Solar Collector Heats Things Up
Virginia Wesleyan’s Associate Professor of Art Philip Guilfoyle completed his 8-foot by 6-foot solar thermal heat exchanger to heat the ceramics lab in the Fine Arts Building at Virginia Wesleyan using solar power.
With a cost-effective budget and energy-efficient idea, Guilfoyle was unanimously selected as the recipient of the 2007 President’s Environmental Challenge Grant. The grant for $2,500 is just one piece of an overall campus sustainability initiative to promote the implementation of environmental initiatives on campus.
In his proposal, Guilfoyle stated the solar collector would drastically reduce electricity as the ceramics lab is currently heated using electric baseboard heat, one of the most expensive forms of heating. In addition, Guilfoyle also wanted to engage students who were interested in the project to assist him with the design, selection, and procurement of sensible materials for the solar collector.
Junior Ryan Billy from Virginia Beach, Va., was one of five students who assisted Guilfoyle with the project. Billy said, “The collector came together fairly smoothly considering that it was a custom project, with no exact blueprints to follow.”
Billy said the project could not have been completed “without Professor Guilfoyle’s strong leadership and excellent vision of what the solar collector should be. This is just one step further in helping the Marlins go green.”
Guilfoyle said the idea of building a solar collector was in his mind months before the announcement of the grant. After conducting research and finding several instances where energy savings of 40 percent were achieved by using hot plate solar collectors, Guilfoyle’s mind was made up on what to submit for the President’s Environmental Challenge Grant.
“Certainly all this energy from the sun is free for the taking,” said Guilfoyle. “Why not take it?”
The break down of how the solar collector works is simple, and the sun is the driving force.
The hot plate collectors absorb solar radiation from the sun and heat the room anywhere from 90 degrees Fahrenheit to 150 degrees Fahrenheit, triggering a thermostat that turns on a blower fan. That blower fan draws cold air out of the room through an insulated duct. The cold air passes through a collector, is heated, and is then blown back into the ceramics lab through another insulated duct.
Materials used for the project included plywood, recycled glass panels from the Habitat for Humanity Store, aluminum flashing and screen mesh painted black that acts as the solar energy absorber and transfer vehicle, and polyisocyanurate insulation, a material listed on the U.S. Department of Energy Web site.
For Guilfoyle, constructing a solar collector has many perks. “Any homeowner could use a unit like this to reduce their home energy usage and contribute to a greener planet,” he said. “And all the materials are available at any home center or recycled from other uses.”
Junior Lauren Perry from Virginia Beach, Va., also assisted with the project and said, “The grant from Dr. Greer was a great idea, and for it to spur this and other environmental ideas that we can consider applying to our campus community means that people care about changing things.”