Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

What "extremely hot" means in Sweden

Last summer in Sweden 2014 we had like five days straight with temperatures around 28 celsius (82 fahrenheit) during the day. Such temperature is considered more or less extreme and during such circumstances things go bad for some of us frozen swedes. Yeah, you read correctly, that is extreme for many of us. You're laughing right? Come here when it's -5 celsius instead and see who has the last laugh ;) Alright, I'm exaggerating a little. bit Most people like temperatures as such. But I believe I found an exception here.


Most housings in Sweden don't feature a cooling system, which is reasonable. I mean, it would be sort of the same thing as opening a sand shop in the desert of Sahara. However, sometimes maybe there is a need for sand even in Sahara. Some fellow engineering student (I guess), suffering in his rented student housing in Gothenburg, found a remedy to his hardships. Down at the yard there was a storage room for solid waste were disposed fridges ocassionally could be found. To shield himself from this burning inferno he mounted the fridge in the window of the apartment. That's right, when there was 28 celsius in Sweden some guy mount a fridge in his, or perhaps her, window. If the top part of the opening of the window was covered for the system to actually work is unknown.

This however reminds me of a deeper aspect. There is so much useful material that just goes to waste in Sweden, while it could sometimes be directly recycled, like here. Okey, this is not a great example, I don't expect people to mount old fridges in their windows. But a lot other stuff that is thrown away is fully usable.

Kommentarer

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

[VAWT] Plausible improvements of the Savonius windmill

Cut a barrel in half, mount it on a shaft and you have a windturbine. If the barrel is used, then what else probably would end up on a scrap heap is instead used for converting renewable energy. Simplicity and low cost makes this an attractive option especially for societies with limited economy and a malfunctioning or non existing electric grid. Small off-grid electrical networks can be built and people who perhaps most needs electricity get that. Isn't that neat? Savonius (from http://solarvan.co.uk/savonius) An overlooked potential? The Savonius though has a widespread reputation of having low effiency and is often dismissed as a credible option around forums and in formal litterature. However, when looking at the graph below from a publication Wortman did 1983, the effiency can be realtively high provided that the TSR(Tip-to-Wind-Speed-Ratio) is held at a correct value and the windmill should work quite nicely. In practice this could probably be done by controlling t

The heating system

One of my former projects was the design and practical realization of an automated wood fired heating system. Two key characteristics of the project were the reuse of junkyard bargains and realization of electronic system starting from component level. Budget was kept low. The system is now warming a house situated on a farm on the Swedish countryside.  I for sure have never done a project spanning so many different categories of work. In the end I had done manual metal work and welding, plumbing, electrical installation, creation of control- and calculation algorithms, circuit design and programming to name some. A box on the upper floor of the house with an Atmega328 microprocessor controls the whole heating  system.   Here is a video summary of the project: Systems furnace is a Braland 21 from http://www.braland.se The control system that is now up and running can among other things monitor 16 different temperatures, control all the systems pumps and do diffe

[VAWT] Affordable wind measurements

The shop Clas Ohlsson in Sweden sells a spare anemometer for the   WH-1080 weather station  for a hobbyist friendly price around 15 euros. This anemometer can probably be found in other countries too. The WH-1080 spare anemometer Here   you can read about how to use this anemometer together with an Arduino or any other embedded system.  As we couldn't find any data on the characteristics of this sensor, we did our own calibration in a wind tunnel and the results are presented in the report above. This anemometer was used in a Bachelors Thesis project related to the devlopment of optimization of the Savonius Turbine, here tagged [VAWT].