I have been thinking a fair amount lately about the potential of stacking in a symbiotic manner several functions into greenhouses. The greenhouse below is one such idea for this concept. Its central function is to act as an atmospheric condenser. The air is drawn in the four inlets and as it cools in the descending underground pipes it hopefully cools to the point of condensation. The condensation is then trapped in a buried storage tank. To drive air through this process a black 3' tube in the center of the greenhouse acts a passive solar air heater, this is ducted over the inlet draw tubes and the natural convection of the cycle acts as a fan to draw air through the condensation cycle. As is also illustrated their is a parabolic concentrator to increase the temperature and effect of the convenction action. I have not done calculations but it may even be worthwhile to place a small 200w air turbine horixontally in the tube to extract some energy from this stream.
Though it is not in the drawing I think that adding thermal earth mass around this tube would further enhance the cold weather growing capabilities of the submerged greenhouse. More ideas and refinement on this concept to come....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/58298476@N04/7707418084/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/58298476@N04/7707418550/in/photostream
Oh one further addition to this concept may be possible. The incoming air could be further cooled through an expansion process if each air inlet tube had a valve that cycled between open and closed states. When those valves are closed the air inside the inlet pipe would expanded by the upward solar chimney draft, this expansion would cause cooling in the pipe and aid in the production of condensation.
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