DJ Cravens <[email protected]> wrote: Notice I did not say flow calorimetry was needed. Just heating a > container of water - pool, spa, teapot.... >
I have thought about that. During the initial warm up phase you would get an interesting result. After that, when it reaches a steady state, you would maintain the entire body of water at a certain temperature for weeks. The body (the bath and its container) would be losing heat into the surroundings. It amounts to more or less the same thing they are doing now, with a bigger body and more thermal mass, plus evaporation and other complicated stuff. I do not see an advantage. A spa or a pond is not a simple thing to model. You do not need to measure flow rates if the effect is significant. > You don't need to measure it now. You have to depend on Drs. Stefan and Boltzmann being right. As for convection, you just gotta look up the numbers in an HVAC textbook. It avoids all the % steam questions, the emissivity numbers, the air flow, > the cameras...... > It does not avoid the steam question! On the contrary, with a body water you are right back to that problem, with evaporation. There are no serious questions about emissivity, air flow, or cameras. The emissivity can be set to 1 (worst case). The air flow comes out of an engineering textbook. We know the camera and emissivity are right because the thermocouple confirms them. All questions are addressed and all are closed. It is about the simplest measure of heat. > The present method is the simplest. Using a body of hot water heated to terminal temperature would be more complicated. The present method is not the most accurate but I doubt that a large body of water would be more accurate. - Jed
