New Air Conditioner Process Cuts Energy Use 50-90% 445
necro81 writes "The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory has announced that it has developed a new method for air conditioning that reduces energy use by 50-90%. The DEVap system (Desiccant-Enhanced eVaporative air conditioner) cools air using evaporative cooling, which is not new, but combines the process with a liquid dessicant for pulling the water vapor out of the cooled air stream. The liquid dessicant, a very strong aqueous solution of lithium chloride or sodium chloride, is separated from the air stream by a permeable hydrophobic membrane. Heat is later used to evaporate water vapor back out — heat that can come from a variety of sources such as solar or natural gas. The dessicants are, compared to typical refrigerants like HCFCs, relatively benign on the environment."
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
The kind NREL uses are syrupy liquids — highly concentrated aqueous salt solutions of lithium chloride or calcium chloride.
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I'm pretty sure they don't get the hydrophobe-based dessicant from Wells. From Pratchett maybe...
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The cooler is two stage, the air is first highly humidified (if not too humid already), lowering it's temperature, the second stage the endothermic effect cools it further. This would work in a humid environment and indeed allows control of humidity outlet.
OK, so when can we buy one? (Score:5, Insightful)
So when will we be able to buy one of these? I know my wife is going to be asking for an AC in the house this summer, and I'm sure that the people in places like AZ, NM, and TX will be clamoring to lower their electric bill.
Additionally, will the dessicants (or the filter) have a recycle lifespan, or will it be more like a traditional household AC, using a 'simple' radiator device?
Re:OK, so when can we buy one? (Score:5, Funny)
I know my wife is going to be asking for an AC in the house this summer
Really? Another one? I've been visiting her for months.
Re:OK, so when can we buy one? (Score:5, Informative)
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I don't know how your swamp cooler works, but any halfway decent one won't be pumping any extra water into your air. They use heat exchangers to get the cold into the building, and evaporate out the water to the open air to cool off the heated piping.
If yours is indoors, you're doing it wrong.
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When the outside humidity is in the region of 10%, how high does the evaporative cooling raise it? Why is that a problem compared with other places where relative humidity could be in the range of 75-100%? I lived in Shanghai the May-Oct before I lived in Melbourne, and I'd say 30C there was worse than 45C downunder (I might react differently than my computer mind you, which certainly doesn't soak it's case through with sweat).
I was somewhere near this weather station [berwickweather.info] last year, it reported something like
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If it's that warm in the winter, summer must really suck.
Re:OK, so when can we buy one? (Score:4, Insightful)
People in those climates would do well to force the builder to actually build the home right. Heat chimneys and long overhangs coupled with highly insulated homes and thermal masses would do a LOT to cool the home with very little cost.
Problem is most homes are built wrong. the same damn cookie cutter McMansions that are designed by idiot architects.
get a 20 SEER rating AC unit and you will have the most efficient you can get today... it's only a couple grand more than a standard AC unit.
Oh and insulate your home, replace your windows with triple pane and low-e glass, and get rid of all air leaks.
Re:OK, so when can we buy one? (Score:4, Funny)
Indeed. I would highly recommend that you seal your house 100% hermetically.
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Problem is most homes are built wrong. the same damn cookie cutter McMansions that are designed by idiot architects.
[...]
Oh and insulate your home, replace your windows with triple pane and low-e glass, and get rid of all air leaks.
Problem is, your way of building homes is wrong. If you aim your house south (or north, in the southern hemisphere) and use high-E glass and proper overhangs, you get heat in the winter and cool in the summer. If you live where you never need heat then "proper overhangs" means that they never let the sun shine in directly. Using low-E glass traps heat in the summer.
There are numerous other things that can be done to improve heating and cooling efficiency, for example cooling towers for ventilation, or simpl
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You should realize that heat flow is a two-way street. Using low -e glass to trap heat in the summer is a good thing, it reduces the amount of black body radiation of the hot outdoors that gets indoors.
