Space Powered Cooling May Be the Future of Energy

this video is brought to you by robo rock the more the planet warms the more we'll need to cool it down yet our cooling systems are heating the earth as they consume fossil fuel energy and release greenhouse gases air conditioning use is expected to increase from about 3.6 billion units to 15 billion by 2050 so how do we exit this cold room trap what if i told you we could tap into space for electricity free air conditioning and other refrigeration tech i'm matt farrell welcome to undecided [Music] one of the chilling effects of climate change is heat waves last june a record-breaking temperature of 121.3 degrees fahrenheit or about 50 degrees celsius triggered 130 deaths in vancouver and this is gonna get worse you may argue that setting your ac to full blast would fix the problem right well it would definitely avoid you melting down in the short term but it will have the opposite effect on a global scale in the long run air conditioning and refrigerators use hydrofluorocarbons or hfcs as coolants now while they have a much shorter life span in the atmosphere compared to co2 hfcs are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas now these uncool gases leaking from cooling equipment contribute about four percent of global greenhouse gases twice as much as aviation the other issue is that a typical ac unit is a dirty energy-hungry machine according to the international energy agency's future of cooling report if we don't find more energy-efficient alternatives by 2050 indoor cooling systems will consume as much electricity as china and india do today you may see why we're walking on thin ice on the way to buy a new ac but it's not just about ac in our houses we need refrigeration in supermarkets to store our food safely and not to mention the facilities to cool down the massive data centers that support and connect our digital world i actually have a separate video on something about that that's really cool to check out i'll put a link in the description now all these combined currently account for about eight percent of greenhouse gases that are released in the atmosphere on the other hand if we improve the efficiency of cooling we could cut emissions in half but how do we do that well a u.s startup has a cool idea for that radiative cooling in short skycool claims they could plug into the biggest freezer in the universe space to make our cooling systems more efficient last february the california-based company was awarded a 3.5 million fund to turn this concept into reality let's take a deep dive into their cool refreshing space pool now everything on earth including all of us emits heat as infrared light based on a phenomenon called thermal radiation any sky-facing surface will release energy into the atmosphere which absorbs some of that heat but there's a cool hole between the 8 and 13 micrometer wavelengths where the emitted heat goes past the atmospheric barrier and actually reaches outer space as a result of this thermal exchange with the cosmos which can be as cold as negative 454 degrees fahrenheit or 270 degrees celsius the emitting body gets cooler now this is the radiative cooling process a heat shedding effect which peaks on cloudless nights that's why it's also known as night sky cooling and why you see frost on the windshield of your car in the morning even when the air temperature is above freezing and it's not a new invention hundreds of years ago ancient persians used it to make ice and preserve food in the desert well before artificial refrigeration was introduced they built sky-facing shallow pools and filled them with water on a clear night in the deserts their ice houses worked like magic except it wasn't magic but radiative cooling that made the water surface drop below the air temperature and reach 32 degrees fahrenheit or zero degrees celsius now that sounds cool right so all we need to do is channel the infrared thermal radiation into this gateway to space and the heat won't be trapped in the atmosphere which means it won't add to the greenhouse effect and the only problem during the day when we would need cooling systems the most sunshine obscures the space freezing effect so what do we do before i get to that i'd like to talk about another cool piece of technology in today's sponsor roborock i've been really impressed with the roborock s7 robot vacuum and its mopping ability and they have a new auto empty dock for it which makes cleaning even easier since the vacuum can empty itself instead of manually emptying the bin every time the vacuum runs it can clean for up to eight weeks before needing to empty the dock [Music] and don't worry about accidents if the dustbin isn't detected in the vacuum it stops itself no dustbin when it's time to empty the dock it's really easy with dust bag and as someone who has really bad allergies i really like the fact that the dust bag is treated to prevent bacterial growth and that the dock has hepa filtration and while this is all automatic you can also manually trigger the emptying process in the app and you can also set different emptying modes by default it uses the smart mode which adjusts automatically based on the length of the cleaning session or you can max it out if you want to if you're interested in getting the robo-rock auto empty dock which i've been very impressed with check out the