Living in a hot climate makes you (or maybe just me)
spend a fair amount of time thinking of ways to not be
hot. Unfortunately, many of my means toward not being
hot revolve around air, which can be a pretty awesome
insulator. So I was thinking, rather than pump heat from
air to air. Why
not pump heat from air to water?
This water could be potable or non-potable/gray, it doesn't
really matter, but how can we insulate it? I did a quick
search and found this paper on the transfer of heat on
superhydrophillic, superhydrophobic and superbiphilic
surfaces: http://goo.gl/0lRfYX
I don't pretend to understand much of that paper, and
correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that a
superhydophilic surface has three times the temperature
gain as superhydrophobic surfaces. I've decided to read
that as insulation (and the pictures helped, too).
So if we have a pipe that has a negligible change in
weight, but has enhanced insulation properties, lower fluid
friction, and as a result, reduced wear and tear on the
plumbing, we might have a cheap way to transport heat or
cool from one location to another.
The idea could be that we could take the heat from an
office building and use that to heat the pool in a gym on
another floor. Dump heat from an indoor ice skating rink
to supply hot water for a hotel next door.
If you wanted to use gray water, the heat generated from
a bunch of buildings could be used to maintain optimal
temperature for methane production in a sewage
treatment plant.
Another part of the paper, is that the thermal exchanges
can be treated to be hydrophilic. This would promote
greater heat exchange from where you would like to have
heat or cool, enter or exit the system.
Finally, enclosed water reservoirs could become heat
repositories. Where heat can be stored and tapped later
during cooler months.