Enjoy the water while it’s good for drinking, available from the ever-depleting water tables, able to be cooled by whatever refrigerant used, and cold enough to counter the temperatures of the ever-growing heatwaves
District heating is objectively the best possible method for heating a town or city. The power plant rejects heat at like 70-150⁰C at the final stage as waste heat. Instead of using that to fucking evaporate water or to heat a lake/river you heat up water and circulate that around town and heat everyone’s place for a literal rounding error.
Little do most people know, you can actually do cooling with heat.
Yes I know, it sounds impossible.
Basically certain compounds absorb heat when you mix them with water. LiBr and ammonia are two types of absorption coolants that can make chilled water.
To regenerate the coolant after you added water to it, you heat the solution up. You can use any heat source for this provided it’s hot enough and you have enough of it.
Therefore, you could make district chillers to also cool a town using waste heat. You could even run these off of renewables, especially if you paired it with a big dumb tank filled with soapstone sand and nichrome heaters. Now you can take renewable abundance and turn it into high grade heat for district heating and cooling.
Enjoy the water while it’s good for drinking, available from the ever-depleting water tables, able to be cooled by whatever refrigerant used, and cold enough to counter the temperatures of the ever-growing heatwaves
So this comment sparked a rant I have bottled up
District heating is objectively the best possible method for heating a town or city. The power plant rejects heat at like 70-150⁰C at the final stage as waste heat. Instead of using that to fucking evaporate water or to heat a lake/river you heat up water and circulate that around town and heat everyone’s place for a literal rounding error.
Little do most people know, you can actually do cooling with heat.
Yes I know, it sounds impossible.
Basically certain compounds absorb heat when you mix them with water. LiBr and ammonia are two types of absorption coolants that can make chilled water.
To regenerate the coolant after you added water to it, you heat the solution up. You can use any heat source for this provided it’s hot enough and you have enough of it.
Therefore, you could make district chillers to also cool a town using waste heat. You could even run these off of renewables, especially if you paired it with a big dumb tank filled with soapstone sand and nichrome heaters. Now you can take renewable abundance and turn it into high grade heat for district heating and cooling.