link in the description below thanks to roborock and to all of you for supporting the channel so getting back to this super cool tech leveraging a combination of nanotechnology and photonics skycool designed a material by alternating seven layers of highly reflective components like half-nimoxide and a weakly reflective compound such as silicon dioxide they optimized the thickness of each layer based on the ideal solar reflectivity and emissivity over the 8 to 13 micrometer wavelength range as a result of this special setup their film sends infrared rays out through the sky transmission window and reflects 97 of the sunlight that's pretty impressive if you compare it to commercially available white paints that reflect only about 80 to 90 of sun rays but i guess someone could argue that that's not a huge difference and that standard white paints probably do just a fine job however if you consider that 100 square meter roof about a thousand square feet an extra one percent of reflectance would give you an additional cooling power of about 1 kilowatt so when comparing it to a commercially available white paint that could be about 10 kilowatts of additional cooling power for that 100 square meter roof that's more cooling power than a standard central air conditioner that we use in our houses today now 40 times thinner than a human hair skycool applies this film on top of their fluid cooling panels that can function at any time of day and not just at night their aluminum modules cool a water glycol fluid flowing within some pipes and their temperature can drop by up to 15 degrees fahrenheit or 10 degrees celsius below the ambient temperatures even when constantly exposed to blazing sunlight using the chilled fluid sky cools panels lower the temperature of the cooling system's refrigerants which increases their efficiency by how much about 12 based on the field trial that the startup performed in california back in 2014. from the website they claimed the efficiency could reach up to 40 this cooling tech could replace ac systems in some cases reducing energy consumption by up to 90 percent and according to the company their panels save up to three times more energy than a standard solar panel generates electricity using the same space the icing on their panel cake is that they don't need water evaporation to cool and can be recycled at the end of their life all this sounds amazing right so what about the practical applications well skycool is currently running a few commercial pilots to solve real world problems for instance they installed 15 rooftop cooling panels and connected them to a walk-in freezer at a convenience store in sacramento california the freezer's daily energy consumption went down by 15 the company also replaced the condensers on the ice machines inside the store with 15 more panels achieving a 25 reduction in energy use skycool also came to the rescue of a grocery outlet supermarket in stockton california the store was spending forty thousand dollars a year to run his electricity hungry refrigeration system and keep their food safe by installing an array of 32 panels on the store's roof skycool estimated a 36 megawatt hour energy reduction per year which translates into nearly 6 000 of annual savings another hot topic sky cool is quenching is energy demanding data centers with 80 of these powered by fossil fuels data centers alone account for about 0.3 percent of the global carbon footprint their emissions are partially caused by inefficient cooling systems which is based on the traditional vapor compression using their panels to reject heat from the server racks skycool attained an energy savings of about 1036 kilowatt hours per square meter per year without relying on any compressors or fans now while the startups pilots are promising are there any other companies in the space and what about the technology's economic viability well since skyschool's film's discovery researchers have been developing other materials harnessing the radiative cooling principle for instance a recent study from the university of buffalo suggested that the passive cooling strategy could be used as an electricity free system on its own scientists designed a polymer aluminum hybrid film whose structure can tune the direction of the emitted infrared rays skywards and radiate heat from buildings this innovation makes the technology less dependent on environmental conditions and more effective in urban areas with many obstacles like skyscrapers but it's not just about the films park engineered a self-cooling paint that cools any surface up to 10 degrees celsius or 18 degrees fahrenheit below the surrounding air the silicon valley based company already tested their spray-on solution on a number of substrates ranging from steel to carbon fibers with a daytime cooling power of around 100 watts per square meter in the summer park tailored their paints to the building and automotive industries engineers from purdue university created an ultra white paint that reflects 98.1 percent of the sunlight they achieved this whopping mirror effect by using barium sulfate particles of different sizes which reflects multiple wavelengths given the low cost of raw material scientists said that the paint could be competitive on the market within a couple of years but are these ultra pale paints more cost effective than conventional ones well australian