Why is it not used again and wouldn’t it be very efficient to combine with a heat pump for reuse?
Especially since water from shower or sink isn’t usually very dirty, couldn’t it be stored for a while in an isolated tank so that e.g. a heat pump can run more efficient on it than on usually colder air or colder ground water?
In: Engineering
1) heat transfer is proportional to temperature difference
2) heat is not very easy to reuse
1) means that, while warm water contains alot of energy, its incredibly difficult to extract it as the temperature gradient is small. Notice all of out industrial power stations, they rely on huge temperature differences. The modern ones will superheat water to force water to go to even higher temperatures than normally possible.
2) the energy can’t be used efficiently. mildly warm water means it can only heat things to temperatures less than the water.
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