this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
516 points (99.4% liked)
memes
10940 readers
3618 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Is there any way to store surplus waste heat for redistribution months later? The only thing I can think of is just a really large, high heat capacity mass surrounded by incredible insulation material, with a heat pump system built in to it. Which would be incredibly impractical.
Look into geothermal heat pumps. During the summer they pump heat from your house underground, and during the winter they pump it back in.
But the energy doesn't really stay there. The thermal mass and temperature of the ground just means that you can always efficiently take heat from it or effectively dump heat into it. Always predictably the same efficiency.
If the heat was actually stored, the start of summer and winner the pump would be super efficient, but by the end it'd be inefficient working hard to move the heat. So it seems kinda wasteful that the energy isn't being stored, but it's actually kinda better that it isn't.
You just described a water heater.
One that would potentially store heat at super dangerous pressures of steam granted.
Just have a safety vent. But I thought they cooled off within days, not months?
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/15/1091042/thermal-batteries-heat-energy-storage/