researchers painted a picture just about that based on their review scientists concluded that you'd be better off using standard paints and moderate climate zones this is because the benefit of using whiter heat reflective paints is too small to justify their added costs another study confirms cool paint can be an efficient and profitable solution in tropical climates like singapore scientists estimated coating cement roofs with cool paint would reduce energy consumption by about 57 dollars per square meter per year and its implementation costs would be paid back in as early as two years besides inorganic materials it turns out we can use organic ones as well a refreshing collaboration between the university of colorado and the university of maryland gave birth to a sort of woody ice cube by removing lignin which is the component that gives brown color and strength to wood the researchers were left with a pale wood made of cellulose nanofibers they then compressed and treated the material to increase the strength and added a super hydrophobic coating to keep water away the bright white wood brick can be used to build heat repellent roofs when testing it on a farm in arizona the processed wood stayed 12 degrees cooler than the natural material researchers estimated the u.s buildings constructed after 2004 would save an average of 20 percent on cooling costs by using their wood the efforts led to the creation of the invent wood startup which is working on commercializing the product in addition to saving electricity bills radiative cooling could be a geoengineering strategy to freeze earth's global warming however this would mean coating up to two percent of the planet's surface with super cool materials which is obviously pushing it just a little bit while being the most ready to cool technology skycool's energy savings have been based on a limited amount of data so far to add to that local climate conditions can negatively impact the panel's performance clouds and especially low fog could reduce the efficiency by up to 30 percent same applies to water vapor that captures some of the infrared radiation before it could reach space also even though the company touts being able to provide renewable electricity-free cooling they still need electricity to power the pump for recirculating the fluid within their panels it's said by their founders while skycool's scientific innovation is promising they still have to tinker with the technology to make it cheaper before it can be commercialized the main challenge is to drive down the module's manufacturing and installation costs based on the pacific northwest national laboratory study if the cost of making and setting up skycool like materials was to be kept below 6.25 cents per square meter on the rooftop it would be paid off by energy savings in five years now thanks to the partnership with 3m and the recent 3.5 million grant they received skycool believes their films can hit market friendly prices by 2023 with a payback time as short as three years with the planet becoming hotter and hotter the introduction of more efficient and eco-friendly cooling tech can't be kept on ice skycool has dug out a galactic sink to dump heat into and more diving into it while the mass production of space-powered cooling materials isn't viable today technology advancements could make this a reality soon but what do you think does this sound like a promising tech to you jump in the comments and let me know and a special welcome to new supporter plus patron ned b and producer tom fault your support really does help make these videos possible if you like this video be sure to check out one of the ones i have linked to right here be sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell if you think i've earned it thanks so much for watching i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Undecided with Matt Ferrell

Views: 828,912

Keywords: future of energy, future of energy production, future of clean energy, future of green energy, future of renewable energy, the future of renewable energy, energy, future, renewable energy, space cooling by solar energy, climate change, environment, radiant cooling, radiant cooling panels, radiant cooling system, renewable, science, skycool panels, skycool systems, skycool ted talk, solar, solar power, space cooling, space cooling systems, sustainability

Id: pq8xDXkbXZs

Length: 13min 11sec (791 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/MasterDefibrillator]

Of course, it's well known that one of the most difficult parts of going to space is dumping the heat that you generate while there; without an atmosphere, getting rid of heat is very hard. There are essentially 3 ways to dump heat: convection, conduction and radiation. When you're in space, you lose the ability to dump heat via convection and conduction because there is no atmosphere, and you are left with the least effective way to dump heat: radiation. This is also why the idea of flash freezing when you get dumped into space, that you see in movies so often, is actually impossible. Even though space is technically very cold, because you can only radiate heat away, it takes a long, long time for something to cool down and freeze.

Turning to the least effective way to cool things seems like a very desperate tactic to me.

[u/hypnotic20]

Isn’t that basically a sterling engine?