thomas malloy wrote:
Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
For your entertainment on this holiday weekend, here's a water heater,
which you can buy today, which is about a
The approach was developed for use as a heating plant on Russian
submarines back in the days of the USSR. (Why not just use waste heat
from the reactor to keep the sub warm? They don't say.) A 3-phase
version was subsequently used on the MIR space station.
I noticed the picture of the submarine and the MIR. I don't understand
why either platform would require a water heater, the sub has waste
heat, and the MIR has solar radiation.
Most recently a 9-phase version has been developed. (WTF?? Nine
phases?? French electricity must be weird indeed!)
That's got to be a mistranslation, there is no 9 phase .
Yes, you're clearly right. The French word "phase" can mean either
"phase" or "stage" and in this case I think it must mean a "9-stage
heater". Specifically, on the "our products" page, they say:
Appareil de chauffage à ionisation à neuf phases, raccordé au réseau en
380/400 Volts triphasé.
which is, roughly:
Nine-phase [or stage] ionization heater, compatible with 3-phase 380 or
400 volt mains.
They've got CE certification, or so they say, along with some other
certificates (no UL listing, but it's not sold in the U.S. so they
don't need that).
The principle of operation:
--------------------------
It's a heating system which is entirely electrically based, and makes
maximal use of the energy available through electrolysis.
In short, instead of running a current through a wire to make it hot,
they run the current through water to heat it directly. This is far
more efficient, because, while electrons in wires travel at only 47
kps, the electrons in the water
Bable fish did a really poor job of translating, I'm not at all clear
about how this thing works, what is that black thing that looks like a
rotor?
Believe me, failure to understand how it works is not just due to the
poor translation! The explanation is lacking.
The black thing appears to be the heater itself; I have no idea why the
9-phase version has what appear to be 9 stubby little pipes sticking out
of it.
The PDF doc with the diagram labeled "Ionize: How does it work?", at
http://www.aepler.fr/Files/ionise_comment_ca_marche.pdf
shows water going in ("entrée eau") on the side near the bottom end,
water going out ("sortie eau") at the top, three electrical connections
labeled "phase", "earth", and "neutral", and two numbered sentences of
annotation:
1) Electricity: Speed of the electrons = 47 km/sec
2) With ionization: Speed of the electrons = 280 km/sec
And then in red letters, they explain the principle of operation:
"The great speed of the electrons causes friction which increases the
temperature of the water"
The red double-headed arrow inside the thing, and the brown, blue,
yellow and green circles, no doubt mean something but it's not clear
what. In fact the diagram would work about as well as an explanation of
a shock absorber as it does as an explanation of a water heater.
The astonishing thing is that they are apparently actually selling them.
It makes me wonder about French consumer protection laws.
