First microwave-powered home boiler could help cut emissions

[Jethro_uk]

Flood of greenie news of late. Not that I'm suspicious or cynical.

#justsayin'

First microwave-powered home boiler could help cut emissions ?Drop-in? replacement for gas boilers may help tackle challenge of cutting emissions from home heating

Emissions From domestic gas boiler. Heat Wayv is building prototypes and expects to trial its microwave-powered boilers in homes by the end of

2022. Emissions From domestic gas boiler. Heat Wayv is building prototypes and expects to trial its microwave-powered boilers in homes by the end of 2022. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian Tue 16 Mar 2021 07.00 GMT Last modified on Tue 16 Mar 2021 10.30 GMT

52 The creators of the world?s first microwave-powered boiler have said it can provide a straightforward, zero-emissions replacement for the gas boilers that heat most homes in the UK.

Heat Wayv is building prototypes and expects to trial the boilers in homes by the end of 2022, with the first sales to customers targeted for

2024. It says a unit suitable for a three- or four-bedroom home would cost about £3,500, the same as an equivalent gas boiler.

Heating produces 14% of the UK?s carbon emissions, and is one of the most difficult obstacles in the drive to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Gas boilers will be banned in new-build homes from 2025 and are expected to be phased out entirely by the mid 2030s.

Heat Wayv is building prototypes and expect to trial its boilers in homes by the end of 2022 Heat Wayv is building prototypes and expect to trial its boilers in homes by the end of 2022 Photograph: PR The government is encouraging the installation of heat pumps, which are extremely efficient and cheap to run but have high upfront costs, can be disruptive to install and are not suitable for all properties. Hydrogen is also being suggested as a replacement for gas, but most experts think the supply of low-carbon hydrogen will be limited and expensive and would be best used for heavy industry and transport.

The Heat Wayv unit is the same size as a gas boiler and has 10 metres of pipe coiled inside, which is heated at multiple points along its length. The microwaves are produced by solid state components, which can be tuned specifically to heat water and better targeted than the magnetrons used in microwave ovens.

Electricity usage will be about the same as an electric oven, the makers say. They say the boiler is 84% efficient in converting electricity into hot water, and another 12% of waste heat is recycled, giving a total efficiency of 96%. The company?s first product, a portable microwave heater, is now in production for military customers.

?The end of the gas boiler is inevitable and scheduled,? said Phil Stevens, a co-founder of Heat Wayv. He said heat pumps would have a place in the market for suitable homes, but his product was ?a clean technology where the boiler will cost the consumer the same to buy, same to install and same to run as a gas boiler.?

Paul Atherton, another co-founder, said: ?The beauty of our microwave boiler is that it is completely compatible with existing home radiators.? He said the company would initially target the 170,000 new homes built each year, which will not be allowed to install gas boilers from 2025.

Ban new gas boilers in UK from 2025 or risk missing net zero target, says CBI Read more Experts contacted by the Guardian said the microwave boiler appeared credible, though the details of the product are confidential. The ability to be dropped in as a replacement for a gas boiler is a significant benefit, they said, though they would use more electricity and therefore cost more to run than heat pumps. One expert said the cheaper purchase price meant there was clearly a lifetime cost calculation to do to see how the costs balance out.

The rollout of electric vehicles already means the national electricity grid needs to be bolstered to accommodate the extra load, and the very widespread adoption of microwave boilers would add to that challenge, the experts said. The microwave boiler is not able to provide instant hot water, as gas boilers can, so it has a hot water storage tank inside the unit.

Some experts said homeowners may need to upgrade the main fuse in their home and may need their local electricity network to approve the installation of a microwave boiler, as required for larger heat pumps. Atherton said he did not envisage this but the company would be working closely with all stakeholders.

A US patent for a microwave-powered boiler was lodged in 1996, but this has expired, and in any case it proposed using a magnetron heater. ?They are very much the sledgehammer of the microwave world,? said Stevens, unlike more the precise solid-state microwave generators.

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[jon]

Will it be more efficient than dielectric heating...?

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

jon laid this down on his screen :

Will they defy the laws of physics and be more that 100% efficient?

I do not see the point.

[Theo]

They do have a sensible product:

that's not a boiler, and you can't buy it.

