Most of us have heard of solar water heaters. Now,
there’s a solar water cooler, and the technology may sharply lower the cost of
industrial-scale air conditioning and refrigeration. The scientists at Stanford
University, California have developed a cooling system which reduces the inside
temperature of a building in a very hot (desert) climate condition by above 20%
with the help of specially designed solar panels without the increase in the
electricity consumption or water evaporation.
Although, we have been hearing about solar water
heaters, this technology developed at Stanford University after implemented
commercially will decrease the cost of industrial-scale air conditioning and
refrigeration drastically.
The new water cooler solar panels are installed on the
rooftop, are made up of three components.
- The first component is a plastic layer with a silver coating reflecting nearly 100% incoming sunlight, thus keeps the panel away from heating up in the summer days, during the scorching heat.
- Plastic layer is on the top of the second component- a coiled copper tube, through which water is circulated. In turn, it sheds heat to the plastic. Then this heat is radiated out by the plastic on top of the tube at a wavelength in the range of the infrared (IR) spectrum. This cannot be absorbed by the atmosphere and instead, goes all the way to outer space.
- Finally, the whole panel is enclosed in a thermally insulating plastic housing, this guarantees that almost all the heat radiated away come from the circulating water and not from the surrounding air.
To conduct the actual field trial, scientists placed
three such water cooling panels on the roof a building at their university
campus. Each panel area was 0.37 square meters. Water was circulated through
these at the rate of 0.2 liters every minute. The result received was, this
setup cooled the water as much as 5°C below the ambient temperature. The test ran for over 3 days.
Ronggui Yang - a
mechanical engineer at the University of Colorado in Boulder, who earlier this
year reported the development of a plastic film that cools everything it
touches up to 10°C - “It’s an excellent paper. It shows a promising
direction for real world use”. Because the plastic IR-emitting materials are
commercially available in large quantities, it shows that the technology has
the potential to be scaled up, Yang says.
Later, they modeled to show how their panels would
help if integrated with a typical air conditioning plant for a two-story
building in Las Vegas, Nevada. The results were positive and this setup lower
the electrical demand required for air conditioning by almost 21%.
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