Cooling towerA cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream, to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and cool the working fluid to near the wet-bulb air temperature or, in the case of dry cooling towers, rely solely on air to cool the working fluid to near the dry-bulb air temperature using radiators.
Heat transferHeat transfer is a discipline of thermal engineering that concerns the generation, use, conversion, and exchange of thermal energy (heat) between physical systems. Heat transfer is classified into various mechanisms, such as thermal conduction, thermal convection, thermal radiation, and transfer of energy by phase changes. Engineers also consider the transfer of mass of differing chemical species (mass transfer in the form of advection), either cold or hot, to achieve heat transfer.
Computer coolingComputer cooling is required to remove the waste heat produced by computer components, to keep components within permissible operating temperature limits. Components that are susceptible to temporary malfunction or permanent failure if overheated include integrated circuits such as central processing units (CPUs), chipsets, graphics cards, and hard disk drives. Components are often designed to generate as little heat as possible, and computers and operating systems may be designed to reduce power consumption and consequent heating according to workload, but more heat may still be produced than can be removed without attention to cooling.
Reactor pressure vesselA reactor pressure vessel (RPV) in a nuclear power plant is the pressure vessel containing the nuclear reactor coolant, core shroud, and the reactor core. Russian Soviet era RBMK reactors have each fuel assembly enclosed in an individual 8 cm diameter pipe rather than having a pressure vessel. Whilst most power reactors do have a pressure vessel, they are generally classified by the type of coolant rather than by the configuration of the vessel used to contain the coolant.
Radiative coolingIn the study of heat transfer, radiative cooling is the process by which a body loses heat by thermal radiation. As Planck's law describes, every physical body spontaneously and continuously emits electromagnetic radiation. Radiative cooling has been applied in various contexts throughout human history, including ice making in India and Iran, heat shields for spacecraft, and in architecture. In 2014, a scientific breakthrough in the use of photonic metamaterials made daytime radiative cooling possible.
HeatIn thermodynamics, heat is the thermal energy transferred between systems due to a temperature difference. In colloquial use, heat sometimes refers to thermal energy itself. An example of formal vs. informal usage may be obtained from the right-hand photo, in which the metal bar is "conducting heat" from its hot end to its cold end, but if the metal bar is considered a thermodynamic system, then the energy flowing within the metal bar is called internal energy, not heat.
Liquid fluoride thorium reactorThe liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR; often pronounced lifter) is a type of molten salt reactor. LFTRs use the thorium fuel cycle with a fluoride-based molten (liquid) salt for fuel. In a typical design, the liquid is pumped between a critical core and an external heat exchanger where the heat is transferred to a nonradioactive secondary salt. The secondary salt then transfers its heat to a steam turbine or closed-cycle gas turbine. Molten-salt-fueled reactors (MSRs) supply the nuclear fuel mixed into a molten salt.
Heat pumpA heat pump is a device that uses work to transfer heat from a cool space to a warm space by transferring thermal energy using a refrigeration cycle, cooling the cool space and warming the warm space. In cold weather a heat pump can move heat from the cool outdoors to warm a house; the pump may also be designed to move heat from the house to the warmer outdoors in warm weather. As they transfer heat rather than generating heat, they are more energy-efficient than other ways of heating a home.
Lithium fluorideLithium fluoride is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula LiF. It is a colorless solid that transitions to white with decreasing crystal size. Although odorless, lithium fluoride has a bitter-saline taste. Its structure is analogous to that of sodium chloride, but it is much less soluble in water. It is mainly used as a component of molten salts. Partly because Li and F are both light elements, and partly because is highly reactive, formation of LiF from the elements releases one of the highest energies per mass of reactants, second only to that of BeO.
Ionic liquidAn ionic liquid (IL) is a salt in the liquid state. In some contexts, the term has been restricted to salts whose melting point is below a specific temperature, such as . While ordinary liquids such as water and gasoline are predominantly made of electrically neutral molecules, ionic liquids are largely made of ions. These substances are variously called liquid electrolytes, ionic melts, ionic fluids, fused salts, liquid salts, or ionic glasses. Ionic liquids have many potential applications.