Most of that energy comes in horizontally (if it's not moving horizontally, then any not radiated from near the house cannot make it inside) and so most of it bounces right back out again if whatever is on the wall behind it is light in color. In fact, proper overhangs all but eliminate that which comes in and does not come out again. This is actually an issue with passive solar heating; you may have to have a wall or ceiling at an angle to keep energy from the sun inside the house! Having one plane in a ro
Re:OK, so when can we buy one? (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was young we had no AC, and this was in rural southern Africa, so it was usually very warm during the day.
I live in an old farm house in the US now and though it has central AC I very seldom use it. Usually when I have guests because if I don't they immediately comment on how hot it is and how can I stand it and that they are sweating just standing still. They threaten to swoon. They forecast their own death. They google map the closest hotel.
I built a cabin on the other end of the property and it is similar to what you describe. (it is a Kundig [olsonkundi...itects.com] design, which tend to be pretty green) People who visit still complain when the AC is not on, but only when it is particularly hot and humid outside.
Anyway, I think it is a combination of dwelling design and the fact that people in the US are so used to conditioned indoor air. Even at 90F there is little real physical risk to anyone other than the elderly, but I have met plenty of people who simply can't tolerate it mentally.
Re:OK, so when can we buy one? (Score:5, Interesting)
can't tolerate it mentally.
That's about right. I program computers for a living. Deep concentration for long periods of time is a key skill. Above the mid 70's I find it difficult to concentrate.
Then there's the humidity. The summer humidity around here is routinely 70%. I own a lot of expensive electronics. 70% plus heat is ruinous. Rust and corrosion. Oxidation. I'd lose half the electricity savings to early failure of my electronics.
Re:OK, so when can we buy one? (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand we regularly have 2 weeks worth of -40 as daily highs. Over most of the winter I generally only heating the house to 55. At 60F I'm comfortable in a t-shirt and jeans. When my formerly Trinidadian uncle comes and visits, he keeps his huge down parka on the whole time he's here. And the African immigrants I know here have seem to enjoy having their apartments heated to 80F.
So yes, it's all fun to be able to handle more extreme weather than others, but be careful in thinking that others are wimps. I don't know you, so I won't make any assumptions, but people who can handle heat well, often can't handle the cold (and vice versa).
Re:OK, so when can we buy one? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a home designer, I resent that remark.
Seeing as I lived and breathed in that field, I can tell you that just about every architect or designer gets a excited at the idea of sustainable, high energy efficient homes, built right to suit the local environment. So these "idiot architects" you rave about don't exist. Since you're obviously ignorant, let me inform you of the real problem. The general public.
Anything other than a "McMansion" just won't sell to the vast majority of Americans. When the home buyer has a limited budget, they have to balance their wants with their needs, and often you will find that features such as low e windows, good insulation, large overhangs, large thermal mass, etc... They might not always compete when compared to that extra bedroom, the outdoor jacuzzi the wife's always wanted, or that extra bay in the garage. Saving $25 a month on a heating bill may be a priority, but in the big picture, it's rarely priority #1.
Personally I love the idea of efficient and sustainable homes, but for one reason or another, clients who are willing to pay for that kind of thing are rare.
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As a home designer, I resent that remark. ... these "idiot architects" you rave about don't exist.
I believe that would be "rant", and they do exist. Until recently I lived in a house that was designed like a solar oven.
The south face had a front porch with a dark roof which was positioned underneath the second floor windows.
It heated the air which would then blow in through the windows. That's nothing if not stupid.
And absolutely no overhangs (which not only is a problem because of the solar heating,
it means you can never leave your windows open if there is even a slight chance of rain
because your hou
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Exactly. The real architects are busy designing skyscrapers and expensive custom homes, not shitty subdivisions full of tract homes.
I think you have the AIA to blame for that. I recently worked on a $3M building project for a nonprofit and the architects routinely wanted 20% of the total cost for their design work, even a two-man shop, and weren't willing to negotiate. They chose to blame AIA rules for their fee. We chose to not work with a design architect and hired a (rare) structural architect for a
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I don't think I could even find 20 seers, let alone get them to agree on which AC I should buy.
