this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
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I would think molten metal would be more effective for this, molten sodium or lead or something? Maybe some kind of Tin/Lead eutectic like old solder?
Firebricks just seem inefficient somehow, particularly since the heat isn't going to be uniform, while molten metals or salts can circulate and convect the heat more efficiently than... air.
The main advantage of using what is basically dirt is that it's dirt cheap. You need a metric fuckton of this stuff so the cheaper the material, the better. Also, molten metal is difficult to handle.
Fine, but given ... everything, it seems like you could do some smaller system with channels in the bricks for conduction, it's the hot air that bothers me, that's not great to try to use for conducting energy everywhere, you get turbulent effects.
How else would you heat up a huge pile of bricks? This is for industrial applications or grid scale heating systems. They basically all use hot air.
They use hot air warmed by gas burners.
Since we're using electricity here, and this was mentioned in the study linked elsewhere, they used ceramic heaters.