Would this even work? Lol

  • bazus1@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Now run your straw through a concentric larger straw and pump -30C glycol through the annulus. You can get your 96C tea down to 54C in seconds! Think of the efficiencies gained!!

  • jana@leminal.space
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    1 year ago
    1. Use a metal straw to improve heat conduction.
    2. Increase the surface area and time for heat extraction to occur with extra loops in the water part (do they make metal silly straws?)
    3. Get really fancy and use a counterflow chiller: create a two layer straw, where tea goes through one layer while cold water goes through the other layer in the opposite direction (obviously with an outlet somewhere besides your teacup)
    • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      But the goal here isn’t to maximize cooling, you still want the tea to be hot, just drinkably hot rather than dangerously.

    • Turun@feddit.de
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      1 year ago
      1. Use a metal straw to improve heat conduction.

      While metal is a better conductor of heat, when looking at the effective rate of cooling you need to take the wall thickness into account. I think a plastic straw with it’s micrometer thin walls is unbeatable.

      Edit: I have trouble finding information on wall thickness of drinking straws, it one source says they are 130-250 μm thick. That is thicker than I expected.

      • jana@leminal.space
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        1 year ago

        Counterpoint: drink a cold drink through a plastic straw and a metal straw, with your fingers on the straw. See which one feels cooler.

        • Instigate@aussie.zone
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          1 year ago

          Leave a block of wood and a brick of steel in a freezer for 24 hours and see which one feels cooler - they’ll be the same actual temperature (at least negligibly close the longer they’re left) but the metal will feel immensely cooler to the touch due to its higher capacity for heat transference.

          • jana@leminal.space
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            1 year ago

            Doesn’t that just agree with what I’m saying? The metal is going to transfer heat more easily than the plastic

        • Turun@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          There are two compounding factors

          • heat capacity: any short term experiment will measure heat capacity first, conduction second

          • locality of contact: contact along the whole length of the straw eliminates heat conduction along the length of the straw. A single point of contact (holding the straw with fingers instead of the whole hand) behaves differently.

          I thought plastic straws were thinner than 0.2 mm, so maybe the metal is actually better.

          It’s fun arguing about these technicalities though!

  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Very low surface area heat exchanger you’ve got there! Gotta do several more loops under the water to get efficient heat transfer.

  • BananaPeal@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Y’all trying to come up with ways to cool it while I’m using my 5 temperature setting electric kettle to get the water hot enough to steep tea, but not boil.

    • Gork@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Ice cubes can water down your drink. Use a large, frozen, steel ball bearing so you can instead get some nice heavy metal poisoning to accompany it.

      (Don’t actually do this)

      • model_tar_gz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There are alloys of stainless steel (I forget the numbers off the top of my head, it’s been more than a few years since I worked in that field) that are perfectly fine and compatible for food/grade hot-process work.

        • Instigate@aussie.zone
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          1 year ago

          I have these things called cold rocks for my scotch - they’re some kind of stone or earthenware dice-sized cubes that you leave in the freezer. Bought them at an alcohol warehouse shop we have here in Australia called Dan Murphys. They’re great for cooling without diluting.

          • Yonrak@feddit.uk
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            1 year ago

            I have some of those too. Problem is they’re nowhere near as efficient at cooling as ice cubes are and never cool my drink enough. It’s the melting (phase change) process that does the majority of the cooling with ice cubes, which you miss out on with these solid blocks.

            I forget the exact maths, but a quick googling reckons it takes something like 84kJ to change the temperature of 1kg of liquid water by 20K, but changing the temperature of the same amount of ice from 0K ice to 20K water takes nearly 420kJ, or roughly 5 times more energy, which is why they’re so much better at cooling drinks…

        • Glimpythegoblin @lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          304 and 316 are considered food safe. 316 is what most industrial food processing machines use. 304 is somewhat easier to machine, and cheaper, so lots of components are also made from that but it has less corrosion resistance.

          • model_tar_gz@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yep those are what I was thinking of; thanks for the cover, internet friend!

            Also now I recall we were looking at pressure vessels made of Hastelloy; that was stupid expensive but they had corrosion-resistant properties that were very attractive for that application. And then management bought them and told us to deploy them for a process that was basically a low-temp filtration process. wtf, ok sure, the material is compatible but Hastellonis way overkill. Whatever, it’s your money to burn but damn.

            • Glimpythegoblin @lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              I haven’t machined hastelloy but that’s some expensive shit. That seems like a poor use of that alloy though, but whatever lol as you said it’s their money.

              I recently did a reactor that was supposed to be 1200C at 30,00PSI and wanted to use hastelloy X (alloy used in nuclear reactors) for that, but budget made us use 316 at a stupid wall thickness and lower the pressure to 5,000psi @ 800C. Same shit but opposite.

  • eldain@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    Just get one of those handy cupholders that come free with lots of electronics:

    They also work for quick thawing.

  • moosepuggle@startrek.website
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    1 year ago

    Wouldn’t the plastic straw melt in the hot tea? Maybe need metal or silicone straw adapter hooked onto plastic straw in heat exchanger 🤔

    • anyhow2503@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Don’t think most plastic straws would melt, but they would probably soften and might infuse more chemicals into your beverage than it would if it were cold. At this point I’d just go for the obvious solution of repurposing an old heat exchanger from an AC unit or something. The strange taste will go away after a few times (probably).

    • FARTYSHARTBLAST@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, I won’t drink anything hot out of plastic anymore: Corpos lied to us for decades that it was safe but it wasn’t and now we’re full of all sorts of terrible shit. The straw probably wouldn’t deform, but it probably would leech all sorts of chemicals into the water.

        • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The melting point of plastic is 300+ degrees Fahrenheit. Even if you tried to drink tea that was still boiling in the cup you’d damage your mouth pretty good but the plastic straw wouldn’t melt.

          • Takumidesh@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            This isn’t exactly true. Plastic is all different types of things and there is no one melting point, for example PLA (poly lactic acid) which is commonly used for things like disposable drink lids has a glass transition temperature of 60c (140f). Abs (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) has a glass transition temperature of 105c (221f).

            While the full melting point for these two polymers is higher than the glass transition, at those temps, your straw will start turning into a nice wet noodle.

            The melting point isn’t helpful here because it defines the point at which the object turns into liquid, not the point where it deforms or gets damaged.

            • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              A drinking straw like that is likely made out of polypropylene with a melting point of 320F. Though the comment I replied to said “melt” specifically, if you wanted to reference the point before it begins to soften, PP has an operating temperature of almost 200F still. So that includes any hot liquid up to the point of near-boiling, which will be a bigger deal to your mouth than the straw. Thats why it’s used in drinking straws and the like.

  • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It would cool it down, but how much would be the question.

    Fridges cool your water in them using the same principal, a loop of tubing is in the fridge which cools the water as it passes through.

    • LastYearsPumpkin@feddit.ch
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      1 year ago

      It would entirely depend on how fast you suck.

      Even moderately cool water would work if you just drank slow enough, and ice water wouldn’t work if you drank too fast.

      I’m sure some engineer could do the math on how cold the water would have to be to cool boiling water at maximum vacuum.

  • CeleryFC@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Assuming the water is cooled, yes, this would decrease the temperature of the tea. Probably not by a ton, but it would make a difference.

    • jana@leminal.space
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      1 year ago

      It just has to be colder than the tea, not necessarily “cooled”. As the tea passes through it, some heat will dissipate to the water.