| district heating or cooling | A system that involves the central production of hot water, steam, or chilled water and the distribution of these transfer media to heat or cool buildings. (05 Dec 1998) |
|---|---|
| blanket | <physics> A region surrounding a fusion reactor core within which the fusion neutrons (if any) are slowed down, heat is transferred to a primary coolant, and tritium is bred from lithium (if tritium is used as fuel). In hybrid applications, fertile materials (u-238 or Th-232) are located in the blanket for conversion into fissile fuels. (17 Mar 1998) |
| blanket suture | A continuous lock-stitch used to approximate the skin of a wound. (05 Mar 2000) |
| gas blanket | <radiobiology> A cold, dense volume of gas surrounding a hot plasma and used to protect a material wall from bombardment by hot ions (and its resultant sputtering and impurity production). (09 Oct 1997) |
| upflow sludge blanket | <apparatus> An apparatus for anaerobic digestion in which the microbes form thick flocculations that are kept suspended near the bottom of the reaction tank. (09 Oct 1997) |