Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com> wrote: Consider a well-insulated box. It contains a reservoir holding a substance > with high specific heat and high melting point. Into the reservoir, and > through a tube into the box, may flow water, and steam may escape. Internal > controls may regulate flow. Hot air may be used to initially heat the > substance. How much heat may be stored in the substance and used to vaporize > water? It is certainly not limited by "chemistry." >
It is limited by electron bonds, which is to say chemistry in the largest sense. You can store heat in a solid until it melts, or a liquid until it vaporizes. The higher the specific heat, the more you can store. Of all ordinary substances, water has the highest specific heat. It can store about 10 times more energy than metal. If you pressurize the water, you can make it hot enough to boil water. I would heat it with an electrical resistance heater rather than hot air. Energy is stored by this method in many conventional systems. For example, some solar thermal energy plants store heat in hot oil, so they can continue generating when clouds temporarily cover the sun, or for a while after sunset. > No claim is made by me that such a device has been used to demonstrate heat > generation, only that it is possible, and not particularly difficult. > Not difficult at all, but the energy density is low. I think it is lower than a battery or most chemical fuel. It would be a little tricky to have something like this produce the output performance of the Rossi device. You would have to have a secret remote control that vectors most of the cooling water around the heat source at first, and then gradually sends the water to carry off the heat from the hot material. To store 23,107 kJ, you would have to have a much larger mass of material than you can fit into the Rossi device. - Jed
