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This 'Cold Tube' can beat the summer heat without relying on air conditioning:
"Air conditioners work by cooling down and dehumidifying the air around us—an expensive and not particularly environmentally friendly proposition," explains project co-lead Adam Rysanek, assistant professor of environmental systems at UBC's school of architecture and landscape architecture, whose work focuses on future energy systems and green buildings. "The Cold Tube works by absorbing the heat directly emitted by radiation from a person without having to cool the air passing over their skin. This achieves a significant amount of energy savings."
The Cold Tube is a system of rectangular wall or ceiling panels that are kept cold by chilled water circulating within them. Since heat naturally moves by radiation from a hotter surface to a colder surface, when a person stands beside or under the panel, their body heat radiates towards the colder panel. This creates a sensation of cooling like cold air flowing over the body even if the air temperature is quite high.
Although these types of cooling panels have been used in the building industry for several decades, what makes the Cold Tube unique is that it does not need to be combined with a dehumidification system. Just as a cold glass of lemonade would condense water on a hot summer day, cooling down walls and ceilings in buildings would also condense water without first drying out the air around the panels. The researchers behind the Cold Tube conceived of an airtight, humidity-repelling membrane to encase the chilled panels to prevent condensation from forming while still allowing radiation to travel through.
A new cooling system for your home?
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Thursday August 20 2020, @05:33PM (3 children)
I've known more than a couple people who've had the plumbing for the ice-maker in the fridge leak. Often the water comes from a 1/4" copper pipe run through the ceiling. When we were kids we watched a friends house on vacation to water the plants, feed their fish, etc. and it's a good thing we did because this is exactly what happened. If they hadn't had anyone watching the house, they would have come home to much more damage.
Now take that leak potential, multiply it by some factor, install it, and wait for the inevitable. Maybe I'm making too much of this. If the panel is right there, the leaks will be more obvious than they are with concealed pipes up in a ceiling. It might slow down or even stop some house fires too.
Of course TANSTAAFL, cold water has to come from someplace and be kept cold as others have pointed out. Some people *do* have an almost limitless supply of cold water. Most people don't. In terms of economy, I don't think it would match the state of the art in my location. We're arid, so evaporative cooling works. It consumes some water, but much less electricity than a compressor cycle.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @05:50PM (2 children)
There are already a lot of water-carrying pipes in a dwelling, so I don't think this is a very large risk.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Thursday August 20 2020, @06:53PM
Yes, but most of them are large sturdy pipes, and most of them are not in the ceiling. The ice maker pipe has that odd tendency to be in the ceiling because it needs to go in at the top of the fridge and/or it's an afterthought. A cooler panel is probably going to have lots of little pipes in it, and there will be a pipe to each panel--all up in the ceiling.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @08:49PM
Water damage is the biggest cause of property damage in the US. Even if you exclude natural disasters, it's still a huge sum of money from busted plumbing. Placing pipes in the ceiling is something you want to avoid, if at all possible as it spreads the possible damage out.