Re:OK, so when can we buy one? (Score:4, Interesting)
In highly sealed buildings they actually need to install air exchangers due to indoor air pollution. Remember: synthetics (carpet, formica, your freezer and rerigerator) outgas, mold grows (I don't care HOW much you clean, if you live in a region where humidity resembles a steam room you WILL get mold), people sneeze, insects and other wild creatures (small rodents, etc.) will find or make a way into your home and they pollute. All mammals, including people, shed. Cooking creates pollutants (oils, soot, etc.) and so forth.
So, in a modern semi-airtight building you need an air exchanger. Check this out:
http://www.epa.gov/iaq/ia-intro.html [epa.gov]
http://www.epa.gov/iaq/is-imprv.html [epa.gov]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_exchanger [wikipedia.org]
This is the Way to go About Golbal Warming (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a perfect example of how any approach to reducing the carbon should be handled.
Instead of brow beating everyone into paying more for less and prattling on about the environment and how we are all going to die, just make a device that accomplishes what you want while making it cheaper for the consumer.
Reduce Carbon, impact "global warming"...sorry, "climate change", pay more = boring, politically charged, scam written all over it.
Reduce cooling costs 50%-90% = Where can I buy one NOW!?!
This is what you call a win-win.
Re:OK, so when can we buy one? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're in AZ, NM, or Western TX, you can already get there without waiting.
Coolerado [coolerado.com] produces high performance indirect evaporative cooling systems for sale. Currently being mainly marketed to the business space, I'm sure you could conceivably get them to sell a 3-6 ton capacity system (as those were designed as residential/business units) to you since they work better overall than the NREL units. The NREL units have one thing over the Coolerado units in that they appear to work fairly well in areas like DFW, Houston, Miami, etc. where the humidity takes a good portion of the ability to cool anything by evaporative cooling. The DFW area is just at the edge of the region that evaporative cooling doesn't buy you nearly enough cooling.
What I'm wondering is whether one could apply the heat driven desiccant system as a dryer front-end to a Coolerado unit. As it stands, they've got this portable 6-ton capacity cooling system on a trailer with a set of solar panels that demo the efficiency of their systems. They're doing it with only about 600 watts of power with the demo system.
As for the desiccants, they're just something like Calcium Chloride in a concentrated solution (i.e. brine)- which means you'll have some periodic parts maintenance much like you would with a water treatment system. You might need to occasionally drain off the brine tank for maintenance, but you'll probably be able to simply capture it and put it back in the system. There's really little that can exist within a brine solution, so you won't have bacterial/algal buildup as a concern with that part of the system.
Good for server farms? (Score:5, Interesting)
Heat is later used to evaporate water vapor back out — heat that can come from a variety of sources such as solar or natural gas.
or the servers that are being cooled?
Re:Good for server farms? (Score:5, Funny)
And how are they going to pipe down solar gas into your server room anyway?
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Why not? In the opposite situation to AC, I know the PDC [pdc.kth.se] supercomputing center in Stockholm, Sweden feeds the surplus heat from their machines into the local district heating system.
Perhaps even more originally, those crafty Swedes have also hooked up their crematoriums [telegraph.co.uk]!
Re:Good for server farms? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, those fucking nanny-state latte-drinking faggie euro-trash tree-hugging abortionist lesbian pot-smoking liberals! That be a strike against liberty!
God gave me the right of freezing to death without having that nanny-state surplus heat fed into my heating system. If I want heat, I'll buy my own oil and heat myself, thank you!
First, you accept their surplus heat, then you go to the hospital for free, when you least expect it you're all dressed in red, singing "The International".
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I'm afraid of one thing: if that filter isn't 100% efficient, salt particles everywhere!
Not harmful to humans (quite healthy actually) but not good for electronics.
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Yes, if your servers run at some high temperature - I assume above water boiling point, based on the specific type of liquid dessicant. Maybe quite a bit more than the boiling point, as it seems this uses a chemical bond
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Such as a 200 degree Fahrenheit heat source. Not servers. And solar only gets you part of the way there. Unless you have a source of high temperature waste heat (e.g. cooking exhaust) or live in a relatively dry climate, you'll spend a lot of money powering the desiccant recycling loop.
