Use asphalt to produce energy

If you once burn a leg when walking on hot roads, you may notice asphalt capable of absorbing solar energy. A Dutch company is taking advantage of this feature to collect heat from roads and parking lots for heating homes and offices.

This seemingly funny idea was cherished 10 years ago by the civil engineering company Ooms Avenhorn Holding BV but in the context of climate change becoming increasingly serious, people began to think seriously about the problem. this topic.

Solar energy is obtained from a road with a range of about 83m and a small car park that can heat a 4-storey apartment building in a village north of Avenhorn. An industrial park of nearly 1.5 km ² near Hoorn city is kept warm in the winter thanks to the heat obtained from the summer through a wide pavement of about 0.4 km ² . The runways of a Dutch air base in the south provide heat for the hangar.

This Street Energy System is one of the slightly unusual ways scientists use to capture solar energy - an endless, safe and renewable source of energy - supplied to the earth. more energy in an hour than the world consumes in a year. However, solar energy currently provides only 0.04% of global energy resources due to high production costs but low productivity.

(Photo: AP / Bas Czerwinski) Proponents of solar power say that this will change in the next few years.

Other solar sources have many disadvantages: not all wind is turning to turbine; waves and tides are only useful for coastal areas; hydroelectricity requires rivers and giant dams; Bioenergy again occupies lands that were only used in agriculture.

According to Patrick Mazza, member of Climate Solutions consulting group based in Seattle, Washington: 'The sun shines everywhere. Compared to other energy sources, solar energy is a step forward and this is what people are looking for. '

Ooms' thermal energy system is essentially a by-product of the goal of reducing maintenance costs for street maintenance.

A system of flexible water pipes is fixed by a line system and covered with asphalt used to increase the solar heat . When the water in the pipes is heated, it is pumped deep into the ground to natural aquifers and maintained at 30 ^o C. This hot water can be withdrawn to a few months later to keep the surface the road surface is not frozen in winter.

Although this will double the cost of construction, the system can increase the lifespan of streets and bridges, reduce accidents due to slipping on the ice surface and the need to tiling the road surface also reduces. less. But the system can also be used to pump cold water from underground storage tanks to cool buildings in the summer.

Lex Van Zaane, the company's commercial director, said: 'We discovered we were getting more energy than we needed and we consulted a contractor who built a way to handle the excess energy. The answer we received was to build buildings near asphalt and install hot water under the floor. '

This water source is not hot enough so it must be pumped through an electric heating machine. The installation fee will be double that of a conventional gas heating system but only half the energy needed. This helps to reduce monthly heating costs and reduce carbon emissions by up to 50%.

Roof-mounted solar water heaters have appeared in many countries decades ago. In 1954, Bell Laboratories created the first batteries to convert sunlight into electricity. But only in recent years have scientists begun to improve the performance of energy batteries to improve the economics of this energy source with modern technology.

Experimental technologies include methods of collecting solar energy with mirrors or lenses, devices that track the sun's direction. New materials are used to boost batteries. Scientists are studying the possibility of using electrochemical batteries using liquids instead of solids to absorb light.

The report in New Scientist magazine states that 'The perspective of humanity must rely on the sun for its energy needs to become more and more bold.'