By JOHN COLMEY KUALA LUMPUR
EOH SIANG TEIK DIDN'T SET OUT TO DESIGN THE
WORLD'S most powerful solar water heater. He just wanted to go
trekking. As an architecture student in Scotland in 1979, the young
Malaysian was looking for a way to prolong a visit to Nepal when a
local businessman asked him to design a hotel in a rural area with
no electricity. His energy-efficient solution won first prize from
Scotland's Royal Incorporation of Architects. He returned with his
architecture degree and designed 69 rural buildings for the Nepalese
government, incorporating solar water heating. "My professors had
told me to leave engineering to engineers and be an architect," Teoh
recalls. "I was just looking for a way to save money on materials."
That quest resulted in a stunningly simple engineering
breakthrough. At the time, there was essentially one way to build
solar water heaters, using a 1976 Japanese patent that is still
commonly applied today. In that basic design, an array of tubes in a
flat glass panel is placed on a slope or roof and connected to a
water tank. The water in the tubes is heated by the sun, rises
slowly and enters a pipe running across the top of the panel, where
it pushes forward and empties into the tank. The circle is completed
when cold water is forced out of the bottom of the tank into a pipe
running to the bottom of the panel. From there it begins the journey
through the panel and back up to the tank again. Standing on the
roof of one his houses in Nepal, Teoh was watching the hot water
rise and shoot into a black 55-gallon drum when he realized how much
heat was being lost pushing the water through the system. Says Teoh:
"The first rule of solar water heating was that the tank was
separate from the panel" and connected by a single tube. "I knew
there had to be a more efficient way."
There was. After
pondering the problem for several years, Teoh designed a heater in
which each tube in the panel pours hot water directly into the tank.
That shortens the path the water has to travel by nearly a meter and
thus slashes the energy loss in transport. Building on the notion of
reducing resistance to hot water flow, Teoh's research over the next
decade led to several more design improvements. For example, he
added an additional lower panel with exposed tubes suspended over a
mirror that allows the heater to receive additional sunlight and
even work on a cloudy day.
Teoh's solar water heater, which
was granted one of three international patents issued by the World
Intellectual Property Organization (under the Patent Cooperation
Treaty) in 1997, out-performs the competition. It guarantees a water
temperature of 60-78 degrees - as opposed to the previous 50-60 degrees
ceiling - more than enough for an entire family of five to take two
hot showers a day. Unlike other solar water heaters, it doesn't need
an electric-powered backup which, on cloudy days, can make operating
costs sky-rocket. And Teoh's model can be built using materials
available at a local hardware store. Such simplicity allows the
company Teoh has set up in his home, Microsolar Malaysia, to sell
heaters for as little as $1,000. That's one-third the cost of a more
technologically sophisticated solar model designed by the U.S.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Teoh's design not
only produces hot water without burning fossil fuels, but it
operates more cheaply than other solar models. In the first 10
years, his heater costs a family of five $100 annually, compared
with $200 for a conventional solar unit with an electric booster and
just under that for an all-electric model. "It works," says one of
Microsolar Malaysia's 1,000 customers, Affendy Th'ng, a Kuala Lumpur
sales executive. Affendy went solar to help the environment and to
avoid buying individual electric heaters for his three bathrooms. He
now enjoys "a substantial savings on my monthly bill."
More
importantly, Teoh's innovation could unlock many more, including
solar air-conditioners. Until now, finding an efficient way to use
the sun's energy to cool air has eluded engineers because the water
temperature must be maintained at an average 75 deg. in order to run
existing solar air-conditioning models. Currently, five to eight
panels are required to reach that temperature, far too cumbersome
and costly for a typical roof, where Microsolar could potentially do
it with two to four panels. Many air-conditioners now use a volatile
gas like freon, which is known to contribute to global warming. So a
freon-free model could be a boon for the environment, as well as an
important new industry for Malaysia, already a major manufacturer of
air-conditioners.
Though Teoh has gained international
recognition for his stroke of solar engineering, he remains very
much an architect, designing buildings throughout Asia. Microsolar
Malaysia plans to franchise his low-cost water heaters to the
developing world, beginning with Botswana this year. Nonetheless,
Teoh rejects the notion that he is a hero. "I don't like the word,"
says the inventor. "I just want to be somebody who makes a small
contribution to the world." And if he is lucky, he may still have
time to go trekking, although the demands of fame are making that
increasingly difficult".
TIME, APRIL 5, 1999
= = = = = = = = = From The Victorian, 1974 = = = = = = = = =
Siang Teik - Prefect and V.I. Swimming Vice-Captain - is seated 2nd from right