Re:Good for server farms? (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally ... a CPU that can cool itself. No noisy heatsink required!
heatsinks are NOT noisy....... not one bit
fans can be tho
Re:Good for server farms? (Score:5, Funny)
heatsinks are NOT noisy
They never make a sound when _you_ are in the room, but just wait until your back is turned. They're bitchy little things.
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Pedant.
this is slashdot... of course i am a pedant
:P
you must be new here
Is this a closed system? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is this a closed system? (Score:4, Insightful)
From what they claim, it sounds like pairing with the desiccants will allow it to work better in humid climates, so presumably that'd have some benefit for places that are hot, humid, and have plentiful water. They do mention being able to improve the usefulness of evaporative coolers in Tucson, though (by allowing for cooling to lower temps), so you might be right about it trading one environmental ill for another.
Re:Is this a closed system? (Score:5, Insightful)
> The places that have water to spare also have humidity ...
It's like that here in Alabama. We're currently running in the mid-90's with dewpoints in 80's. "Swamp coolers" just don't work well in this climate, so I don't know how useful this will be to us.
From the Wiki article on evaporative cooling: "When considering water evaporating into air, the wet-bulb temperature, as compared to the air's dry-bulb temperature, is a measure of the potential for evaporative cooling. The greater the difference between the two temperatures, the greater the evaporative cooling effect. When the temperatures are the same, no net evaporation of water in air occurs, thus there is no cooling effect."
This is simple physics.
In other words, it's a neat idea that'll probably work in Arizona and Utah, as others have mentioned, but where AC is used the most -- here in the humid Southern states -- evaporative cooling just doesn't work.
Not that I wouldn't like to see it, mind you, considering the electric bills at our studios and transmitter sites. :(
Re:Is this a closed system? (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia doesn't do the principle justice. A swamp cooler is essentially a big fiber mesh (which can look and feel similar to cardboard but holds up when it gets wet). This mesh is constantly sprayed with jets of water to keep it wet -- damp isn't enough. A big fan, bigger than a typical air conditioner, forces air through this mesh and pushes it into the house. Each room that needs to be cooled needs to vent air out, typically into the attic and out into the outside. The more air you move through this mesh, the cooler the house, so it's typical that the air volume is much higher than an air conditioner.
The humid air introduced into the house is essentially at dew point (if it's lower than dew point, the mesh / jets aren't doing their job forcing the water into the air), so the house will likely be warmer than that, making a few assumptions about the conditions outside. Now, if you had this pre-drier in Alabama, dropping the dew point to 40 or 50, you'd be able to cool the air 20 or so degrees -- about what your air conditioner does.
By the way, I grew up in Phoenix. Instead of the $400/month power bills from running the air conditioners, my parents opted to run swamp coolers. The water bill regularly got above $100/month, but the electric bill didn't. Financially, it was a good trade-off. I'm told there are health benefits from breathing more humid air instead of dry desert air, and the air was constantly being refreshed from the outside, so there certainly weren't any toxic house concerns that people in some areas of the country have. On the flip side, there's the monsoon season, which is typically the whole month of August; the dew point rises to the point where swamp coolers just don't cool much. Several of my Magic: The Gathering cards (mostly Revised aka 3rd Edition) felt like they had a powdery coating on them. I assume this is mold. If it was on my cards, I'm certain it was on countless other surfaces we just never touched enough.
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Re:Is this a closed system? (Score:5, Interesting)
1) it can use salty water. It's drinking water that we are short on.
2) cooling the air extracts humidity from it. If the dehumidifier filter is ~99% efficient, it will receive more water from intake air than lose at the filter.
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Why do you believe it can use salty water? I've seen salt deposits, and I've worked with swamp coolers. If you spray salt water at a fiber mesh and force air through this mesh to evaporate the water and cool/humidify the air, the salt remains in the mesh, right? So it's eventually so clogged no air goes through? And the salt that makes it into the air will rust out the motor driving the fan and end up depositing itself all over your duc
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Why do you believe it can use salty water?
