New technology could reduce the amount of energy for air conditioning

Since this article uses that fluffy "tell a story" writing style, here's the facts in the article stripped out:

1. Air conditioning consumes 10% of global energy and 20% of energy used in buildings.

2. Demand for cooling is expected to increase significantly, with 2/3 of world households projected to have air conditioning by 2050.

3. Dehumidification accounts for over half of energy consumption in air conditioners in humid conditions.

4. New technologies are being developed to improve air conditioning efficiency:

   a. AirJoule by Montana Technologies:
      - Uses metal-organic framework material for dehumidification
      - Claims to reduce energy for dehumidification by up to 90%
      - Still in prototype and testing stages

   b. Blue Frontier:
      - Uses liquid desiccant for dehumidification
      - Being installed in various locations in the US

   c. IceBrick by Nostromo Energy:
      - Energy storage system for large-scale cooling
      - Can reduce annual cooling costs by 30% and associated emissions by up to 80%
      - Only suitable for centralized cooling systems

   d. Gradient:
      - Window-based heat pumps with larger external units for better efficiency
      - Currently costs $3,800, aiming to reduce to $1,000

5. Electrocaloric cooling is being researched as a potential future technology, potentially 20% more efficient than current methods.

6. Passive cooling measures (e.g., window shutters) should not be overlooked as they cost nothing to run.

7. Current non-centralized air conditioners operate at only about 20% of their theoretical maximum efficiency.

I was talking with someone from Greece recently who was experiencing a heat wave and they dont have AC. I am from the south eastern US where we are basically required to have AC for de-humidification as much as cooling - we would be overrun with mold and mildew without AC in the summer. Our heat indexes regularly reach 105F during the summer and sometimes much higher. I joked the other day that if our aquifers ever ran out of water we could probably get most of what we need with just a better dehumidifier.

Edit to add: just in case, you should never use water out of a dehumidifier for anything but grey water use cases unless you sanitize and purify it - it can make you very sick!

I think they alluded to it in the article, but when a heat pump is cooling the inside it's generating lots of heat on the outside. They could/should/likely are using that 'waste' heat to dry out the desiccant. Seems like a great plan.

I often wonder why hot water systems aren't linked into the HVAC as well. I know you can get heat pump water heaters, but it seems like integrating it into the HVAC system would potentially allow for system scale optimizations. I would assume the cost/complexity is too much for residential systems. For that matter, refrigeration in homes falls into the same category as they are a heat pump that's dumping waste heat into your living space.

Another trend I have seen[1] ] (US market, high performance/high energy efficiency homes) is the use of HVAC and separate, standalone dehumidifier to do the same thing - take out humidity out of the air that the AC system has to otherwise both cool and dehumidify on it own.

The framing (at least as I understood it) was more on the psychometric side - 24C@65% relatuve humidity _feels_ worse than 27C@45%RH, but the energy savings aspect is also non-trivial.

As an aside - a fairly large number of central AC systems in the US do not have a humidity censor, so they only go by the temperature set point. Upgrading to control system which does measure humidity, while energy inefficient (because AC would be used to dehumidify the air _below_ the target set point), is an option, though not as good as having a stand-alone humidity control system. Sadly, I am unaware of Nest and/or Ecobee's support for this sort of a setup. Probably not cost effective for them. :\

[1] https://youtu.be/rWWLW4nLNBI?si=Ud1jk3x58H6pnMci

In areas where water is not in particularly short supply, you can cool by evaporating water into the exhaust pre-heat-exchanger of an MVHR system. This then vents the warmer humid air into the outside and cools incoming air. The enthalpy diagram suggest it's quite helpful and there's a product on the market that uses exactly this approach.

It's basically half of a closed cycle heat pump, in which the hot side is an externality.

