outmoded?
The more I think about it, the more I take issue with the idea of the Btu being outdated. I am an HVAC mechanic working in the US- and I use the term Btu daily. All of our AC/ Boiler/ Heating systems are measured in Btu. Poopa Poopa Poopa. Is there a better way to say that Btus are used in industrial applications (in the US) while the Scientific community (and apparently the rest of the world) has moved to the joule? --johntindale (talk) 01:11, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Natural Gas?
The conversions section of this article talks about natural gas. Specifically, it says things like:
"1 standard cubic foot of natural gas ≈ 1030 BTU"
That statement is attempting to convert a volume of gas to a unit of energy...? That doesn't make sense. Are you trying to say that by burning a cubic foot of natural gas at a defined pressure and temperature, you would generate 1030 BTU? If so, it's not coming across in the article. I think the word burning needs to be added somewhere.
143 Btu problem
I'm confused. The statements
"A BTU is defined as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit."
and
"Melting a pound of ice at 32 °F requires 143 BTU"
seem inconsistent. Assuming that we have a pound of 32F water in the form of ice, does the first statement not imply that it would take exactly one Btu to heat it to 33F, melting it in the process?
I suggest not using the ice/melting example as it confounds temperature changes with phase transitions (regardless whether or not the 143 is correct). I suggest either taking the statement out altogether or replacing it with something like: "For example: to heat a pound of water from 100F to 101F requires 1 Btu" Of course, that pretty much exactly restates the more general statement. My advise; drop the example altogether.
The statement "143 BTU is required to melt a pound of ice." is wrong: it depends on the temperature of the ice. It will take 10 times more BTUs to melt -10C cold ice than to melt -1C cold ice. --75.210.120.2 22:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
The temperature of the ice was nominated in the example. --Spuzzdawg (talk) 05:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
The 143 BTU example is a miserable example if the goal of the article is to educate the user about what a BTU is. It may well be true, but so what? I'm sure I could calculate the number of BTU's necessary to lift my fat body out of the chair and onto the ground, but the fact that this number can be determined is pretty much independent of what a BTU is. Also, the following table is very confusing except the entry that says 1 BTU = xxxx Joules. I'm sure that it is quite interesting to some that unfreezing water takes more energy than raising that water an additional degree, but how is that relevant to an article that is attempting to define a BTU? 97.96.59.27 (talk) 17:00, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
BTU or Btu
I believe that the proper capitalization is Btu . --User:Eliasen 03:38, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Tons of Cooling
In the HVAC trade, tons of cooling or ton capacity is used in addition to BTU/H. One Ton of Cooling is equal to 12,000 BTU/h. A condenser unit that can continuously cool at 12,000 BTU per hour has a 1 ton capacity.
According to Dr-Fix-It, the name comes from the fact that it takes 288,000 BTU to melt one ton of ice at 32 °F to water at 32 °F in 24 hours, which is 12,000 BTU per hour.
Source:
UK Legal BTU
Weird. The 1055.05585257348 BTU doesn't explain itself (if you Google for 1.05505585257348, you get six essentially identical laconic hits). Is it a refinement of the IT BTU? The problem is that the IT BTU is not a rounded equivalent; you can't get 1055.055852 62 from 1055.055852 57348 ...
Urhixidur 19:59, 2005 July 26 (UTC)
suggest adding in some info from
http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/studentdownloads/DEA350notes/Thermal/thcondnotes.html
specifically "SURFACE AREA OF BODY" section. ---Fractal3 21:19, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Switching Sections
Because the conversion is simpler and often all people are searching for (beside the initial definition), I suggest we switch the more detailed "Description" section with the "Conversion" one. --Theultimatejoeshmo 03:08, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
North America or Global
I've lived in the UK and currently New Zealand where BTU is used for cooling systems specifications. Should the opening sentence 'used in North America.' be expanded?
Global and still in use
In many non-English-speaking, metric countries, the Btu is the standard term manufacturers (and therefore customers) use, especially for air-conditioning units. One explanation for this seemingly-strange state of affairs is that many people in countries which use(d) Imperial measurements (includng the UK itself) are extemely keen to show how 'modern' they are by ditching the original measurements. In Italy, for example, the Btu has no such 'baggage', and is therefore used freely. I'm going to edit the page, because as it stands it is very misleading. Goldchair (talk) 19:16, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
I removed the language that made it seem that it was an outmoded and outdated unit of measure used only in the US. Its use is still very common and is the understood standard among HVAC professionals worldwide. The original language made it sound like the "joule" had nearly replaced it- which isn't the case. Johntindale 15:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Disambiguation
I think some disambiguation is needed. In the days when (in Britain) a kilowatt-hour was called a Board of Trade Unit, this was also abbreviated to BTU, although it is a different unit. On the Watt-hour page, Board of Trade Unit is abbreviated to BOTU but I have never seen this abbreviation used elsewhere. Biscuittin 13:10, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
BTU Sizing
Is a higher BTU equivalent to a higher power cooling unit or is it reversed so a lower BTU is equivalent to a higher power cooling unit?24.167.12.12 03:35, 3 July 2007 (UTC)LR
Heating and Cooling are essentially the same process, it just depends on where heat is being transfered. (An air conditioner installed backward will function as a heater, for example). A BTU by itself however, is an amount of energy. If you're talking about BTU/hr, a heat transfer rate, then the greater the heat transfer the greater the degree of cooling. 71.156.107.2 (talk) 21:48, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Btu's used to convert 32 degrees to 33 and 211 degrees to 212
It has been a long time, but I have a slight recall in a class, that I learned that there was considerable more BTU's used to change the temperature of anything at the freezing point and the boiling point, due to the conversion of matter. Has anyone else been taught this?
Gideonjohn (talk) 17:45, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
I think you are correct. The term I know this phenomonon by is the "heat of fusion", and it represents the heat that must be pumped into the ice to change it from ice to water. Bvsmith1953 (talk) 18:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
This can also be expressed as latent heat. It takes an "extra" btu to change the state (gas-liquid-solid and reverse) that isn't measured with a thermometer. This is why a glass of icewater is 32 degrees F, and 0 degrees C, while an open boiling pot of water is 212 degrees F and 100 degrees C. --johntindale (talk) 01:16, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
The terms latent heat of fusion and latent heat of evaporation refer to the "hidden" energy required to change the phase of matter from solid to liquid and from liquid to vapor, respectively. Both liquid and solid water can exist at 32 degrees F, the difference between them being the stored energy in the molecules. 71.156.107.2 (talk) 21:51, 21 October 2008 (UTC)Associated Units
The last paragraph in the associated units reads:
"1 quad (energy) (short for quadrillion BTU) is defined as 1015 BTU, which is about one exajoule (1.055×1018 J). Quads are used in the United States for representing the annual energy consumption of large economies: for example, the U.S. economy used 99.75 quads/year in 2005. . One quad/year is about 33.43 gigawatts."
The last sentence compares energy and power. A quad is a unit of energy, since it is a multiple of Btus, and gigawatts is a unit of power. I have not done the math, but I suspect that the correct sentence should be:
"One quad/year is about 33.43 gigawatts-hours." Bvsmith1953 (talk) 18:17, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Also, it should be unified in the use of , and . to seperate the decimals. it seems to me that this is diferent from number to number here.--84.129.147.219 (talk) 08:08, 15 September 2008 (UTC)Energy divided by time is power (i.e. a Watt is one Joule/second), so quad/year is power, as gigawatts are. A gigawatt-hour is a unit of energy. 71.156.107.2 (talk) 19:33, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Common Misconception
Perhaps this item should be added: It is sometimes beli
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