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That's kind of clever: http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Eutectic_20water_20heater#1510113076 http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Eutectic_20water_20heater#151... Alt
by zelos 9y ago
That's kind of clever:
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Eutectic_20water_20heater#1510113076 http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Eutectic_20water_20heater#151...
Although rendered kind of pointless with modern on-demand boilers.
- gjem97 9y agoOn-demand water heaters are really only feasible if you have natural gas or propane heat in your house. The electric ones are quite feeble and expensive to operate. This is a good idea. My intuition though is that the additional up-front costs of this type of setup would be enough of a barrier that adoption would be slow.
- Tuna-Fish 9y agoMy brother uses an on-demand electric water heater he built himself (he is an ee) and it works just fine. Also, it's less expensive to operate than a tank-type heater, as there is no cooloff loss.
- freedomben 9y agoI tend to think cool off loss is much less of a problem than people think. The insulation around those heaters is incredible. I once turned off my water heater before leaving on vacation, and when I got back after a week the water in the tank was still probably 10 to 15 degrees F warmer than room temperature.
- RandallBrown 9y agoI had a bad water heater in my apartment that kept turning off. It would take me 2 or 3 days to notice that there wasn't any hot water because I could usually get a few hot showers out of it before I noticed a problem.
- frankus 9y agoAlso in a lot of cases (cool climate, electric resistance heat, water heater inside conditioned space) that heat isn't really lost, it's just offsetting heat that would have come from something like an electric baseboard heater.
- mavhc 9y agoI have an on demand 10kW water heater, it's my shower.
- al2o3cr 9y agoThere was a pretty successful Kickstarter a while back for a product ("Coffee Joulies") that was exactly that, but for your coffee mug. Little bean-shapes made of stainless steel, filled with material that changed phase at 140F.
- rockostrich 9y agoThere's also Ember [1] (also a kickstarter I think) that just made a mug with a heating element and controller to keep your beverage at a specific temperature. Using materials with specific phase change temperatures sounds like an innovative solution, but it's also grossly engineering a problem that can be solved better by $10 worth of components. [1] https://ember.com/products/ceramic-mug https://ember.com/products/ceramic-mug
- grogenaut 9y agoI'd also be really worried about toxicity and materials that changed phase at that temp... Or well any temp. Can it leech through the walls? I wouldn't be Keen on dropping molten steel in my coffee either.
- sulam 9y agoSeems clear that the stainless steel is to keep the material out of your liquids. It is not molten! Keep in mind you regularly put stainless steel in your mouth and lick it. I’d say this is a reasonable use.
- maxerickson 9y agoIt's isolated components of vegetable oil: http://discovermagazine.com/2013/september/21-running-hot-and-cold-forever http://discovermagazine.com/2013/september/21-running-hot-an... Not really terrifying.
- maxerickson 9y agoA battery powered mug with an app isn't really any simpler of a solution than fancy ice cubes. Vacuum mugs already advertise hours of heat retention. Most hot drinks aren't going to taste better after sitting for hours and hours anyway.
- luckystarr 9y agoThere are actually companies manufacturing these things but mainly to increase heat-storage capacity of water tanks for solar heating elements. They use thiosulfates (the stuff in hand warmers) or paraffin wax.