White Dog
and The White Dog Army
Wonderful
World Wednesday
White Dog knows that one of the things that make OUR world
wonderful during the throes of New Mexico’s intense summer heat is our ability
to stay cool. While our swamp cooler system is relatively low tech and uses
less energy than refrigerated cooling, it DOES rely on sending water through
pads and past a fan…water that is a scarce commodity which evaporates and is
not reclaimed. The WDA cannot imagine what summers are like in places of the world
that have no electricity or water at all.
We are huge believers in alternative energy. Our house has
solar panels to collect the vast amounts of sunlight that bathe our area. The
WDA knows that reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear power plants is NOT the
direction the world needs to head to provide everyone with access to the basics
of modern living. So imagine our delight when we read about those clever
engineers at Stanford University who have invented a sort of reverse solar
panel that cools like air conditioning but requires no energy output.
And, as a bonus, these panels could protect cars from the
incredible interior heat gain that prevents the WDA from running errands that would have
them waiting inside the vehicle! Yes! Now THAT would be wonderful…
By Good
News Network Thursday, April 18, 2013
Homes and buildings chilled without air conditioners. Car
interiors that don't heat up in the summer sun. Tapping the frigid expanses of
outer space to cool the planet. Science fiction, you say? Well, not any more.
A Stanford team has designed an entirely new form of
cooling panel that chills even with the sun at high noon. Such a panel could
vastly improve the daylight cooling of buildings, cars and other structures by
reflecting sunlight back into the chilly vacuum of space.
"People usually see space as a source of heat from
the sun, but away from the sun outer space is really a cold, cold place,"
explained Shanhui Fan, a professor of electrical engineering and the paper's
senior author. "We've developed a new type of structure that reflects the
vast majority of sunlight, while at the same time it sends heat into that
coldness, which cools manmade structures even in the daytime."
The trick, from an engineering standpoint, is twofold.
First, the reflector has to reflect as much of the sunlight as possible. Poor
reflectors absorb too much sunlight, heating up in the process and defeating
the goal of cooling.
The second challenge is that the structure must
efficiently radiate heat (from a building, for example) back into space without
that radiation interacting with Earth's atmosphere and causing greenhouse
gases. The new structure accomplishes both goals.
The Stanford team has taken a very different approach
compared to previous efforts in this field, succeeding where others have come
up short by turning to nanostructured photonic materials, which can be
engineered to enhance or suppress light reflection in the key frequency range
necessary to escape Earth's atmosphere.
"No one had yet been able to surmount the challenges
of daytime radiative cooling –of cooling when the sun is shining," said
Eden Rephaeli, a doctoral candidate in Fan's lab and a co-first-author of the
paper. "It's a big hurdle."
A typical one-story, single-family house with just 10
percent of its roof covered by radiative cooling panels could offset 35 percent
its entire air conditioning needs during the hottest hours of the summer.
Radiative cooling has another profound advantage over
other cooling equipment, such as air conditioners. It is a passive technology.
It requires no energy. It has no moving parts. It is easy to maintain. You put
it on the roof or the sides of buildings and it starts working immediately.
Beyond the commercial implications, Fan and his
collaborators foresee a broad potential social impact. Much of the human
population on Earth lives in sun-drenched regions huddled around the equator.
Electrical demand to drive air conditioners is skyrocketing in these places,
presenting an economic and environmental challenge. These areas tend to be poor
and the power necessary to drive cooling usually means fossil-fuel power plants
that compound the greenhouse gas problem. (SOURCE: Stanford News)
2 comments:
I know one thing for sure,, and that is trees make very nice shade for me when its hot, and the creeks cool my toes.
And when its cold- thank goodness for blankys!
love
tweedles
I think the humans might figure it all out eventually.
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