Solar Sausage for Electricity and Potable Water
Our goal is to create electricity via PV panels and provide a system that will be able to purify water using these solar concentrators, know as "Solar Sausages".
![bb_solar_sausage[fsu].jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b41242_e9745c621618491cbbe4933387a028e6.jpg/v1/fill/w_460,h_295,al_c,q_80,enc_avif,quality_auto/b41242_e9745c621618491cbbe4933387a028e6.jpg)
Solar sausage field.
A version of the soar sausage being used currently. The design Team 26 will be using has a different method of assembling the sausage but this picture illustrates the general design.
Solar sausage field.
About
The Solar Sausage design project is a multi-department project to be completed in a year. The Solar Sausage project was initially started by a research team at The Florida State University, this team created the parabolic trough system used to create cheap electricity via solar panels. The student design team will take the current system, invented by Ian Winger and Sean Barton, and look for possible ways to fix inefficiencies and add any applications that will help to improve the overall output of the Solar Sausage system.
Project
The end goal that the student-led design team will accomplish, is to create electricity via PV panels and provide a system that will be able to purify water. The design team must focus on three factors to keep the system working smoothly: the sensitivity of pressure levels within the two chambers of the sausage, a type of cooling system to keep the PV panels at a safe temperature, and a process to pasteurize the water. A pressure regulator will be present in the design in order to keep the separate chambers at their exact measurements respectfully. In this system, if the pressure is not exact, the output of the system alters drastically and will not perform as expected. The PV panels must be kept at such a temperature that they will not overheat, if the panels get too hot their functionality decreases. A design for a heat exchanger will be used to pull the heat from the PV panels into the water, this is the same water that will later be pasteurized and used as drinking water. The pasteurization process will be achieved by heating the water to a certain temperature for a decided amount of time in the second solar sausage.
Latest News
Shown above is the final design used for the demonstration. It was assembled in the Energy and Sustainability Center where the Solar Simulator is located. The Solar Simulator was used because of weather conditions that occurred during the week of our demonstration.
The Solar Simulator used for the demonstration is shown above.