Why can’t we cool water as quickly as we can heat it? (continued)
The rate of heat transfer to, or from, water is determined by three variables. The first factor is the difference in temperature between the heating source and the water. The second factor is called the heat transfer coefficient. The third is the contact area between the water and the medium that is doing the heating or cooling.
Heating is generally accomplished by an electrical element, or some form of flame. The heating source can be hundreds of degrees hotter than the water. In contrast, cooling is generally accomplished with a liquid refrigerant or with ambient air, both of which are usually less than a few tens of degrees cooler than the water.
The heat transfer coefficient (HTC) is a measure of the conduction and convection that is occurring in the particular physical system. Water isn’t a very good conductor, but it can be a very good convector, because water density changes with temperature, which sets up currents that carry heat away from the heating surface. The convection occurring with boiling water results in an extremely high HTC, because the turbulence carries more of the heat away, and because the steam transfers huge amounts of latent heat. Therefore, the observation of faster heating is due to a combination of greater temperature difference and a higher HTC.
Water isn’t a very good conductor, but it can be a very good convector, because water density changes with temperature
However, in industrial cooling towers or your home evaporative cooler, the water surface area can be increased enormously by the water being broken into small drops and being in contact with air. The HTC is also high because the evaporated water carries away the latent heat. In this case, it is quicker to cool than to heat.
We can engineer systems that cool water as quickly as we can heat it. Think of the coolant system for a car. The coolant is pumped into the coolant channels in the engine and is rapidly heated up by the engine block. Then it passes into the radiator, which has multiple thin channels where it is cooled by air flow.
When the system reaches its running temperature, it reaches an equilibrium temperature governed by the thermostat. The heating time is the time the coolant spends in the engine block coolant channels, and the cooling time is the time the coolant is in the radiator. These don’t necessarily match, but they could be engineered to do so by resizing the radiator channels.
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