"a very strong aqueous solution of lithium chloride or sodium chloride"
That's salty water.
Insulate even in the warm climate! (Score:4, Insightful)
For starters, Americans should start insulating their houses better. That would cut the energy costs even more.
Not just insualation, setting reasonable temps too (Score:2)
I keep my house at 78 in the summer, I have ceiling fans in all the rooms I frequently use in the day. Throw in nine foot ceilings and it is very comfortable; especially when compared to the 90+ high humidity days we have in Georgia. Last year my highest bill in the summer was $140. This is four thousand square feet of home. Granted the other electrical costs are pretty low because of CFLs everywhere, a LED based projection tv - we only have one tv, and Macs/Pcs that sleep often.
That compares to some fr
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Re:Insulate even in the warm climate! (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean I can break even after only four years? Sign me up!
Generally that's true in older, poorly insulated homes. In more recently constructed homes (10 years old or less) adding additional insulation will have a longer payback period. That is, if the builder actually insulated the home as required. Most screw it up somewhere.
On the other hand, the 1920s portion of my home was made significantly warmer last winter with about $50 worth of cans of expanding foam sealant.
The 1990s portion was built with really good insulation, and there's just not much to be gained there. Some, but not much.
I am considering temporarily pulling some of the attic insulation out so I can seal all the tiny holes in the electrical boxes above things like light fixtures, and seal the boxes to the ceiling board. Supposedly the small amount of airflow leaking from these fixtures adds up to a significant heat loss, and the only expense to fix it is a roll of foil tape used on the backside of the boxes.
Since I have a gas forced-air furnace for heat, which uses air for combustion, I'm going to install a cold-air intake on the outside of the house with insulated duct all the way to just outside the furnace cabinet. The first year we were in this house I noticed cold air coming into the basement - it was being pulled down the balloon-framed walls all the way from the attic, because the furnace burner creates a low pressure area in the basement. The cold air also had a side effect of cooling the walls as it flowed down to the basement. Cost for the cold air intake should be under $50. I expect it to pay for itself in the first month of winter.
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Lots of higher-efficiency furnaces already have a spot to tie an intake plenum into place. My current ancient house uses black 2" ABS pipe for intake and exhaust. My previous ancient house used 2" PVC for exhaust, and had nothing for intake, like yours. It wouldn't have been obvious to me that it was designed to support a dedicated intake line if I hadn't read the book for that particular unit, but the fittings were right there if one knew to look for them. (I never did hook that up, because we were hav
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Even re-insulating the walls is fairly easy once you start doing the whole house, room-by-room. The first room is going to be hard, the second much less so, and the third one will be a non-thinker, almost.
I have recently faced taking off a horrible straw mat wallpaper. After spending 2 hours cleaning up one 4x7' section, it became obvious that taking down the drywall will be much easier. Especially that I had to run some new wire, and I hate unsupported wires just hanging in there; there is a point when pat
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"Sir, are you aware you were going 120 in a 30 zone?"
"Yeah, but I saw someone who was going 130!"
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I just recently saw an apartment that I was going to rent. But the windows were storm windows - no primary window at all. Talk about poor insulation! And this is in the US, too.
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Americans? I would say that most Western nations like America, Canada, and Western Europe are doing pretty well when it comes to insulation compared to other countries. Hong Kong makes me cringe. Cement walls and large rows of single pane glass windows for residential and most shops have open storefronts with the air conditioning blasting. Given the high heat and humidity, air conditioning accounts for a large amount of energy expenses.
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Any Japanese woman will tell you that insulating a Japanese house is impossible, because any attempt to do so will ensure that mould infests the house as soon as summer comes around.
Given the large fraction of Japanese homemakers who have never experienced a summer in a foreign home and the fact that the Japanese power giants are happily selling electricity at near double the US rate, don't expect this mentality to change anytime soon.
The key to TFA (Score:5, Informative)
Or, maybe,
As TFA states, desiccant cooling has been known since at least Carrier's work at the turn of the 20th Century. The trick has always been to make a practical desiccant cooling system.
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> The trick has always been to make a practical desiccant cooling system.
