Warming with ice

INTRODUCTION
Its obvious for us, that we are capable of cooling with ice and warming with hot water. It is
something natural. However it is only one thing. What it were like if we could get control over
the nature? To overcome the problem of freezing, which is harmful to our houses. It might
sound strange, but what about heating with ice?
One company has developed a system that uses the latent energy contained within ice to
heat a home efficiently and without releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Heres
how.

INSTALLATION
A large buffer is constructed next to a building in a moderate climate. By burying the buffer
underground, its ambient temperaturehis kept nearly constant. During the summer, theicool
water is used to reduce the heat in the building, for instance byawater-cooling floors or by
passivefair-conditioning.

PROCESS
Now comes the innovation. Asbthe months grow colder, the water in the buffer is also cooled
in a gradual, measured process. This crystallization releases some energy in thegform of heat.
However, as the ice is being cooled, the heat is contained within the ice itself. Why?
This phase transition heat is retained ascpotential energy in the ice. The trick lies in the fact
that much more energy is needed to change a materials phase (in this case from solid to
liquid, or the other way around) than in heating or cooling a material within the boundaries of
one phase. Transitions between solid, liquid, and gaseous phases typically involve large
amounts of energy compared to the specific heat. If heat were added to a mass of ice to take
it through its phase changes to liquid water and then to steam, the amount of energies
required to accomplish the phase changes would be unexpected big and that is used in this
process.
An example makes this principle clear. It takes as much energy to melt one liter of ice (at a
temperature of just below freezing) into water (at a temperature of just above freezing) as it
does to heat a liter of water from just above freezing to 80C.
It is this latent heat that is then used to warm the building very gradually during the colder
season. In this manner, one m3 of ice stores about as much potential heating energy as 10
m3 of natural gas.

ECO
The system uses solar power during the autumn to add energy to the system. This means that
greenhouse gases are reduced to an absolute minimum. The new heating system enables
home owners to save around 30 euros a month on their bills. And in summer, the ice
produced in the winter time means the system becomes an energy- and carbon-neutral air
conditioning system.
SUMMARY
As we see today things that might have seemed to be impossible just few years ago are
becoming very real. This great idea may out of blue change not only the engineering but also

our life making it more comfortable. The first large-scale system is being installed in a Dutch
municipality building this summer. We are about to see how it will work.