Last episode of Tech Ingredients teased this:

https://youtu.be/hc_HcT4pIOE?si=0Nn1HwY-rpvhny9H&t=922

  in the next video we're going to
  show you how to improve the efficiency
  of air conditioners and not by a small
  amount it's estimated that approximately
  $200 billion a year is used worldwide to
  generate the electricity that drives air
  conditioning so even a few per reduction
  in the cost of running an air
  conditioner would make a huge difference
  and could save billions of dollars and
  what we're going to show you isn't going
  to improve the efficiency by a small
  amount but by a huge amount so stay tuned

Sorry to comment on the site and not the article, but goddamn. I have an old phone and visiting news sites like wired make it as hot as if I'm playing a video game, and the page had to reload several times like it ran out of memory. I lost 15% of my battery in 2 minutes of reading.

Wired (and other news sites), what the hell are you doing to computers? Stop it. People on newer phones may not notice it, but they're still burning just as many cycles on whatever stupid bullshit you decided to add to your site.

Maybe we wouldn't need so many air conditioners if sites like yours didn't exist.

> The system wouldn’t suit a single house, as it only works with these large centralized cooling installations. However, it can be bolted to a variety of chiller plants—it doesn’t really matter what circulating fluid they use, for example, Ben Nun says

We have district heating in New York [1]. Fascinating to think of district cooling, too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating

Air conditioning should be applied only the to a bubble of cubic space surrounding the people in a given room as well as any temperature-sensitive goods like medicines, perishables, etc. We ought to develop tech to facilitate this, for example a mosquito net style insulating cocoon to enclose your bed at night that conditions the air inside of it but leaves the rest of the room warm.

what happened to the DEVAP? https://www.osti.gov/sciencecinema/biblio/1047710 It appears it's been in development for more than 10 years: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/87527.pdf

Honestly it could be hardly used in practice. The frontier of cooling is:

- living in MODERN, so air-tight, well insulated buildings, designed to get the Sun when needed in winter, but not get it in summer with simple design choices etc;

-living in places where nights are fresh and having p.v. to cool with no energy consumption from grid during the day.

Now the above points are a bit bold but try reasoning why we live where we live. In the past places where circadian thermal delta was/is lower was very good places because it was less hot than now and there was no cheap heating. Similarly living in some places very deep in a valley was nice because floods was a thing anyway, but having clean water was invaluable and homes back then have had much less things who can be damaged by floods. Climate have change but technology, human living is changed much more. In the present world many inhabited parts of the world that back than was nice places, today they are not and others back than not so nice today are nice places.

In the past being many in a single places means:

- being able to defend against enemies

- having access to all professions and services

- having trade and learning opportunities

- be more exposed to illness, BUT being able to get help much easier

now? It means that

- 9/11 alike attacks or simple drone attacks are much more easy and deadly

- you get more dysfunctional services because we are too dense for them in too many place (as an example packages delivery in large condo complex vs single family homes)

- be more exposed to illness, with sometimes even LESS chances of a quick aid

- being mostly limited by nearby activities instead of having plenty of space for build a new one and remote work

Try to weight this, in terms of opportunities, disasters and who win vs who loose.

We could reduce demand for air conditioning if we designed our lives around the natural environment rather than isolating ourselves from it.

Right now we build giant boxes to live/move around in that suck up the sun's heat, then we insulate the box, then build another box to remove moisture in the box, cool the air in the box, blow it around, and then we have to power it...

....or we could live and move around in an open, shaded area, where wind can pass easily, fans blow on us to cool us (your skin is designed for cooling with wind, unlike most other animals on the planet), and cool mists can assist.

The latter is how I stay comfortable while camping in 90% humidity and 90F temperature. There are other solutions too, like staying underground during the peak of the heat, taking a dip in a pool of water, drinking cold liquids. All these and more don't require an exponential increase in energy generation, advanced engineering, or boxes designed to create an artificial environment.

Just pair AC with dirt cheap solar panels and the problem takes care of itself.

No need to by hyper-efficient when energy is almost free.