NREL Improves On Swamp Cooler Tech to Create 90 Percent More Efficient Air Conditioner

[madokie]

http://www.popsci.com/node/46623/?cmpid=enews062410

NREL mechanical engineer Eric Kozubal, who co-invented the system, says the goal is to revolutionize cooling while removing millions of metric tons of carbon from the air. It cools and dries the air in one step. Evaporative cooling, blowing air across a wet surface to promote evaporation, has long been used in swamp coolers, as Technology Review notes. The DEVap takes it a step further, dividing air into two streams that are separated by a polymer membrane.

Water passes through one airstream, making it cooler and wetter. The cooler air cools the membrane, which cools the air on the other side, without making that side any more humid.

Another process dries the air, making the system effective even in humid locales -- a big step toward reducing refrigeration-based air conditioning, which is used in most of the country and is responsible for about 5 percent of the nation's energy consumption.

(snip)

In the DEVap, another membrane separates the desiccant from the rest of the air, and allows water vapor to pass through its micrometer-sized pores. The desiccant pulls moisture from the airstream, leaving dry, warm air. Then, in a second channel, water evaporates to cool a second airstream, which cools the first, dry airstream. The result is cool, dry air.

[AndyA]

1. An older woman I once knew had a very large house, and she had a Swamp Cooler.

Huge thing in the back yard, near the corner of the house. When you walked inside her house, it was COLD. No matter how hot it was outside, the house was chilly inside. That's the way she liked it. And her air conditioner fan didn't seem to run that much, either. She lived in a very humid area, but the house didn't seem damp inside at all. Seemed to be a pretty efficient system.