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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, @05:46PM
The most affordable tech for cooling in the desert is evaporative, aka "swamp cooler". It works by forcing air through pads that are being soaked by recirculating water. It can be remarkably effective as long as the humidity is low. The water use is acceptable--I'm not sure how much water it uses on a hot day, but I don't think it's a significant increase to my water bill.
Swamp coolers fail when it's humid, providing very little relief. That does happen in arid parts of the US, such as the monsoons in AZ, and our recent tropical thunderstorm/fire disaster here in CA. It's just a few days out of the year, or sometimes none for us so we just grin and bear it. A few people around here have installed traditional AC compressor cycles because while they use more electricity, they're much lower maintenance and pull double-duty as heat pumps in the winter.
So it's basically a bifurcated market you might say--cheaply installed coolers that sometimes don't work very well and require frequent maintenance, and the high dollar system that heats and cools reliably with low maintenance.
I hadn't even thought about what the panels would do on a humid day. The condensation might come down on you like indoor rain. Don't install it over your PC.
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