I also don't see the point, and I'm disappointed that journalists (also at the 'i') have given this company airtime. The company had two employees and

150K capitalisation in 2014: Companies House says they have zero employees and no income in 2019 or 2020: The snake is oily with this one.

Theo

[Jethro_uk]

I did notice.

Last week I saw a flurry or chatter about investments in Hydrogen. Again.

Still, stories like this are a good way of flagging up cretins.

[Andy Burns]

So they accept that an immersion heater is better?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Q1: And how is this more efficient than a heating coil? Ans: It isn't.

Q2 is this less efficient than a heat pump? A: yes.

Fi8le under snake oil/ ecobollox.

[GB]

There's an article here about the microwave oven for hiking, which says it weighs 1.5Kg. That's rather a lot to make a brew. I'd rather just carry a thermos flask.

I think they've missed their metier. They seem to be wonderful at PR.

[GB]

It's weirder than weird that journalists print this stuff. Do they really have no idea, or do they just want to fill pages with the least effort and get paid?

[Max Demian]

"They say the boiler is 84% efficient in converting electricity into hot water."

If electricity is electrons, where do the protons and neutrons come from?

In general, electric heating is 100% efficient, though may not be where you want it.

Why are microwaves a better way to heat water than resistance wire?

No mention about electricity being three times as expensive as gas (currently), in fact nothing about cost at all.

I suppose the attraction is that you replace the boiler with an electric heater so you can use all the same pipes and radiators.

Except that most people won't be able to afford to heat their whole house, so we will be back to shivering in front of a bar heater and unheated bedrooms.

"The microwave boiler is not able to provide instant hot water, as gas boilers can, so it has a hot water storage tank inside the unit."

So not enough for a bath or shower, just a sponge down.

Advocates of heat pumps say they will have to be on all the time so you will be heating the house when you don't need to, such as when out to work and when in bed.

They say that "attitudinal changes" will be needed so that we will put up with ambient temperatures of around 18° C.

[Pancho]

AIUI with microwave the trick was to heat the people directly.

[Theo]

It's quite hard to get it wrong with water heating though. OK you'll have losses from pipes etc, but getting the heat into the water in the first place isn't the problem.

Electric boilers already exist and are pretty efficient. But of course people don't like the running costs.

Arguably the bar heater is more efficient than electric wet central heating.

There's not enough electricity feed to the house to run a decent volume of instant hot water. That's why people have hot water tanks. They manage to have a bath with those just fine, even with a 3kW immersion.

Heat pumps work well on well insulated houses - it doesn't matter about heating it when you're out if the losses are low enough. Just like a closed freezer maintains its temperature for some hours with the power off.

It's harder to have temperature swings with insulated houses - if you want

20C in the day then it's hard to get 15C in the night unless you open a window, and then it'll have to work harder to bring it back up in the morning. (The same goes for gas boilers - you can't get them small enough/modulate down enough in some well-insulated new builds).

Theo

[Andy Burns]

I think it's just copy/paste from the press release ...

[Owain Lastname]

They don't

They do.

Owain

[Max Demian]

You won't get a big enough tank *inside* a casing the size of a combi boiler.

Instant is enough for a shower.

[Tim+]

That?s what heat pumps were created for. ;-)

Nor me.

Tim

[Andy Burns]

Sounds like you want the double-height "heat wayv max" with 74 gallon tank, instead of the "heat wayv one"

I'm usually happy to walk around SBN if the house is 18°, TMI?

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

Andy Burns wrote on 16/03/2021 :

SBN ??

18C is fine for me too, when doing anything at all active. It my default setting for the heating system. I nudge it up to 21C when sitting about relaxed, if I remember.

[Tim+]

I?m guessing ?stark b*ll*ck naked?.

Tim

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Do the writers of this have a short term memory issue as they seem to repeat everything at least twice sometimes three times. Now call me dumb, but I thought the best approach was a reversible heat pump so we can have it cool in the heat and hot in the cold? I suggested back in the 80s that if they replaced all pipes with waveguides and used microwave absorptive materials for radiators then you could just feed the Magnetron into te end and heat the house.

Are we saying here then that a good efficient direct heating electric system is not as efficient as shoving microwaves into a body of water? I'm surprised.

Brian