DailyDirt: Better Living Through Phase Change Materials

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Fri, Apr 1st 2011 5:00pm — Michael Ho

High school chemistry is probably the last time most folks hear about heats of fusion. As a quick reminder, when solid materials are melted, there's the energy to just heat up the material, and then there's some extra energy that goes into melting the solid (if it has a melting point) -- and that's the heat of fusion. This property can actually be useful for maintaining temperatures near the melting point of a material -- and that's a phase change material (PCM). This kind of thing can be done with other phase changes, too. Here are some interesting examples.

Keeping your coffee at just the right temperature (~140 Fahrenheit) for longer periods of time is a convenient reality with phase change materials. Next up: Earl Grey. Hot. [url]
PCMs can help to save babies! Keeping babies warm and not too cold is an awesome application for PCMs. [url]
Swamp coolers take advantage of a very common material, water, for its heat of vaporization. Too bad, this kind of evaporative cooling only works in low humidity. [url]
Wikipedia lists several applications for PCMs, along with a lot of other cool facts about these materials. It doesn't mention Coffee Joulies, but that could obviously change. [url]
To discover some other chem/nanotech-related stuff, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: coffee joulies, pcm, phase change material, swamp cooler

6 Comments

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:Lobo Santo (profile), 1 Apr 2011 @ 5:03pm

Typo
This kind of thing cab be done with other phase changes, too.

(emphasis mine)
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- Michael Ho (profile), 1 Apr 2011 @ 11:19pm
  
  Re: Typo
  Oops. fixed.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Apr 2011 @ 5:50pm

Swamp coolers can cool in the humid regions too if you pass the air into a dehumidifier like the Coolerado does or the other one base on it, that uses a liquid salt to dehumidify the air.

http://technewsdaily.co.za/2010/06/28/energy-saving-air-conditioner-system-5090-percent-less -energy/
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Apr 2011 @ 5:57pm

The videos for the Coolerado explaining how it works.

http://www.coolerado.com/tech-info/
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 1 Apr 2011 @ 6:16pm

Coffee At 140� Celsius ...
... isn�t going to stay coffee for very long.
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- Michael Ho (profile), 1 Apr 2011 @ 11:20pm
  
  Re: Coffee At 140� Celsius ...
  YIKES. Meant to say Fahrenheit... :P
  
  Obviously, coffee's gaseous phase change happens well before 140 C..
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