Stephen Cooke <stephen_coo...@hotmail.com> wrote: Regarding the waste heat, you mentioned that all the waste heat can't be > transferred to the water? But surely if the heat source is inside the water > tank it can only be transferred to the water. Isn't this how we do > calorimetry? >
Look at photos of the shipping container. It has shelves with insulation-wrapped large metal boxes on them. Each box is a cold fusion generator. Water flows into the boxes and then out from the shipping container in a single pipe. At least, that was the configuration in Italy. The boxes get hot internally, and some of the heat transfers to the water flowing through. However, it cannot all transfer. Some of it radiates out from the boxes to the inside of the shipping container. This is waste heat. The insulation reduces it, but cannot eliminate it. I am not capable of determining how much radiates, but an HVAC guy estimated that if there is ~1 MW transferred to the water, there would have to be several hundred kilowatts of waste heat. Here is a 6-burner 212,000 BTU/h (62 kW) restaurant stove: http://www.therdstore.com/page/IFSES/GSTOVE/SR-6-36 That is much bigger and hotter than any stove at home, which typically have 4 burners totaling at most 40,000 BTU/h (12 kW). 212,000 BTU/h is 62 kW, so if the waste heat if 300 kW (conservatively) that would be the equivalent of 5 restaurant stoves or 25 home stoves going full blast in large steel box, making the box a large oven. > As long as the water tank was insulated for 120 deg C and the water or > steam flow ensured this temperature was not exceeded I don't see why it > would get hotter In the container. > The boxes would have be very hot inside to produce 1 MW of heat. There are not many boxes. 50 as I recall. Each one has to produce 20 kW. > I suppose other kinds of boilers that have an external furnace for coal of > gas this is not the case, as the furnace it self might be much hotter? > Yes, space heating and water heating furnaces heat sources are always much hotter than the fluid. This is wasteful. It is an impedance mismatch. - Jed
