Posted on 05/22/2015 7:30:55 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Consisting simply of a surface and legs, the table is one piece of furniture that has remained largely the same for thousands of years.
But now, a French design duo has come up with a way to turn the humble table into a means of climate control that doesn't use any electricity.
Paris-based industrial designer Jean-Sébastien Lagrange teamed up with French engineer Raphaël Ménard to create the Zero Energy Furniture table, also known as the ZEF Climatic Table.
The ZEF table looks like any other with the sleek design of a solid plank oak top and angled legs — but it could hold the secret to cutting energy costs by as much as 60%.
“We wanted to see if it was possible to address climate and energy issues on a furniture scale,” Lagrange told WIRED.
Beneath the oak table are a series of phase-changing materials (PCMs) placed between the wood and anodized aluminum bottom....
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
LOL
The idea of phase change materials being used for this application goes back about forty years. Normally you use these PCM materials in walls where you can add a lot of mass and area. It seems ridiculous to even consider making a table out of a PCM. National Gypsum makes ThermalCORE panels which use a BASF micro-encapsulated paraffin PCM. Tiny spheres of paraffin, just 5-10 microns in diameter (less than half the size of Portland cement particles), are encapsulated in acrylic shells, and these are mixed with the gypsum in drywall. The paraffin melts at 73°F, plus-or-minus 2°F. There are other commercial materials, as well. See more at:
http://www.thermalcore.info/product-info.htm
Yeah, it might help with the bills but I think you would need a considerably larger expanse of the material to make any real difference.
“Houston heat and humidity for the next 6 months would chew up and spit out that frenchy “cooling table”.”
Table would be warped after the first weekend.
As much as, as much as, as much as...
...or maybe not even close.
I have a cube of butter on my counter that does this. Apparently, I just need more butter.
Maybe if you put it outside it could solve climate change.
Here is an article on Houston and humidity.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/resources/askjack/2003-09-03-answers-fla-texas-humidity_x.htm
Here are some charts.
http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/hot-humid-days-cities.php
It’s probably not a sham, to some extent.
It probably does operate as it is advertised, keeping a constant temperature for itself under normal conditions.
The problem I see with this is that, as it absorbs heat from the surrounding area is that it could cause the furnace to kick in and heat the house.
I have a cube of butter on my counter that does this. Apparently, I just need more butter.
LOL! English muffin with phase change material. Delicious.
Putting a bowl of water on your window sill and letting the air blow over it is a surprisingly good cheap air conditioner.
Let them try their Frenchy table in the humidity in Alabama.
Rule #1: never trust any liberal arts graduate media type writing a story involving thermodynamics where no actual data is cited.
I surely did. There were little football players that you set on it. When you turned the table on, the players would move in random and useless directions.
Washington, D.C. is horrible in the summer.
lol
It doesn’t seem to be among the worst, not even close, not like Houston.
rofl
For those few rooms that require using a heater during the night and an air conditioner during the day, a table like this might help. More typically, people want their rooms to have a particular average temperature, not a smaller temperature range.
Change of phase materials to work ask anyone who’s worn them Under Armour or inside a mascot suit. on the industrial level there have been some attempts at making a change of phase paint additive that will work as well. the issue is of course how much temperature differential the material can take and how fast does it can phase.
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