it's summertime somewhere and all i can keep thinking is how in the world did
anyone ever live without air conditioning seriously but as we all know keeping our
homes at a comfortable temperature can come with a hefty price tag both financially
and environmentally but what if i told you that one company is working on a cooling system that
could cool your entire house without producing any emissions and bring down your electric bills
by 95 percent better yet it does it by harnessing the coldness of space sound
too good to be true well with the company sky cool and their passive radiative cooling systems
it just might be possible come chill with us as we take a deeper dive here on tiba davinci
special thanks to acorns for sponsoring this video automatically invest your money
by rounding up purchases using acorns the world loves ac and why not getting to set your home
or office to the perfect temperature so you can live comfortably all the time who needs fresh air
but as demand increases things might not be so cool after all you know what is super cool though
hit the like button right now about 15 of the planet has air conditioning but as global
temperatures increase and developing countries continue to well develop demand for that sweet
sweet ac is only going to increase in places like india and brazil purchases are increasing by over
15 annually by 2050 the global population will own over 5.6 billion air conditioning and refrigerator
units adding about 10 new units every second for the next 30 years this proliferation
can be seen as a major win for public health a 2015 heatwave in india killed over 2500 people
more ac would definitely help people in such intense weather situations
but there are some major downsides with air conditioning systems contributing to the very
problem they are designed to solve part of the problem is that the ac heat pump technology
really hasn't been updated much since it debuted in the early 1900s we've actually done a whole
video on heat pumps that you should definitely check out but we'll do a short breakdown here
essentially ac systems are heat pumps that pump a special chemical compound that has a
convenient boiling point through a mechanical system that initiates different phase changes
the tldr version is that as this coolant passes through an evaporator it goes from liquid to gas
absorbing huge amounts of energy where you want cooling then as it condenses back into a liquid
it releases energy usually in the outside split system where heat is discarded downside number one
is that the process requires an incredible amount of energy with a whole house ac system that can
easily consume three to five kilowatts for large parts of the day ac units alone account for about
one-fifth of the energy used around the world adding up to somewhere between 10 and 20 percent
of global electricity consumption and those numbers will only grow in the coming years
then there's the issue of the chemical compounds that ac units are using as their working fluid
a common one being hydrofluorocarbons according to a study from the birmingham energy institute
in the uk these substances and the power the units consume accounted for at least 11
of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2018. invariably in any hvac system there will be
some level of gas escape as these fluids are released requiring systems to be topped off on
some interval the effect these compounds have on the atmosphere can be several thousand times more
potent than carbon dioxide alone in 2016 the deal reported that ac units added close to 700 million
metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually so what do we do just turn off our acs and sweat
it out quietly i mean my mother assured me that that does build character well thanks to some
new innovative tech we may have a way of staying cool without these downsides before we get back to
the show let me tell you about our sponsor acorns my entire youtube channel is about why the future
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thank you to acorns and all of you for supporting the show sky cool and their co-founder ashworth
rahman might have stumbled upon a technology that could cool our buildings more efficiently
while consuming virtually no electricity and better yet they actually utilize the cold
of space the way it works is truly brilliant it's not a heat pump in fact when installed
they actually look like solar arrays utilizing a natural phenomenon called radiative cooling
if you've ever gone out to your car on a brisk fall morning and seen a layer of frost on your
windshield yes even here in san diego i've seen it a couple of times in the colder months
this is an example of radiative cooling this is where the real fun begins with a quick
detour through the wonderful world of heat transfer the study of how heat flows all around us
the three main forms of heat transfer are conduction where heat is transferred
between particles of matter in direct contact convection where heat is transferred from a
surface to a liquid or gas that is in motion and three radiation where heat is transferred
through empty space the effective play with this technology is radiation infrared
radiation can pass through dry clear air in the wavelength between eight and three micrometers
this range is best to need to cut through the water vapor and co2 in our atmosphere
and exit into space materials that can absorb energy and radiate it out at these wavelengths
exhibit a strong cooling effect materials that can also reflect 95 percent or more of sunlight
