Interesting tech...
I don't know if you had a chance to check those pictures I uploaded
from the Geneva inventors expo, but there should be a few pics and/or scans
about a French solar-powered refrigerator that used zero electricity.
That is different tech but extremely simple and should be easy to replicate.
I don't think it could be used for air conditioning very easily, but it might...
Basically, this is how that device works:
- sunlight falls on a box covered with a one-way mirror so that it cannot get out.
- the box is filled with a good layer of 'dessicant'/'dehumidifier' pellets/gravel, of a type
that releases the humidity to the air at the temperature inside the box
- the box is connected to another, thermally isolated, box by a hose (with a an air valve)
- the box is also connected to a vaporiser which allows water vapour to escape the system,
via a hose (with a valve?)
- during the day, the dehumidifier pellets lose nearly all of their water content to the hot air as vapour
- the vapour is allowed to escape through the 'vaporiser'
- any vapour in the thermally isolated box is absorbed by the dehumidifier pellets, thereby removing
vapour from the air inside the box and cooling its contents
- day/night cycle keeps this cooling cycle going
I may have missedan element somewhere, but this was the basic principle.
And it has been tested in Africa, where it worked quite nicely, I was told.
May be something interesting to build for the coming summer eh?
