3 ms·
It consumes a lot of water, so it'd be expensive if you send the outflow down the drain. If you pump the outflow back into the fresh water supply, you have to w
by tlb 8y ago
It consumes a lot of water, so it'd be expensive if you send the outflow down the drain. If you pump the outflow back into the fresh water supply, you have to worry about contamination from everyone's heat exchanger.
In a dense urban setting, you can heat homes with water heated at the local power plant, either fossil or nuclear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoIf we think insulating a single home is bad, image trying to build the infrastructure for that throughout a city.
- maxerickson 8y agoThere's closed loop ground source heat pumps. It's all very situational as to whether they are practical to install. The vertical ones are more expensive but don't need a whole lot of ground area to be installed.
- jabl 8y agoIn my city, about 10% of the district heating load is covered by heat pumps where the heat source is municipal waste water.
- Scoundreller 8y agoToronto does this for district air conditioning with incoming city water. I don’t think they’ve bothered to calculate the effects of pumping warmer water into everyone’s air conditioned home...