Stanford researchers have developed a new radiative cooling system:
So Raman and electrical engineering professor Shanhui Fan made panels containing layers of silicon dioxide and hafnium oxide on top of a thin layer of silver. These radiate in a unique way: They send heat directly into space, bypassing the Earth’s atmosphere. The panels do this by emitting heat at infrared wavelengths between 8 and 13 micrometers. To these waves, the Earth’s atmosphere is transparent. What’s more, the panels reflect nearly all the sunlight falling on them.
For the new fluid-cooling system, the researchers made radiative panels that were each one-third of a square meter in area; they attached the panels to an aluminum heat exchanger plate with copper pipes embedded in it. The setup was enclosed in an acrylic box covered with a plastic sheet.
The team tested it on a rootop on the Stanford campus. Over three days of testing, they found that water temperatures went down by between 3- and 5 °C. The only electricity it requires is what’s needed to pump water through the copper pipes. Water that flowed more slowly was cooled more.
As a practical application for the system, the researchers built a model in which the radiative water-cooling panels cool the condenser coils of a building’s air-conditioning system, providing an assist to the system’s cooling fans. The circulating fluid helps siphon more heat from the condenser, increasing efficiency. Water that’s cooled by only a few degrees can make a big difference: In general, the electricity needed for a cooling system is reduced by 3 to 5 percent for every degree Celcius the condenser temperature drops.
The model showed that cooling a two-story commercial office building in Las Vegas with fluid-cooling panels—which covered 60 percent of the roof—cut the building’s electricity use by 21 percent compared with using only a traditional fan-based condenser during the hot summer months of May through August.
I wonder if this will show up in liquid cooled vehicle applications. Reducing air flow through radiators reduces drag and having to deal with where that air flow goes so smaller radiators would be an advantage. I’d expect to see opportunities for it in places like NASCAR except for NASCAR’s devotion to a 19th century rules set.
Like a box sticking up from the hood? Cooling from this technique is not nearly significant enough for automotive use.