Looking at heat transfer the completely wrong way
Looking at heat transfer the completely wrong way
(OP)
I don't know what I was thinking...
During my recent calculations, I was worried about the thermal CONDUCTIVITY of my vessel wall, thinking, quite stupidly, that said wall would conduct heat away from the product at it's maximum rate, meaning that something on the outside skin of this wall would have to be taking that heat away at a VERY rapid rate, as IR had mentioned a large flow of chilled water or something.
What I should really do is NOT worry about the thermal conductivity of the wall material at all and instead worry about two things:
1. stopping convection
2. stopping radiation
I could make the vessel out of gold and, other than me getting fired, the ONLY thing that would happen assuming I had good convective and radiative blocks in place is: nothing.
During my recent calculations, I was worried about the thermal CONDUCTIVITY of my vessel wall, thinking, quite stupidly, that said wall would conduct heat away from the product at it's maximum rate, meaning that something on the outside skin of this wall would have to be taking that heat away at a VERY rapid rate, as IR had mentioned a large flow of chilled water or something.
What I should really do is NOT worry about the thermal conductivity of the wall material at all and instead worry about two things:
1. stopping convection
2. stopping radiation
I could make the vessel out of gold and, other than me getting fired, the ONLY thing that would happen assuming I had good convective and radiative blocks in place is: nothing.
-Plasmech
Mechanical Engineer, Plastics Industry





RE: Looking at heat transfer the completely wrong way
As general rule, you do want to start with a reasonable wall material, i.e., NOT aluminum or diamond, do the math on the convection and radiation and adjust as required. It's almost never a closed-form solution, and there are always plenty of iforgots.
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RE: Looking at heat transfer the completely wrong way
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