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Low cost, energy-saving radiative cooling system ready for real-world applications (edit: fixed link)
University of Colorado Boulder and University of Wyoming engineers have successfully scaled up an innovative water-cooling system capable of providing continuous day-and-night radiative cooling for structures. The advance could increase the efficiency of power generation plants in summer and lead to more efficient, environmentally-friendly temperature control for homes, businesses, utilities and industries.
The new research demonstrates how the low-cost hybrid organic-inorganic radiative cooling metamaterial, which debuted in 2017, can be scaled into a roughly 140-square-foot array—small enough to fit on most rooftops—and act as a kind of natural air conditioner with almost no consumption of electricity.
"You could place these panels on the roof of a single-family home and satisfy its cooling requirements," said Dongliang Zhao, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in CU Boulder's Department of Mechanical Engineering.
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Monday October 29 2018, @03:12AM (6 children)
Oooh Soylent. A driveby insult with absolutely no context or explanation.
The internet sucks :(
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 29 2018, @10:19AM (5 children)
Was there need? I mean it was pretty obvious to me that nobody was claiming to have reversed entropy, so either your reading comprehension or your physics sucks.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Monday October 29 2018, @03:27PM (4 children)
It is you who is mistaken. Let us examine the post I was replying to.
The poster clearly describes a device which emits but does not absorb heat energy. The poster even cites Maxwell's Demon, a well known thought experiment posing this scenario. From Wikipedia: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon)
And I replied:
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 29 2018, @04:21PM (2 children)
Like I said, your reading comprehension sucks. There's a very important word in something you quoted that you're utterly ignoring or missing.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Monday October 29 2018, @04:41PM (1 child)
Or maybe, just maybe, I comprehend exactly the words being written but you have a different interpretation?
I am no longer interested in responding to troll statements by someone who merely throws insults and refuses to explain his own arguments.
(Score: 3, Funny) by grumpcuss on Monday October 29 2018, @09:21PM
An open container of water will self cool to below ambient temperature (down to the dew point). Is this a reversal of entropy? The processes are analogous.
Any mass at a temperature above absolute zero will emit thermal radiation. That is established physics. That mass will also absorb incident radiation. The trick is to minimize the absorptive surface, while maximizing emission. That is what they have done.
As for your example of the Seebeck plate, the "warm" side of the plate will cool to equilibrium with the "cool" side as electricity is generated. The "heat sink" is a red herring. There must be energy input to maintain the "warm" side at temperature.
Before flaming about entropy reversal and such, you should learn a bit more thermodynamics. And try reading and understanding the research. I did.
And I never said it actually WAS Maxwell's demon, I simply made the comparison that it was more similar to that than to "bunk, or overhype". This actually has a chance at working.
You may now return to your bridge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30 2018, @09:40PM
You're thinking about the wrong ambient temperature. The key word is "space." Space is, on average, cold [vif.com] (pdf) at around 3 K. Because we're near the Sun, and because the albedo of the Earth is less than unity, and because of the atmosphere, we're not so cold. The dark side of the Moon gets cold, and craters near its poles are always cold. The effort here is to work around the effect of the Earth's atmosphere.