water, energy (definately not *nix related)

[Stewart C. Russell]

Byron L. Sonne wrote:
> 
> Does anyone on the list know if there is any substance, preferably 
> liquid, that holds heat energy more readily and has a higher capacity 
> for heat storage than good ole H20?

What sort of temperatures are you looking at? From the few minutes I was 
actually awake during heat engines classes, I seem to remember that 
water has different specific heat capacities with temperature.

If you really, really need to get heat away from a very hot thing in a 
hurry, there's nothing to touch liquid sodium. It's what they used to 
use at the Dounreay breeder reactor in Scotland. Of course, being a 
highly reactive metal with a melting point just below the boiling point 
of water, there are some issues involved in its handling. ;-)

I think you'd have to have a fairly specialized application to beat 
water on price, availability, toxicity and general inertness.

You might get a better answer on Talk Energy <http://talkenergy.com/>, 
which is basically Slashdot for energy nerds.

  Stewart
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml