Air Conditioners

For those times when the outdoors is too hot or too cold, the easiest way to find respite is to dash inside. But what if that's not an option? Sony thinks it has the answer with the Reon Pocket air conditioner, which it's crowdfunding through its own First Flight acceleration program.

A German research team has prototyped an extraordinary heating/cooling system that stresses and unloads nickel-titanium "muscle wires" to create heated and cooled air at twice the efficiency of a heat pump or three times the efficiency of an air conditioner.

Beginning with the principles of the Stirling engine, SoundEnergy's THEAC thermal acoustic engine takes heat - either industrial waste heat or solar heat - and turns it into powerful cooling without requiring any other power source. This completely renewable technology could prove highly disruptive.

Launched this month, the Global Cooling Prize is a competition to help stop runaway climate change, by dangling US$3 million in prize money for the development of more energy-efficient cooling solutions. ​

Researchers have paired a cooling system that draws thermal heat from a building and beams it into space with a solar panel, designing a system with the same rooftop footprint that ccould generate electricity and passively cool a building at the same time.

​Steve Feher wants to cool motorcyclists' heads, using the same technology he invented to cool drivers' butts. The Feher helmet is the world's first fully integrated air conditioned motorcycle helmet, and it claims to keep your head 10-15 degrees cooler than the outside world.

​Riding a motorcycle in very hot weather can be quite vexing, particularly when trapped in traffic-jammed daily commutes. BluArmor Helmets suggests a simple solution to keep the head cool; a detachable air cooler unit that fits to most full-face helmet in seconds and sends refreshing air inside.

​Chances are, you don't give a lot of thought to changing the air filter on your furnace or air conditioner. You might go check on it occasionally, or just put a reminder on the calendar. FloSmart, however, is designed to notify you when it detects that the filter needs replacing.

Legionnaires’ disease can spread when water in a building's air conditioning system becomes infected with Legionella bacteria. Checking for that bacteria takes up to two weeks, and requires water samples to be sent away. The Spartan Cube, however, can do the job on location in less than an hour.

Over the last few years a Stanford team has been developing a roof-mounted system that cools a building by reflecting heat into space, and the latest test has managed to use solar panel-like devices to cool water without needing any other energy source.

​Evapolar is back with a second iteration of their portable air conditioner after successfully completing an IndieGoGo campaign in 2015 and delivering over 20,000 units worldwide.

Doug Martin, an engineer at Ford, didn't like the idea of condensation from cars' air conditioners being wasted. That's why he created a prototype system which collects that condensation, and repurposes it as drinking water within the car. ​