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MIT Engineers Find Ways to Save Energy and Make Boiling Water More Efficient

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MIT engineers designed a new surface treatment that makes boiling water more efficient. New surface treatments can save energy for systems used in many industries. At the heart of many industrial processes, including most power plants, many chemical production systems, and even cooling systems for electronics, is the energy-intensive step of boiling water or other liquids. They can significantly reduce their energy use by increasing the efficiency of the systems that heat and evaporate the water. MIT MIT stands for Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a prestigious private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts that was founded in 1861. It is organized into five Schools: architecture and planning; manipulation; humanities, arts, and social sciences; management; and science. MIT’s impact includes many scientific breakthroughs and technological advances. Their stated goal is to make a better world through education, research, and innovation. ” data-gt-translate-at

Scientists Have Found A Way To Save Energy And Boil Water More Efficiently

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Water boils a lot – whether it’s a cup of tea brewed in the kitchen or a power station that generates electricity. Any increase in the efficiency of this process will have a major impact on the overall amount of energy used for it each day. One such improvement could come with newly developed treatments for surfaces involved in heating and evaporating water. The treatment improves the two main parameters that determine the boiling process: heat transfer coefficient (HTC) and critical heat flux (CHF). Most of the time, there is a trade-off between the two – when one improves, the other worsens. After years of investigation, the research term behind this technique has found a way to improve both. “Both parameters are important, but raising the two parameters together is a bit tricky because they have an intrinsic trade-off,” said bioinformatics scientist Youngsup Song of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. “If we have a lot of bubbles on the boiling surface, that

Designing a surface that makes boiling water more efficient

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The key to the new surface treatment is to add texture at several different size scales. The electron microscope image shows millimeter-scale pillars and dents (first two images), whose surface is covered with tiny nanometer-scale protrusions (bottom two images) to increase the efficiency of the boiling reaction. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Boiling water or other liquids is an energy-intensive step at the heart of many industrial processes, including most power plants, many chemical production systems, and even cooling systems for electronics. Increasing the efficiency of a system that heats and evaporates water can significantly reduce its energy use. Now, researchers at MIT have found a way to do just that, with surface treatments specifically designed for the materials used in the system. The increase in efficiency comes from the combination of three different types of surface modification, at different size scale