The sudden drop in temperature has made the problems of keeping warm and heating in the shelter more serious.
Although the outside temperature is -34°C and the temperature inside the shelter is still 7°C, which is enough to prove the shelter's excellent thermal insulation and cold resistance capabilities, this cannot conceal the fact that the temperature inside the shelter is already very low.
You must know that there may be a greenhouse in the shelter. If the temperature there is too low, it will affect the growth of crops.
While thinking about these problems and cleaning up the ice accumulation in the small shelter, Chen Xin had to think about how to improve the heating and preservation of the shelter.
Compared with the heating problem, keeping warm is not that difficult for Chen Xin. After all, his shelter is protected by a layer of soil more than two hundred meters behind. Even the entrance is covered with thick reinforced concrete and insulation layers. It has absolutely no insulation performance. By the way, the best proof is that the indoor temperature is still 7 degrees.
If he wants to improve the thermal insulation performance, Chen Xin thinks that he only needs to upgrade the insulation material of the wall again.
As for the choice of upgrading insulation materials, Chen Xin has no idea, but if possible, he would like to replace the insulation material of the wall with carbon-doped aerogel.
The thermal conductivity of carbon-doped aerogels can be as low as m·K under normal temperatures and pressures, making it the solid material with the lowest thermal conductivity on Blue Star.
Compared with traditional polyurethane materials, it has better performance and can still provide good thermal insulation effect even in extremely low temperature environments.
But the heating problem is somewhat serious.
Although the room temperature inside the shelter is still 7 degrees Celsius, Chen Xin would have no problem even if he didn't turn on the heater at this temperature, but the same could not be said for the cultivation greenhouse.
Although low temperature will not cause crop death, it will reduce crop activity and slow down growth. Crops that can be harvested in one month may take forty days to harvest.
Therefore, Chen Xin must find a way to maintain the temperature of the greenhouse at least around 20°C to ensure good growth of crops.
This undoubtedly requires a powerful heating system, which consumes a lot of money whether it uses electricity or gasoline.
After all, the calorific value of gasoline is here, the energy it can produce is fixed, and the conversion of heat energy into electrical energy itself has losses, and the electrical energy has to be converted into heat energy again. The energy loss in the middle is really too high, and it is completely not worth the gain.
After much calculation, Chen Xin found that he was still stuck by the energy problem. If this problem was not solved, it would be difficult for the shelter to continue to operate normally.
After knocking out the broken ice in the small bunker and throwing the broken ice on the ground out of the gap, Chen Xin returned to the shelter with the hammer in hand.
After taking off his protective clothing, he took a thermometer gun to the greenhouse, intending to measure the temperature of the greenhouse before thinking about heating.
However, this measurement was somewhat beyond Chen Xin's expectations. The temperature in the greenhouse was still 11℃.
Chen Xin looked at the planting greenhouse with some surprise. He carefully looked at the walls of the planting greenhouse and the fill lights hanging on the shelves, and became convinced.
These fill lights are used to simulate sunlight. The intensity can be equivalent to natural sunlight. Naturally, heat energy will also be generated. In addition, the wall insulation of the greenhouse is why it is not difficult to understand that the temperature is higher than other parts of the shelter. matter.
But even so, Chen Xin still has to consider heating up the greenhouse.
Although the temperature of 11℃ is not low, it will still have an impact on crop growth.
Putting the thermometer gun back into the cabinet in the bedroom, Chen Xin turned on the computer, eating self-heating food for breakfast and planning to check some information.
After checking the information, Chen Xin was also thinking about what kind of heating method was more suitable for him.
Chen Xin's refuge is located on the bank of Dongting Lake. As the northern gate of Hunan Province, this city has a large number of hot springs distributed in both the south and the north. However, it is a pity that there are no geothermal resources or hot springs in this city.
If there were geothermal hot springs, Chen Xin felt that he could give up thinking. It would be enough to dig a large hot spring bath in the shelter and directly use the geothermal heat for heating. If the geothermal heat was abundant, he could even use it to generate electricity.
However, Chen Xin no longer counts on the natural resources of geothermal hot springs. Not to mention that the city itself does not have geothermal hot spring resources. When Chen Xin upgraded the water supply system before, he drilled it fifty meters down, and the groundwater extracted was not only useless. Hot, even a little cold.
So I don’t count on the geothermal hot springs in Chenxin.
While browsing the information, Chen Xin also noticed a piece of information that interested him.
Although this piece of information had nothing to do with heating, it still attracted his attention.
This is a technology developed by an algae biofuel company in Florida, which uses the intracellular photosynthesis process of blue-green microalgae to generate ethanol.
The ethanol produced by blue-green microalgae can be excreted through the cell wall, collected as a dilute ethanol/water solution from a closed photobioreactor, and purified into fuel-grade ethanol.
This is a new technology that was still in the experimental stage before the disaster, but the promise is indeed promising, and the technology itself has been proved to be feasible.
According to the data given by this company, they expect to build 430 bioreactors/hectare, which can produce about 56,000 liters of ethanol/hectare a year. On average, a bioreactor will produce about 130 liters of ethanol.
A photobioreactor has about 4,500 liters of culture medium, which is 4.5 cubic meters in volume terms. Chen Xin feels that he can consider upgrading his algae oxygen generator to this mode, which can produce oxygen while producing ethanol. Come.
You must know that ethanol is a very good fuel. Although 130 liters is not a lot, it can be used in many aspects.
After recording this information, Chen Xin rummaged for a while, and then found the information he was looking for, the city's shallow geothermal energy utilization project planned in Yanguo's "13th Five-Year Plan".
The so-called shallow geothermal energy refers to the geothermal resources contained in the depth of 0-200M on the earth's surface. It is an energy concept relative to geothermal resources.
Although it belongs to geothermal energy like geothermal resources, shallow geothermal energy is defined as shallow low-temperature geothermal energy <25°C. Its main utilization method before the disaster was for heating.
Although the utilization technology of shallow geothermal energy is not a new technology, because the city’s three shallow geothermal energy utilization projects were planned only in recent years, these projects were not completely completed until the disaster. Not to mention putting it into use.
Looking at the introduction and related information about geothermal energy, Chen Xin couldn't help but feel excited. Should he engage in this? If it is completed, it will not only solve the current heating problem, but may also be able to develop deeper geothermal resources with continued upgrades in the future. (End of chapter)