Cold Tube Draws the Heat

-

If you live anywhere near the tropics, air conditioning isn’t a luxury but a necessity. The problem however is that humid climates can cause conventional air conditioners to draw more power to dehumidify the air than it requires to just cool it, which increases the power needed to run the unit. Back in 1963, there was a proposal to create a cooling system that didn’t foster condensation and couple it with different methods of removing humidity. Researchers in Singapore have now created such a system. It uses a membrane that is permeable to infrared radiation but prevents condensation around the cooling unit.

You can see a video of the apparatus in a pavilion in the Singapore heat in the video below. Chilled water runs through tubes behind a membrane that passes thermal radiation. Since the tubes are not exposed to the ambient atmosphere, condensation is minimal. But heat radiates from the warmer area to the much colder area of the tubes.

Desiccant passively dries the air. Does it work? The paper mentions testing in January which sounds odd to people from chillier latitudes, but Singapore is so near the equator that it isn’t really what others might call  winter there even in January. A quick search reveals the average temperature in January is 87F or about 30.5C. People found the area to be subjectively cool and comfortable.

We wonder of course if you could cool electronics with a scheme like this in applications where airflow or vibration from a contact surface could be an issue–for example, under a microscope. You can build a classic air conditioner out of odd parts if you like. Swamp coolers work well, but not with humidity.



from Blog – Hackaday https://ift.tt/3lrNmIT

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Modern Radio Receiver Architecture: From Regenerative to Direct Conversion

-
Image
Modern radio receivers have a distinct advantage over the common early designs which I covered in my previous article . Most of the receivers you will have worked with over the past couple decades are designs by Edwin Armstrong ; regenerative, superregenerative, or most commonly superheterodyne. These are distinguished by a few fascinating key traits that bring both benefits and drawbacks. Today let’s dive into Mr. Armstrong’s receivers. I’ll also talk about DC receivers which, despite the name, are not made to listen to batteries. These are receivers you are much more likely to encounter in modern equipment. Regenerative and Superregenerative The regenerative receiver is all about doing more with less. You still see some of these in simple applications like RF remote controls. The idea derives from how an oscillator works. In a simple way of thinking, an oscillator is an amplifier with enough positive feedback that any tiny signal at the right frequency will amplify and then, throu...
Get this one»

Hackaday Links: May 31, 2020

-
We begin with sad news indeed as we mark the passing of Marcel van Kervinck on Monday. The name might not ring a bell, but his project, the Gigatron TTL computer , certainly will. We did a deep dive on the microprocessor-less computer a while back, and Marcel was a regular at conferences and on the Gigatron forums, supporting users and extending what the computer can do. He was pretty candid about his health issues, and I’ll add that when I approached him a few weeks ago out of the blue about perhaps doing a Hack Chat about Gigatron, he was brutally honest about how little time he had left and that he wouldn’t make it that long. I was blown away by the grace and courage he displayed. His co-conspirator Walter Belger will carry on the Gigatron mission, including joining us for a Hack Chat on June 24. In the meantime, this might be a great time to pick up a Gigatron kit before they’re all sold out and get busy soldering all those delicious through-hole TTL chips. May of 2020 is the mo...
Get this one»

Homebrew 68K Micro-ATX Computer Runs Its Own OS

-
Image
We’re no stranger to home built Motorola 68000 computers here at Hackaday, but more often than not, they tend to be an experiment in retro minimalism. The venerable processor is usually joined by only a handful of components, and there’s an excellent chance they’ll have taken up residence on a piece of perfboard. Then [NotArtyom] sent in his Blitz , and launched the bar into the stratosphere. Make no mistake, the Blitz isn’t just some simple demo of classic chips. The open hardware motherboard has onboard floppy, IDE, and PS/2 interfaces, with a trio of 8-bit ISA expansion slots for good measure. The  Motorola 68030 CPU is humming along at 50 MHz, with 4 MB of RAM and 512 KB of ROM along for the ride. Designed to fit the Micro-ATX motherboard standard, you can even mount the Blitz in a contemporary PC case and run it on a standard ATX power supply. An earlier prototype of the Blitz motherboard. As if the hardware wasn’t impressive enough, [NotArtyom] went ahead and created hi...
Get this one»