NREL has patented the DEVap concept, and Kozubal expects that over the next couple of years he will be working on making the device smaller and simpler and perfecting the heat transfer to make DEVap more cost effective.
which means it still is not practical... or at least practical enough.
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Exactly.
Dr. John Gorrie (Score:5, Interesting)
Few people have heard of the true inventor of both air conditioning and the artificial ice machine, Dr. John Gorrie [wikipedia.org], of Apalachicola, Florida, who received the first patent (number 8080 [uspto.gov]) for a machine to make ice, on May 6, 1851. While it was reduced to practice (he used it to cool the rooms of his fever patients, and gave iced drinks to his guests at parties -- a fantastic novelty in 1850s Florida) he was unable to make a financial success of the venture. His machine was the first to make use of the refrigeration method of air conditioning.
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Re:Dr. John Gorrie (Score:4, Interesting)
If you visit the John Gorrie Museum State Park [floridastateparks.org] in Apalachicola, Florida, you'll learn more about Gorrie than what is on the web. For example, he employed forced-air distribution of the cooled air by means of vents into multiple rooms, much as central air conditioning systems do today.
As it happens, while he started work on an air conditioning system to help his fever patients, he moved to ice production as a quicker way to market. At that time, people used ice for cooling when necessary, so there was an existing market and distribution system for it. However, the ice was shipped from the North, and thus very expensive, so there was a ready market for an ice machine making inexpensive ice.* The idea of central air conditioning was a bigger conceptual leap for the times, especially since there was no electrical grid and motive power would have to be supplied by steam engines, which would make the central cooling of buildings very expensive.
By the time Carrier arrived, in the 20th Century, the economics had changed; the electrical grid, combined with a ready industrial need for refrigeration, made all the difference -- as did his location: Carrier was from New York.
________
*He thought; in reality he was "a hick from the sticks," without the funding needed to bring his invention to market, and was never able to complete with the entrenched power of the ice companies of the day -- who, of course, saw the ice machine as a threat to their existing businesses and did all they could to discourage him. Recall that there were no venture capitalists at that time; if you were a struggling inventor you either had the backing of wealthy friends (Gorrie didn't), or you got a government grant to support your work (as Samuel F. B. Morse had done with the telegraph a few years earlier). The building animosity of North vs. South that would soon lead to the Civil War didn't help matters, either; he was a Southerner, while the potential financial backers (and the ice companies) were all in the North.
No solid-state? (Score:2)
That's all well and good, but I'd rather see efficiency advances in solid state cooling (quieter, more reliable, often smaller...)
Spelling (Score:2)
Isn't that "old" tech? (Score:2)
We are getting a new AC system in our DC in a few weeks and this sounds pretty much exactly like the things they do.
Can someone enlighten me, please?
And the *best* part... (Score:2)
Is that we'll all have this in 3-5 years!
Propane efficiency (Score:4, Interesting)
How does it compare with efficiency of propane cooling? For the foreseeable future propane will continue to be created by oil industry, regardless of the idealism of some environmentalists, so it will continue to be used in homes for heating. For cost-saving purposes, propane fridges and freezers are being used quite often in remote areas - they are also extremely efficient. I am curious how the two systems compare in efficiency.
Dessicant reaction (Score:3, Interesting)
Calcium chloride is interesting: put a pan of it in a humid room and it dissolves in the water it absorbs. But it also gets hot when it does so, which would seem to defeat the purpose. I wonder how they get around that problem.
Re:lithium chloride or sodium chloride? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:lithium chloride or sodium chloride? (Score:5, Funny)
So if they don't do stuff like that, then whats the point of having grad students?
Sex (Score:3, Funny)
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This is not really a closed system though - the hydrophobic membrane can not be 100% efficient. OTOH, you can get a salt water inhalation solutions at a pharmacy, to help with drying up eyes and nose - some salty water in the air may be a positive thing. (still, not the optimal solution for server rooms etc).
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Who pissed in your cornflakes this morning?
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It does say these dessicants are relatively benign compared to the presently used refrigerants.
