Our house is done and built, so no space for said system, but would a big waterproof hole in ground be OK to store maybe 16^3 metres (average winter's worth) of stuff?. Maybe pop a solar heat collector on top?

Viking House

I am not sure where you got those figures of €2,500 for 4m3, this is not the correct price.
If Piet did quote this price he was very wrong.
Xsorb will provide heat in addition to hot water if solar thermal tubes are filtered through the battery.
Also please be aware this gives direct heat through adsorption not generated by electricity or gas so it is extremely efficient. Without know the setup of your home I could not begin to calculate the necessary output needed.

beelbeebub

Excellent yes you memory serves you well, and you are well informed.
The storage of "Potential" heat can be help for years if necessary without dissipation.
When charging or during the desorption process the battery will take 90% of whatever heat it comes into contact with which can be stored leak free for the winter or indeed the following winter.

In effect you are drying Silica or Activated Alumina spheres with a huge surface area (up to 800m2 per gram). The more you dry it the better it will perform for you when it comes into contact with humidity.

Damon Hd

Density is between 700/850kg per m3.
of course this could be spread thin across the joists in a slab or indeed in the walls or floors depending on the Architects preference.

EcoMind, Tony is asking will dust particles in the air being blown across the Xsorb material not block it up and make it less effective over time.

Sorry misunderstood as with the delivery system HVAC/HRS there will be filters to prevent contamination yes.
Any particle on the surface of the sphere over time can impede performance. But the price of changing filters is low as it is simple.
The Spheres within the battery are used as I said earlier in refining natural gas, the sphere are hammered at high pressures and changed under these stressful conditions every 3000 cycles.
So with this in mind "theoretically" that would computer to 3000 years under far less stress than their natural gas counterparts.

Yes Willie it would.

In a retrofit it would fit into the existing system, but may need the controls updating depending on the age of the system and what make.

Willie : Sorry for half baked message.

The cost of a cubic metre is around £1,500, I have just talked to Piet Honkoop and he does not know where that quote came from.

Sorry if being slow, could you expand how the integration would work, my understanding that MVHR doesn't deliver enough airflow for heating or would it with higher temperatures from the store. I understand the MVHR can provide the humid air to the store but missing how the delivery works, is an extra fan required or would it be the MVHR unit that does it? Do you have any pictures of how it would look with MVHR?

RenewableJohn - Why do you try to give information about something you obviously know very little about, even if you were half correct (Which you are not) do you know what type of material to use Zeolite, Silicas or Activated Alumina. And if so with the reams of data you have at your disposal what size and type would you use.
With shoot form the hip information like this you could end up killing someone and a whole lot of legal trouble you don't need,
Why do you do this ??
Some of the materials which come under the banner of adsorbents contain Arsenic and carcinogenic materials.
Also the materials come in various sizes and grades all of which can make a difference to performance and cost.

EcoMind wrote:

''RenewableJohn - Why do you try to give information about something you obviously know very little about, even if you were half correct (Which you are not) do you know what type of material to use Zeolite, Silicas or Activated Alumina. And if so with the reams of data you have at your disposal what size and type would you use.
With shoot form the hip information like this you could end up killing someone and a whole lot of legal trouble you don't need,
Why do you do this ??''

EcoMind, I was just thinking how nicely everyone was behaving after a very tetchy start, and then you become all confrontational again. We are all interested in what your product may do. In finding this out, we may conjecture a bit, we may go down some blind alleys, and we may say things that you think are wrong and even dangerous. Correct us, educate us, but please do it in a civil manner.

I've just gathered a few points from this thread from the point of view of our house:

http://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-Xsorb-interseasonal-heat-storage.html

So, 10m^3 or less of this stuff might eliminate the need for winter space heating if I've done my sums right. Expensive yes, but I'm more motivated by carbon reduction than financial payoff.

I'm looking to slip in some solar thermal or PV/T sometime soon, so potentially these could be combined to leave only the need for something to produce DHW in winter, which would be remarkable.

Could eliminate the need for an even more expensive GSHP when eliminating use of gas, so definitely work thinking about further.

(I'd need to talk to an SE about putting 8.5t in our loft, for example, but there are alternatives even in our small house.)

Rgds

Damon

The reason I got upset with ignorant comment is the fact it can kill if the wrong materials are used.
So to give someone advice of not only about breaking patent laws but possibly misinforming that all silica gels are the same is very dangerous.

Neil if you want some figures for my own house to base some calculations on I will give you a run down.

I'm currently building a 215m2 house which on paper performs a little above certified passive house levels. My annual space heating demand is estimated at around 4500kWhrs and I would estimate that my DHW demand will be around 3000kWhrs so around 250kwhrs per month.

I currently propose to satisfy that demand with a 5kW ASHP at a cost of around £8,000 installed and it is estimated to give a seasonal performance factor of 3 so electricity usage is likely to be around 2,500kWhrs.

I have looked at instead installing an oversized solar array and with self install could probably have 50m2 of evacuated tubes and a 1000 litre tank for the same cost as the heat pump.

Even this set up would not cover my total demand, the shortfall is probably a little less than the electricity usage of the heat pump at around 2,000kWhrs split evenly between space heating and DHW.

So in this situation I have lots of excess solar energy in the summer to charge the Xsorb with.

However I am going to need about 4m3 of Xsorb to make up my shortfall of space heating at a cost of £6000 (is that the installed price including the heat exchangers etc. or only the cost of the material?) and still need to heat water electrically.

All the above calculations take into account using all of my low temperature solar heated water either direct to UFH or pre heating DHW.

If I were using Economy 7 electricity to heat my cylinder to run the underfloor heating from, the 1,000kWhrs would cost me what? £70 - £100.

Even if I were focused on a zero carbon solution and went ahead and installed it, Xsorb would still leave me needing to use electricity for DHW.

At the end of the day I have decided that the heat pump is a more reliable solution, I don't have to worry about abnormally cold or long winters as I would with the solar solution or the unreliability of winter solar in general.

There is also the visual impact of 50m2 of evacuated tubes to consider and the fact that I can now leave my roof free to install PV panels in the future if I so please.

I am also considering to use some low cost solar air heating panels to reduce my space heating load.

So there you have my considerations in terms of space heating and seasonal stores, you are welcome to pick holes in it in any way you wish and try to convince me that using Xsorb makes sense for me.

Posted By: EcoMind
So to give someone advice of not only about breaking patent laws but possibly misinforming that all silica gels are the same is very dangerous.http://1.2.3.11/bmi/www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/forum114/extensions/Vanillacons/smilies/standard/sad.gif" alt="" title="" >

Okay so what is so different in your patents lodged in 2011 that was not referred to in the article dated 1979 which SteveZ highlighted earlier in the thread. All I have been doing is referring to the 1979 article which as Steve suggests is not rocket science. I have stuck with what I know in respect of Activated Alumina but the 1979 article does describe other options available.