One of the not-so-subtle reasons for mentioning solar innovations in a local forum is firstly Jamaica's abundance of "free" solar energy, and the possibilities of harnessing that energy in a sustainable, efficient and thrifty manner.
It is also thought that, as these discussions spread and take on a natural currency, our students from Sandy Bank Primary upwards to the highest levels of education will be inspired to be our innovators...taking the lessons which they have learned in academic laboratories and the informal ones by the "seaside" to bring real benefit and advances for the multi-tudes.

Here's an experimental idea worth latching onto:

It is possible to create steam within seconds by focusing sunlight on nanoparticles mixed into water, according to new research.
“We can build a portable, compact steam generator that depends only on sunlight for input. It is something that could really be good in remote or resource-limited locations,” said Naomi J. Halas, an engineer and physicist at Rice who ran the experiment.

Whether the rig she and her colleagues describe would work on an industrial scale is unknown. If it does, it could mark an advance for solar-powered energy more generally.

The experiment is more evidence that nanoscale devices — in this case, beads one-tenth the diameter of a human hair — behave in ways different from bigger objects.

The nanoparticles — either carbon or gold-coated silicon dioxide beads — have a diameter shorter than the wavelength of visible light. That allows them to absorb most of a wave of light’s energy. If they had been larger, the particles would have scattered much of the light.

In the focused light, a nanoparticle rapidly becomes hot enough to vaporize the layer of water around it. It then becomes enveloped in a bubble of steam. That, in turn, insulates it from the mass of water that, an instant before the steam formed, was bathing and cooling it....

In all, about 80 percent of the light energy a nanoparticle absorbs goes into making steam, and only 20 percent is “lost” in heating the water. This is far different from creating steam in a tea kettle. There, all the water must reach boiling temperature before an appreciable number of water molecules fly into the air as steam.

The phenomenon is such that it is possible to put the vessel containing the water-and-nanoparticle soup into an ice bath, focus light on it and make steam.

...nanoparticles are not expensive to make and, because they act essentially as catalysts, are not used up. A nanoparticle steam generator could be used over and over. And, as James Watt and other 18th-century inventors showed, if you can generate steam easily, you can create an industrial revolution.


Read More @:
www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/making-steam-without-boiling-wate r-thanks-to-nanoparticles/2012/11/19/3d98c4d6-3264-11e2-9cfa-e41bac906cc9_print. html