. These things are incredibly versatile, if you get tired of doing one thing you simply move on to another from wrought iron work to ore processing to foundry casting to pyrochemistry to something like producing cubic zirconia. If in doubt get one anyway .

How much hydro/solar are we talking, and with how much storage capacity? 10kW of anything is enough to do a fair number of industrial things (like induction heating and melting, as mentioned). 1kW or less is enough to do some things (you can do passable arc welding in that range), but getting rapid bulk heating, like for induction heating, forging, melting, those sorts of things, is a lot harder.

Anything electrolytic can, of course, be done on pretty much any power level, limited by how much stuff you need to make per hour for it to be worthwhile!

If you only have a few kW capacity, but a few kWh storage (lead acid?), you could potentially do any of these activities, at any time of the day, as long as you keep it to a low duty cycle (say, a few hours recharge between 10 minute runs).

And if you do have a battery... I could make an induction heater that runs off that. Saves having to make your own AC grid (grid tie and UPS inverters)! Easy to integrate the solar panels, though the hydro is probably more comfortable at AC, so you'd need a battery charger to get that into the DC system. You could even wire the house with DC (using inverters as necessary for real AC outlets), making sure to fuse the circuits adequately (special fuses are required for DC...they're not too cheap).

Relevant coolness:
http://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html

Other ideas:
If you have nice clay deposits on your land, get into pottery! A kiln isn't hard to build; operating one is more of a challenge. Gas or electric are typical; you could run a reasonable sized kiln from a couple kilowatts, but you'll need very good insulation (pricey, but a one-time cost at least). Other additives and chemicals are best shipped in (for example, you probably don't have big deposits of zircon to make white glaze from..), but that's fine. Even if you have to ship in a pallet of clays and minerals every so often, the value-add for artisan pottery should be quite good.

Even if you have crappy clay deposits, you can probably make good molding sand from it. (And if not, it can be one-time shipped in just as well; it's quite reusable). A metal melting furnace is pretty easy to build (you could start with wood or charcoal fuel, from dead trees and brush!), and can only get better (like the induction furnace ). Making metal parts will probably be more practical and economical than most chemical processes will be. And don't get me wrong -- chemistry is an important part of metallurgy: phase diagrams, alloys, fluxes, binders; lots of important chemistry involved.

And depending on what grows on your lot, or what you plant, you could do some organic chemistry, extracting and modifying natural essences. Electricity isn't really directly involved in organic, but I can't think of a more convenient source for the various equipment used: heating mantle, water pump, vacuum pump, refrigerator, etc. (Maybe even get a Stirling cryocooler to make solid CO2 or LN2 for those reactions that need the chill?)

Tim

P.S. Don't forget the tall barbed wire fence to keep the zombies out

Maybe last year mining BTC would be a good idea, but with the increase in 'miners' its become very expensive to get a good enough [competitive] rig. Also with so many 'miners' it it hard to win those BTC .

Quote: Originally posted by Rassilon

Hi, I'm curious to know if any of you would have ideas on any good projects that would use excess electricity from a microhydro/solar installation. [...] Any specific compounds/chems that you can think of that would be interesting in this situation?

Quote: Originally posted by phlogiston

pressurized air The bitcoin mining was a bit in jest, but with free electricity it should be profitable, provided you eventually resell or reuse the equipment you purchased for it.

You could run a chlorate cell if you'd need truckloads of chlorate. You could also run a birkeland process with feasibly high amperage arc to kick up the efficiency.