But you are spot on with the rest of your post, proper insulation and appropriate construction techniques would go a long way in limiting the energy consumption of buildings.
In the mean time we here in N/W Europe we can only hope for weather warm enough to switch off the heating.
Re:lithium chloride or sodium chloride? (Score:5, Insightful)
I lost interest at this point. Wake me up when biochemists and medical doctors get a chance to run test case groups about the adverse effects of lithium in their localized atmosphere, typically inhaled into the lungs and later causing one's sense of reality to become skewed.
Well what about the Sodium Chloride option. People have lived near oceans without adverse effects.
Re:lithium chloride or sodium chloride? (Score:5, Funny)
A desert is an ocean with its life undergound, and a perfect disguise above.
Or is it the other way round?
Re:lithium chloride or sodium chloride? (Score:5, Funny)
I lost interest at this point. Wake me up when biochemists and medical doctors get a chance to run test case groups about the adverse effects of lithium in their localized atmosphere, typically inhaled into the lungs and later causing one's sense of reality to become skewed.
In order to get lithium chloride vapor in the atmosphere, one would have to raise the temperature to about 1600 Kelvin at normal atmospheric pressure. Under those conditions, I propose blind panic as a suitable coping strategy.
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It's not either/or (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're building new, modern building codes result in a more insulated space. In my opinion modern codes -- even those in CA or the "stretch in MA or the base points in LEED -- aren't aggressive enough, but they're far better than existing conditions in most buildings. Of course, the same opportunities exist for major remodeling or work on the exterior.
Sometimes, though, the mechanical unit needs to be replaced, and quickly. In those cases, would you prefer that this new AC not exist (assuming they wor
Re:It's not either/or (Score:5, Informative)
no they dont. 4" exterior walls are common now. it USED to be 6" was required for exterior walls. but contractors wanted to increase profit margins clamored to make houses more "shitty".
Homes should also be sheathed with 3/4" plywood instead of the craptastic fiber board they use now. I've been doing high end installs of whole house audio in $1,000,000+ homes on the side for 5 years now. Home construction has went down hill quite a bit from the late 80's where you had to have good construction quality.
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I won't be using it in my house for a simple reason: If that "membrane" gets punctured you're going to have one hell of a cleanup cost. I won't even go into the aerosolized effects. Check out any SDS.
Re:lithium chloride or sodium chloride? (Score:5, Interesting)
You need to do more research. You can put R-400 in the walls and it won't help, because you are dealing with a building that has windows and occupants.
In most places, solar heat gain is a major component that A/C has to deal with. Humidity in the makeup air is also a large problem for A/C to handle.
Humans inject heat and water vapor into the building through cooking, respiration, appliances, and opening doors.
Humans also need fresh air, and you can't -- legally or practically -- build an air-tight building without makeup air.... which introduces more humidity and heat into the building envelope.
I built my house 2 years ago and used all closed-cell spray foam (isocyanate) making all walls, floor, and roof, water-tight and air-tight. 133 mm of foam gives me R-37 in the walls, and more gives me R-60 in the floor and ceiling. All ducting is in conditioned space. All external walls have thermal breaks (offset studs). I have an ultra-efficient water-jacketed earth-coupled geothermal heat pump. The solar gain in the summer still rapes my house with heat gain. The makeup air I have to have because the house is so damn air-tight, uses a high capacity heat exchanger, but still is a water-vapor sieve pumping water vapor into the conditioned space that the A/C has to then remove.
So do a little more research before you spout off with drivel.
Re:lithium chloride or sodium chloride? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your argument is bogus. R30 fiberglass bats are 9 1/2 inches thick. Are you saying to frame the walls with 2x10s. You know the cost of dimensional lumber increases geometrically with dimension, right. Or do you stagger frame with 2x6s...basically build each wall twice and double your labor costs?
What about existing structures? Because the US market has enough backlog of existing structures. Do you build another layer of insulation INSIDE the house and lose a foot of floorspace near each exterior wall..and then pay to reframe, drywall, move out electrical outlets, etc? Or do you reframe the exterior of the house and then cover and weatherize your new outside envelope?
