Metamorphosis

Having determined that there is no personal profit in innovation, I have decided instead to simply publish a few of my inventions before they can be serendipitously stolen from me.

To that end, may I present the Greenhouse Electrical Generator. Everyone knows that greenhouses are incredibly hot. Most intelligent people also know that their heat-trapping properties can be accentuated by filling them with various heat-retaining gases. The question is: how hot can their temperatures get? Can they be used to literally boil a caldron of water? And if so, can that boiling water be used to turn a steam turbine, thereby generating electricity?

The answer is that it depends upon the gas. I therefore propose the following method of generating electricity: a plexiglass chamber is filled with a highly potent greenhouse gas. To mitigate the risks upon exposure, it must be non-flammable, relatively non-toxic, bio-degradable, and heavier than air. A good candidate would therefore be Nitrous Oxide, though there are plenty of others.

The floor of the chamber is covered in a material which can absorb sunlight and re-emit its energy along a spectrum of light that can be absorbed by the gas. This will result in extremely high temperatures within the chamber. Depending upon the concentration of the gas, it can easily be high enough to heat a boiler either housed within it or connected to its side, which can then be attached to a steam turbine and generate electricity.

If the entire chamber is also lined with both a heat-trapping material and an insulating material, it can keep temperatures high enough to produce electricity even after the Sun has gone down. Electricity can therefore be reliably generated at any hour of the day or night.

Stay tuned for more interesting ideas.