Use of Asphalt Paved Surfaces For Solar Heat

vg30e writes "It seems that a company in the Netherlands has found a way to use asphalt paved surfaces as solar heat collectors. Flexible tubes under the surface of the road collect heat from asphalt pavement using water as the working liquid. The heated water is stored underground for later use in defrosting the road, or heating buildings. With all the miles of highway in the continental US, this might be a viable way of collecting massive amounts of thermal energy."

Comments

Energy efficient meme

[youthoftoday]

So they're using a series of tubes to make renewable energy? Seems like you can do anything on the internets these days...

Re:Old idea from Universty of Chicago

[bcattwoo]

Pipes and water just sound like a bad idea in general. Sounds like high maintenance costs, not necessarily suitable for all weather environments, high installation cost, specialized labour and more unions, ... it just sounds impractical. Right, certainly not as practical as your apparently low maintenance, all weather, low cost, monkey installed, made from unicorn horns electrical asphalt.

Re:My employer does this sort of thing for a livin

[hoggoth]

> takes in large quantities of water at ground temperature, say 12 degrees C, and compresses that heat into a tank of water (heating it to say 45-50 degrees C) and the water that returns to the ground will exit at something like 6-8 degrees C...

> A more layman style description can be made using orange squash. Imagine you have a large volume of orange squash...

I was having trouble following the process because I am unfamiliar with this "water" material you used in your example. Thank goodness you gave an analogy using "orange squash." Now the process is crystal clear because I am much more familiar with "orange squash" than water, as I'm sure is the case with most everyone reading this.