Here's another PopSci:
Popular Science, June1990, p.29.
I also found this link on the Schatz heat battery:
Engine waste-heat storage.
Quote:
...the heat battery is a 10-kilogram cylinder 37 centimeters long and 17 centimeters in diameter. The container's core consists of a stack of flat sheet-metal envelopes filled with the heat-storage medium-readily available barium hydroxide crystalline salt. The envelopes also serve as turbulence generators for the engine coolant that flows through the container, Schatz wrote. The core is surrounded by a high-vacuum insulating jacket.
If the coolant temperature is higher than that of the storage medium, it warms the salt, which eventually liquefies at its melting point (75 [degrees] C). The device has a heat capacity of 600 Watt-hours when cooled down from 80 [degrees] to 50 [degrees] C. During discharge, the storage medium solidifies.
|
600Wh is about the same as what you'd get from a block/coolant heater, but it's free and remote, and lasts for a few days.
This article said the melting temperature of barium hydroxide is 75*C,
Wikipedia states 78*C. That may be a little high. My coolant temp hardly ever exceeds 78*C (during winter only on long uphills), and there are more efficient turbodiesels than mine (like 1.2TDi, of VW Lupo and Audi A2 fame), which have even lower temps, so the medium may never melt. On the other hand, any thermal help for a cold engine is good.
I googled around, but it seems that this in the news in the early '90's, VW and Saab fooled around with it, and then
Hush! I wonder why it never went mainstream? Cheap oil, like usual?