4 ms·
I think what they're talking about is the following. If they could focus all of the energy on a very thin layer at the water's surface then most of it would go
by _aavaa_ 5y ago
I think what they're talking about is the following.
If they could focus all of the energy on a very thin layer at the water's surface then most of it would go into evaporating the water rather than be transferred into the bulk.
Sure, heating the bulk makes it easier to evaporate, but it doesn't help as much as concentrating it all on the surface
- margalabargala 5y agoThis makes sense, thanks.
- zdragnar 5y agoNon-evaporating water will also radiate heat back out into the environment, meaning that less of the heat warming the bulk of the water goes into the actual evaporation process.
- hinkley 5y agoI would think that at the point of precipitation, heating the lithium and not the water would be a relatively large loss of efficiency. Minerals and plumbing can be bad news. There are systems for efficiently extracting water from brine via evaporation, but that requires a dilute brine to keep from gumming up. I do wonder though if there’s a hybrid system here where you install solar panels next to the ponds, use the input pipes to cool the solar panels, and use the power for something like final processing or drying.