Hi Folks,

I'll start this group with details of the trough I've been working on.   I'm building this as an experiment to see if it is viable to generate electricity, refrigeration or at least some good hot water.

I chose the trough design over a dish because it seemed the easiest to build.

I found some picture mounting frames by the side of the road which I thought would be perfect:



I bought a roll of Aluminized Mylar film from my local hydroponics store which cost me $30 for a 1.2m x 3m roll (I only used 1.8 m).

I found an excellent freeware program for calculating the dimensions of the parabola here: http://mscir.tripod.com/parabola/index.htm  

Marking out the parabola.


I used some 900 x 600 Corflute sign boards for the base:

My Dog!

 

Attaching the Mylar fim.
Here's my first test run. I set it up to heat water in a bucket but couldn't get the thermosiphon to work. I think this could be a problem with a horozontal concentrator. Used some Copper pipe as the concentrator. I've done some more work on this which I'll post soon. Cheers, Lee.