Quote:
Originally Posted by Overdog
I question whether with water would actually get any flow through the system in a loop, especially against gravity. Seems like you might have cool water moving from the cooling tank back to the warming tank at the same time warm water is moving up...IF the temperature differential is great enought to generate such convection currents.
Otherwise the heat transfer would be mostly radiation and conduction...
Heat Transfer
Also, if the system is a closed loop full of water, heating up one side of it would just cause an increase in pressure throughout the system. If you heat it up enough, it would explode. |
There are a couple of items I wanted to ask about. Yes, the water moving up would be going against gravity, but wouldn't it be both pushed and pulled in that direction due to pressure in the system? After all, there would also be water at the other side of the system being pulled down with gravity.
As for pressure in the system. Because it is closed loop, the warm water would naturally flow to the highest point in the system as it was displaced by the denser cold water.
Explosion...
I had considered that possibility but did not think it would be too likely considering we are only heating with sunlight and not a more robust source of heat. That being said, I have an idea how to minimize the possible issue with pressure. Even though it is a closed system, I will require a few access points to the system. Probably one at the highest point (filling) and one at the lowest point (draining). If I left the access point at the highest point open until the middle of a hot day, the system should be at peak pressure and if I sealed it at that point the pressure would only be able to decrease, but never pass that level.
Thanks for pointing this stuff out overdog. I was really hoping to bounce this idea around a bit to work out kinks in the concept phase rather than once materials had already been invested in.
