Cooling

In some of the world's hottest countries, where cooling systems are most needed, the infrastructure required to power such setups is often lacking. A new system could help, as it provides multiple cooling effects but uses no electricity.

Quantum computing requires extremely cold temperatures. To that end, IBM has built and demonstrated a huge “super-fridge” codenamed Project Goldeneye that chills things colder than outer space.

After the summer so many of us have just sweltered through, we need better ways to cool buildings. Researchers have now spruced up the humble window with hydrogel-glass, which can selectively block heat from the Sun without blocking its light.

Gases used as refrigerants in cooling systems can leak into the atmosphere and become major contributors to climate change. Now engineers at Harvard have demonstrated a new prototype cooling device that uses a solid-state material as a refrigerant.

Israeli company Green Kinoko is preparing for the first public tests of a remarkable clean outdoor cooling system. The Kinsho system operates like the inverse of an outdoor cafe heater, cooling several tables per unit without using any electricity.

A large percentage of a building’s energy usage is consumed by heating and cooling, but a new dynamic shading system could help. Inspired by the skin of krill, the system uses cells of blooming pigment that can block light on demand.

Reaction Engines has built a precooler for its SABRE engine that can chill a hypersonic airstream from 1,000 °C to -150 °C in 1/20th of a second. Now it's doing tests with the USAF and DoD to prove it can upgrade other existing jets to handle Mach 4.

Although a completely flat-surfaced wheel would be aerodynamic, it would also be hard to keep cool – especially during the braking process. An experimental new wheel rim, however, has cooling vents that open as needed … and they're activated by heat.

A huge chunk of energy usage goes towards heating and cooling homes and buildings, so it’s important to find new ways to regulate temperature passively. A new wood-based foam could drastically cool buildings to a degree that can be easily tuned.

Researchers at Oxford have developed a new smart window coating that can be tuned on the fly to emit or reflect heat from the Sun in different amounts, reducing the energy costs of heating and cooling by up to a third.

Heating and cooling buildings is a major consumer of energy, especially older ones that weren’t built with modern energy efficiencies in mind. Now Fraunhofer engineers have developed a modular solar-powered facade that can heat or cool rooms.

Berkeley Lab engineers have developed a roof coating that can keep a building warmer or cooler, depending on the weather. When it’s warm out the material will reflect sunlight and heat, but it switches itself off in winter, reducing energy use.