How would you like to stay cool in a building or home that used 90% less energy than conventional residential or commercial air-conditioning systems? Wow! Sounds good, sounds green and sounds exactly like the perfect product for the country’s “New Energy Economy” as described by Colorado Governor Bill Ritter.
The Governor recently commended the Coolerado Corporation and awarded the company his “Governor’s Excellence in Renewable Energy Award” for its new-age sustainable air-conditioning products. Coolerado CEO, Mike Luby, described the new product; “It may seem strange that a company that consumes energy received a renewable energy award, but Coolerado air conditioning systems use one-tenth of the energy required by the most efficient conventional systems. Our air conditioners achieve a tenfold reduction in greenhouse gases because of reduced power generation needs and they are green, using no chemical refrigerants.”
The Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) published a report that supports Luby’s claims. The report states that Coolerado “can help Federal agencies reach the energy-use reduction goals of EPAct 2005, particularly in the western United States. This technology has the potential to have a significant impact on an agency’s energy bills in terms of reducing both energy and demand costs.”
University researchers have received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study a type of metal that could boost energy- and space-efficiency in refrigerators and air conditioning units.
Materials science professors Ic
hiro Takeuchi and Manfred Wuttig, who conceptualized a new cooling method utilizing the metal, will lead the research into practical real-world applications on this campus, material science and engineering department chair Robert Briber said. Researchers in other parts of the country will also assist.
The university’s research will focus on the cooling of the thermoelastic shape memory alloy, in which deforming metal reduces ambient temperature, according to Briber.
“Refrigeration is a ubiquitous technology fundamental to every aspect of human life,” Takeuchi wrote in an e-mail, and current refrigerants “are all harmful to the environment and cause global warming.”
Every summer, we spend countless millions of kilowatts keeping things cool indoors. This alone constitutes a good chunk of global warming, but we’d swelter, even die, without it. So far, the most efficient way to cool things down has 
been the swamp cooler, but that’s only of use in relatively arid locations; Evaporative cooling does no good at all near any large body of water.
In the past, discussions about alternative cooling systems always involved huge sums of money. With all the more recent focus on solar and other renewable energy sources, though, scientists have been focusing their attentions on the problem. We reported some months back about a MIT professor who had devised a solar-driven hydrogen power plant, for example. Now Europe is talking about revisiting a cooling technology, modifying the concept to be fueled by the sun. Could Europe have the solution to a Green air conditioner?
Air conditioning is possible in a green home. Read all about it in this installment of our “Focus on Green Homes” series.
Air conditioning in green homes is cause for much debate among green enthusiasts. Certainly, the best way to save energy
on air conditioning is to not have it or use it. But this is just not practical for everyone.
Without a doubt, air conditioning of the past was anything but green. It used very damaging chemicals and consumed large amounts energy for what it produces. Even more efficient units in use today still use lot of energy causing enormous electricity bills in the summer months. Can a system be designed for a green home that uses much less electricity and no damaging chemicals? Yes, indeed.
A research team has designed and built an absorption chiller capable of using solar and residual heat as an energy source to drive the cooling system. The technology used in this machine, which looks like an ordinary air-conditioning system, minimise
s its environmental impact by combining the use of a lithium bromide solution, which does not damage the ozone layer or increase the greenhouse effect, with a reduction in the use of water by the machine.
The team, managed by Professor Marcelo Izquierdo from the Department of Thermal Engineering and Fluid Mechanics of the UC3M, who is also a researcher at the Instituto de Ciencias de la Construcción Eduardo Torroja (IETCC) of the CSIC, is building a solar cooling system that unlike the existing machines on the market, uses an improved absorption mechanism capable of producing cold water at a range of temperatures from 7º C to 18º C when the exterior temperature ranges from 33º C to 43º C.
Our Michigan summers can get to 100 degrees with very high humidity. Most everyone uses air conditioning. Our local energy board warns every year about the overuse of air conditioning and ‘brown-outs’. We have never
invested in a central AC or even a window unit.
We prefer to use ‘greener’ methods which are better for the environment. They are better for our health also. They are easier on our gas and electric bills as well. We have, therefore had to research and explore methods for keeping our house cool and comfortable.
