Sand Battery Prototype. Interesting device.

Hello, this is Chan.

I am building a sand battery with a hotplate, an aluminum pot, medium size 2Kg, 500 grams of sand, and a special fireplace fan. This is the principle behind an energy storage device.

The hotplate reaches 500 degrees C and absorbs 350 degrees C (500-150 deg C) from the aluminum pan and hotplate. The efficiency is around 40%. Maybe lower with the draft coming in.
Now I don’t have proper insulation of the pot. This could increase the efficiency way more than without an aluminum pot.
Note that for this project the steel pot (specific heat is 0.466 Joules per C) and the Copper have a specific heat around (0.385 j/g degrees C) so the Aluminum pot is the best choice for a heat conductor.


Time stamps of this video.

0:00- Start of the video.
0:21- Hotplate at 125 degrees C and the hot plate is at 500 degrees C. Bricks are required to protect the table.
0:33- introduction of the sand battery.
0:41- Introduction of what a sand battery does.
1:33- The sand battery. Sand itself is at 100 degrees C.
2:00- Pot Excel graph.
3:11- Hotplate reaches at the surface 150 degrees C.
3:34- Explaining the sand battery efficiency at 30-40%.
4:30- Explaining the practical use of a sand battery and it supplies are abundant.
4:51-Explaining that I could heat up a beaker of water but that would take too long to do.
5:00- Telling the viewer that the fan, due to the sand spinning, will spin for 2hrs or so.
5:37- The end of the video.

Practicality of a Sand battery. Although this sand battery isn’t that efficient, you could boil water or run a generator as a principle for an energy storage device. 500 g of sand was used in a cool device, and the hotplate was run for 40 minutes.


Warning:
Hotplates are dangerous if misused. Wear PPE when using the sand due to the dust. Silica poses a small risk.