Instant Hot Ice for Heating!

[gravityblock]

Here's how to make instant hot ice to heat your home in the winter, http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Hot-Ice  There are instructions and a video on the link page for more info and showing this in real time.

A few questions I have.  1)  How long would it take for the solid to cool back down to room temperature?  2)  After cooling, does it turn back into a liquid?  It should, because the hand warmers are based on this.  If it doesn't then there is no need in reading the rest of this post.  3)  Is there anything I'm overlooking where the below idea won't work?

Please note, heating the water to dissolve the sodium acetate into the water is a one time process.

After the sodium acetate is dissolved in the water, then it can be placed outside in the cold winter air or the refrigerator for 30 - 60 minutes.

Then bring it inside and touch the solution with a bit of the solid sodium acetate on your fingertip or a toothpick. The solution should turn into a solid as soon as you touch it.

The newly formed solid should be warm (130°F, 54°C) and can help to heat your home.

For best results the solution should be in a good thermal conductor container holding about 5 gallons with an air tight lid.  After the solid cools to room temperature and is back in liquid form, place it back outside or the refrigerator for 30 - 60 minutes and repeat the process.

You could use many 5 gallon containers placed throughout the house.  While they are heating your home, you could have another group of buckets outside cooling.

The ultimate solution would be to have a small water pump to move the liquid outside to cool during the winter months, then move the water back into the house to be turned back into a solid to heat.  This would save time and work in not having to move those buckets back and forth.

This posting is to inspire ideas to make this possible without a lot of work and to improve on the concept.

Thanks,

GB

[ResinRat2]

This is a phase change material. Here is a link to a company that makes them:

http://www.pcmproducts.net

There is no overunity here. The amount of energy required to melt the salt solution from solid to liquid is the exact amount of energy required to freeze the solution from liquid to solid.

The energy you gain from the solidification process in the form of heat is reabsorbed once you bring the solid back to melt it into a liquid; so no net gain. However! if you could somehow bring the sun's heat into this equation then you would have a very useful way of storing and releasing the sun's heat.

A large number of salt solution containers in a block could store and release heat like a geothermal heat sink. Just like you suggested.

[gravityblock]

There's a technique of how to make ice in the desert.  I'm not sure of the exact process.  It's something like putting water into a hole in the ground and insulating it very well.  During the night, the water will freeze due to the ground losing it's heat.

Here's another method http://www.techdigest.tv/2008/09/making_ice_whil.html , A big mirror focuses the sun's rays on a tube of coolant. The coolant evaporates and travels through pipes into a chamber where it's absorbed by an unnamed material. When the sun goes down, this material slowly cools until it hits 40°C. At that point, the coolant turns to a liquid and due to pressure differences, it rapidly cools to below 0°C. You then put some water next to it, and voila, it'll freeze. The next day, you just do exactly the same thing all over again.

What this unnamed material is I don't know.   These would be methods to cool your home in the summer, but the ice could be put in the refrigerator as Creativity suggested in another thread.