You can keep tropical fish in the windows. :)

Interesting, but I can't see it being cheaper than an interseasonal store linked to underfloor pipes.

To me, it all sounds more plausible in a climate with a diurnal swing where it's hot during the day and cool at night.

If you combined the water-filled panes with insulated external shutters and a close by reservoir, the window itself plus maybe the area directly below could be the radiator when the shutters are closed.

Looking at the diagram it appears the water "screen" is separate/centralised from the two outer panes although I guess the whole lot is a sealed unit.

Posted By: WillInAberdeenMakes a change from filling glazing units with expensive noble gases I suppose. Now why ever did we do that? Sure there was a reason....!

To slow down the convection of the gas between the panes of glass, which increases the overall thermal resistance of the glazing unit.

Argon, and especially Krypton, are significantly heaver than air's nitrogen-oxygen mix, as per their atomic weights:

Nitrogen - 14.007
Oxygen - 15.999
Argon - 39.95
Krypton - 83.798

Which is also why you wouldn't use Helium, even though it is a noble gas - it's atomic weight is only 4.

Mike, Ed, you want the Rayleigh number, which depends on the kinematic viscosity, which for semi ideal gases depends on the molecular weight. Heavier molecules -> more inertia -> more viscous -> less buoyant convection.

Molar heat capacity is pretty much the same for all diatomic semi ideal gases 7/2R and slightly less for monatomic semiideal gases 5/2R.

If instead you use water with a forced convection, there's way more heat transfer between the water and the room and the outside.

The point of triple glazing is to have a temperature gradient from the room to the environment, so the fluid temperature should be inbetween the room and outside temperatures. But AIUI the proposal is to have warmed water circulating, so it will lose more heat to the outside, compared to triple glazing filled with with cool gas.

All the heat is solar heat which would have ended up in the room otherwise. The water is presumably 'warm' rather than 'hot' so there's limited scope for storing it using the heat.

The application seems to be for buildings which have excess solar heat, such as over glazed offices and supermarkets, who otherwise would be paying for air conditioning.

Posted By: WillInAberdeen
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The application seems to be for buildings which have excess solar heat, such as over glazed offices and supermarkets, who otherwise would be paying for air conditioning.

This, to me, seems the driver behind the idea. Water has high absorption for IR radiation, better than low solar gain low E glass, so it will capture a large fraction of the incoming solar radiation as heat before it reaches the interior, which can then be taken elsewhere by pumping the water around.

Perhaps a closed system with water and krypton would be nice: water fill for summer, krypton fill for winter. People like eco bling so there might be a market for it