in the 200 nanometer to 2.5 micrometer range can exhibit cooling effects even in direct sunlight
the reason we don't typically notice this cooling effect during the day is well the sun this is
why it gets so much colder at night but sky cools breakthrough technology has found a way to harness
this natural process during the day one thing that has helped skycool make their technology viable is
the nano technology of their thin film panels the substances that they use are particularly
good at emitting infrared light sending about 97 of the sun's beams back out into space more
bounce back than the sky itself this reflective capacity allows the cooling effect to take place
the system's film consists of seven microscopic layers of hafnium oxide an inorganic compound
that acts as an electric insulator and silicon dioxide or silica a natural abundant material
all sitting on top of a thin layer of silver now for this process to work we need a few key things
first we need a material that can reflect as much of the sun's incoming radiation as possible
check we need a material that radiates outward efficiently in the 8 to 3 micrometer wavelength
check and finally we need this material to be good at absorbing heat check and check sky
cool panels contain a working fluid but instead of hydrofluorocarbons they use a water glycol
mixture like radiator fluid in your car the fluid circulates through the panels absorbing heat from
the buildings through radiators and convection similar to a traditional heat pump the infrared
reflection cools the panels and the working fluid up to 15 degrees below the ambient air temperature
and the best part is they can work 24 hours a day seven days a week what's really fascinating about
this technology is that it actually gets rid of heat instead of just moving it around remember
that a traditional ac is a heat pump so that just moves heat from inside your house to outside
so yeah if your solution to global warming was to just crank your ac with all your neighbors
and open all your windows that wouldn't really do the trick because you're just moving heat from one
place to another but with these radiative panels we actually take the heat energy and radiate it
into space and in the case of this technology it doesn't have to be either or adding skycool
panels to traditional ac units can improve energy efficiency by about 15 to 35 percent
fully replacing a traditional system could generate between 80 90
energy reduction on top of that sky cools panels cool without evaporating water and only require
electricity to run a small circulating pump since radiative cooling panels are similar to
solar panels that create electricity we'd have to decide how to line the roofs of tomorrow
so what should we choose it turns out based on the efficiency of solar panels a solar array at the
same location with the same area would normally create about 14 mega hours per year or about two
and a half times less energy than what you could save by using sky cools panels that is remarkable
of course the best solution would probably be some combination of the two or maybe one day our solar
panels could double as both electricity generators and radiative coolers that's the kind of thinking
that got me into engineering in the first place sky cools panels have already proven their worth
the company ran a long-term experiment at a grocery outlet store in stockton california
decking the store's roof out with 32 panels covering about 62 square meters prior to the
experiment the store was spending upwards of 40 000 a year just to run its refrigerator system
after the system was installed the store saw a reduction of over 100 kilowatt hours per day or 30
000 for the year and the financial result skycool panels brought the store nearly six thousand
dollars in annual savings but this technology as with all inventions it's not 100 foolproof
things like cloud cover and high humidity can reduce the panel's efficiency as water droplets
can trap some of the infrared light they do best in places with clear sunny skies year-round like
california or arizona still one thing is clear as the world warms up and it's warming up our current
options for ac aren't going to help having a clean passive system that uses no harmful chemicals and
consumes almost no electricity could be a major win right now at the moment of writing this video
the us is experiencing yet another record-breaking summer heat wave places like arizona new mexico
and especially texas run the risk of overloading their grids during summer months just because
of increased usage of air conditioning passive systems like sky cool do a better job of cooling
down buildings while also putting far less strain on the grid and the result is more money in the
customer's pocket sounds pretty chill to us but let us know what you think would you install
sky cool panels on your roof do you know of any other air conditioning system solutions out there
let us know in the comments below so that is a look at the sky cool radiative air conditioning
replacement panel pretty amazing technology and this is the sort of stuff that i just love
hearing about sure it's early there's long ways to go for the company but this is some pretty
promising tech and the right applications this could be pretty game changing so that pretty
much does it for us but before you leave if you like the show and you want to support us and
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no harm you can join or leave at any time there's no commitment and until next
time i'm ricky with tuba davinci and just remember the future is going to be awesome