In either case, what about windows and doors? You do know that heat will gladly take a parallel path. Third-year ME heat transfer class...remember the resistor analogy? You can make the walls R300 and the heat will still get in (out) through "holes in the bucket." Have you priced super high R glazing options? Do you want a 8" thick front door? Even in the walls themselves, you have to worry about thermal bridging through the wood studs...all these would be problems even with some crazy aerogel insulation that is R50/inch.
The building standard is what it is for a reason. It is an engineering trade-off between cost and performance. R30 in the ceiling and either 2x6 walls with R18 or 2x4 walls with R11-12...and maybe a dense insulation board on the outside before siding is installed. Double pane insulated glass windows. Now those trade-offs were in considered with energy and HVAC hardware costs at a certainly level. And more insulation is good but only to the point. The insulation costs goes well beyond the price of the insulation bat, and a point exists where adding more makes no financial sense. If you *insist* on having windows and doors, it doesn't make engineering sense anymore either. Your recommendation is well past that and smacks of niavete. Build or remodel a house or two (especially using your OWN MONEY) and then get back to me. A home built to your bogus specifications would cost four or five times more. I doubt you could find someone to build it for you.
If you want to look into green houses, then look into earth bearmed homes, rammed earth homes...building underground, using lots and lots of earth as thermal insulation and thermal mass. Folks have been doing this since the 70s and there are books that give some good overviews. I'd like to see the building codes revised to make it easier to build some of these different "hippie" houses.
And in sunny climates, I think the best ROI would be a 100x100 white canvas tarp and support structure to shade your entire house. I'm surprised no one does that. That would effectively remove the direct radiation load from the cooling...which is significant...just ask your barefeet after a walk across sunlit asphalt.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I lost interest at this point. Wake me up when biochemists and medical doctors get a chance to run test case groups about the adverse effects of lithium in their localized atmosphere, typically inhaled into the lungs and later causing one's sense of reality to become skewed.
Isn't this where the reavers came from? Lithium chloride in the atmosphere to calm the population, caused 99% of the people to give up and die, and sent 0.1% into a psychotic rage?
Oh, right. That was a science fiction movie. I always get those confused with reality.
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I eated a pack of silica gel.
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You're making it out to be much more expensive than it actually is. If you really have 1930's construction, then insulating your home would be relatively easy and cheap. Between each pair of studs in your wall (and, possibly, ceiling if you have no attic) a hole is drilled and the gap is filled with a ground newspapers and phone books. Then you repair the holes. It has quite good insulating properties and is relatively cheap. The 1930's status of your construction actually helps, since you won't have firebr
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Do you perhaps mean a row of horizontal studs?
No, it's a firebreak (Score:3, Informative)
Do you perhaps mean a row of horizontal studs?
Do you perhaps mean joists [wikipedia.org]?
Neither. The horizontal pieces between the studs are called firebreaks. They are there solely to slow fire down and help prevent it from spreading between building floors vertically through the wall stud space. They don't serve much mechanical structural purpose, but they do also help prevent vertical cold air flow inside the walls which helps the insulation (fiberglass insulation doesn't stop airflow, it just filters out the dust).
The 1920s portion of my house does not have any firebreaks in two of the
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A better way is self expanding foam, it will even insulate homes that have the crappy 1st gen fiberglass batting. it just requires COMPETENT installers so they dont put in too much and burst the walls.
I did an entire 2100 sq ft home for less than $2200.00 that included adding an extra 18 inches of fiberglass batting to the attic. My heating bills dropped from $210 to $80 a month in the winter with a 25 year old 55% efficient furnace. this summer that get's replaced with a 90% efficient furnace.
Re:Is it better than this? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Cause Coolerado [coolerado.com] uses Flash and TFA [nrel.gov] HTML5?
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Has the potential to do better in hot and humid climates (and might do better in hot and dry climates, although it might be more expensive)
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now capture the evaporated water back into the bottle and we're home.
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In the street, just like every other air conditioner in the world.
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You're right. There's no point in doing anything, ever. We should all just die. Also, you hate your parents, right? Because they wouldn't get you the bigger iPod?
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