Remote Living > Heating

Phase Change [heating with solar]

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Bruce S:
With winter just a few short months away, the plants I have growing in pots will begin their annual back into the green house. The blue & black barrels can hold a whole lot of heat , but there's no real way for me to slow the heating without going into full insulation of those barrels ( very space constrained at this point).

I've been looking into different ways of storing more latent heat from our water barrels.

Being that my wife happens to be a chef, I also know first hand how well beef fat stores heat ( I've made a few tallow candles even). Tallow seems to be close to paraffin in heat/cold qualities, being that I can get it free thought I would try it first.
 
I went searching our forum and found that Madscientist267 had done some Phase change tests (for cooling) with salt water. I also saw where dnix71 has a link for Phase Change materials.

I'm wondering if anyone had thought about using the latent heat holding abilities of fats to slow down the cooling effect of the water or rather allowed the solar heating time to melt the fats to a liquid then release the heat while it converted back to a solid.

My thoughts are to use cases of canning jars, stacked in various arrangements,while sitting down in the barrels full of water; to absorb the heat from the water, melting the fats , then during the night the fats revert back to their solid state warming the water backup keeping the area warm. It may just be better to burn the tallow candles than all these other steps. BUT this seems to be a better cyclic route.

Any thoughts?

Thanks
Bruce S

Amish_Fighter_Pilot:
That is an interesting line of thinking. Its sort of the opposite of the way some cooling systems are being designed now, and yet works somewhat the same way. They make ice at night and let it thaw during the day.

I would strongly recommend separating the fats from the water completely if possible. They should be able to share heat across a radiator or something, but mixing them together is a recipe for unwanted anaerobic bacteria(and the smell associated with it).

MattM:
Is this to hold thermal heat from the day-time into the night?  (Because sunlight is already at a premium during the day on quite a few winter days.)

It would probably work through the fall until the real cold sets in and then you can burn the fat when sunlight isn't so abundant.

I can't help but to think getting heat into the system is much easier than a recovery system.  Once the cooled down grease coagulates and shields the remaining liquid from exchanging heat, then what?

Amish_Fighter_Pilot:
They make blender blade attachments that fit right on jars. Maybe he can rig some of them up as low-speed agitators?

electrondady1:
your making the supposition that animal fat can retain its heat energy longer that an equal mass of other material ? how does that work?

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