Waste heat recovery devices

[Jessica Med-Beq]

I believe canon has mostly kept quiet about this, but I believe that, since reactors and propulsion systems all produce waste heat, perhaps waste heat could be used to power stuff like life support, water heaters, shipboard kitchens, or even be used in an auxiliary reactor (they won't produce nearly as much power as the main reactors and engines, but still enough to power life support, computer mainframes, water heaters and shipboard kitchens).

Perhaps the first and third Death Stars had thermal exhaust ports because they couldn't use all the waste heat from the main reactor...

 

[Kami Meran]

a heat sink?

 

[Verz Horak]

a heat sink?

Came here to post that

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

The stuff I am talking about is actual stuff real-world waste heat recovery devices are used for. One would assume Star Wars would also make use of such devices.

a heat sink?

That might account for why sublight engines partially protrude from the hull in many canon ships, the exposed part of the sublight engines act as a heat sink...

 

[Kurayami Bloodborn]

In space the heat is radiated out as there is no medium to provide for convective means of cooling or for the dispersion of heat through other means. So what I would see as likely is that the ridged design you see on many engines is a byproduct of needing to radiate the heat away from its source without causing damage to the metal used or having to attach special panels that would affect something like a fighter in a negative way by adding to the mass of the craft. The waste heat would be spread ofver a larger area and then would be taken care of rather easily due to the background temperature of space being about -270 degree Fahrenheit. As for the internal components all you need is to spread the heat over the skin of the craft to allow for it to radiate off with little issue since that would be spread over a much wider area. So chances are that many ships engines and reactors already have such a component in place given the amount of time they can go between refueling.

TL;DR-Another minor detail that doesn't really affect the plot or most writers as we don't need to know how exactly heat is dealt with in Star Wars to write a good space battle.

 

[Dashka Soon]

[member="Kurayami Bloodborn"]
thus my posting a heat sink.
oops wrong character,

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

The trick is that I have this dev thread for battlecruiser engines, on which WHRDs would be mounted so that waste heat would be used in several ways: providing a source of heat for the on-board kitchens, for internal waste management, keeping the ship at more manageable temperatures for organic crews, for heating water. And perhaps an auxiliary power generator but said generator won't generate nearly as much power as the primary.

Maybe I could even sub a WHRD to be available across all size brackets of the game (1 per engine or reactor on a ship: hyperdrives count as 1 engine regardless of the presence or absence of backups)

It might not make a difference in fleeting, but I have seen a wide array of components sold on the Marketplace that didn't either: landing gears, collision avoidance systems, sound systems, and so on, so forth.

 

[sabrina]

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"] the chance are the will be pipes running around it, containing water. That will be pumped around waste water tanks, on the bigger ships, to help purify the wastewater. By making very hot. The steam coming of it, then would be collected and recycled. Also some of it would be used, to give the crew hot water, so they can shower and wash there hands.
This would be similar to a system boiler, rather than a combi boiler. Also could give under floor heating in the crew quarters.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

[member="sabrina"] I never said much about what the WHRD actually was, just what it was used for. I might even name the resulting factory sub after you if you want.

 

[sabrina]

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"] feel free

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

[member="sabrina"] http://starwarsrp.net/topic/96396-sabrina-waste-heat-recovery-device/