Roadtrippin’ 2024: Using heat to make ice at Chena Hot Springs
FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTUU) - Roadtrippin’ to Chena Hot Springs has its benefits, not the least of which are the hot springs themselves, but the heat from those springs does more than just warm you up on a cold winter’s night. The hot springs provide power to the whole facility.
“Most of the buildings with cement floors actually have tubing that runs through the bottom,” explained Emma Fisher, Greenhouse and Gardens Manager. “And there’s a lot of radiant heat from the floor.”
The hot springs even provide power to keep the ice in the Aurora Ice Museum frozen. It just takes a bit of steam.
The water comes out of the ground at 165 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s warm enough to make a mist on a chilly morning but not hot enough to create steam to spin a turbine. So they found something that boils at a lower temperature than water and use the steam to make power.
“The water we bring out of the ground at 165 degrees,” said Steven Vander Maas, Activities Manager at the resort. “We put it into a piece of equipment called the evaporator condenser.” The refrigerant boils at 140 degrees, so when it gets warmed by the water from the hot springs, it boils.
“Because the temperature difference between the coolant, or the refrigerant, and the water, it actually allows the hot water to flash into a steam and then we just steam power,” said Vander Maas. “The steam goes (into) a casing, spinning a screw drive, working the same way your gas power generator does.”
It just take a little heat to make ice.
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