Great solar cooling , solar air conditioning !

[hartiberlin]

Here is a great video of a new
solar air conditioning and cooling technology
that really should "kill" all the normal power wasting air conditioners :


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtMC2MXc_n8

[triffid]

a few years back I helped a friends kid with a science project where we used charcoal(to absorb the sun's heat) and methanol
alcohol to produce a cooling effect.triffid

[triffid]

he got an "A".

[ResinRat2]

They really didn't say anything about the total cost of the system for materials and installation. My guess is that even though it costs very little to run the system, you still would not get your money back over a reasonable period of time. ( to me reasonable means two to three years maximum.) That system is huge.

It probably costs so much that it would be like the solar panels we have now. It takes at least 15-20 years to get your money back from the total cost of materials and installation. Once again, probably not feasible for use in present day society. It would have to be implemented in some other country (China, India, etc.) We will never see it put to use in the USA in my lifetime.

Besides, the oil guys won't like it. It's dead in the water for now.

[Koen1]

Interesting tech...

I don't know if you had a chance to check those pictures I uploaded
from the Geneva inventors expo, but there should be a few pics and/or scans
about a French solar-powered refrigerator that used zero electricity.
That is different tech but extremely simple and should be easy to replicate.
I don't think it could be used for air conditioning very easily, but it might...
Basically, this is how that device works:
- sunlight falls on a box covered with a one-way mirror so that it cannot get out.
- the box is filled with a good layer of 'dessicant'/'dehumidifier' pellets/gravel, of a type
that releases the humidity to the air at the temperature inside the box
- the box is connected to another, thermally isolated, box by a hose (with a an air valve)
- the box is also connected to a vaporiser which allows water vapour to escape the system,
via a hose (with a valve?)
- during the day, the dehumidifier pellets lose nearly all of their water content to the hot air as vapour
- the vapour is allowed to escape through the 'vaporiser'
- any vapour in the thermally isolated box is absorbed by the dehumidifier pellets, thereby removing
vapour from the air inside the box and cooling its contents
- day/night cycle keeps this cooling cycle going

I may have missedan element somewhere, but this was the basic principle.
And it has been tested in Africa, where it worked quite nicely, I was told.
May be something interesting to build for the coming summer eh?