Energy & Green Tech

A cooling system that works without electricity

It looks like a regular roof, but the top of the Packard Electrical Engineering Building at Stanford University has been the setting of many milestones in the development of an innovative cooling technology that could someday ...

Energy & Green Tech

See-through film rejects 70 percent of incoming solar heat

To battle the summer heat, office and residential buildings tend to crank up the air conditioning, sending energy bills soaring. Indeed, it's estimated that air conditioners use about 6 percent of all the electricity produced ...

Energy & Green Tech

Global demand for air conditioning to triple by 2050: report

The worldwide demand for air conditioning is expected to triple over the next 30 years, making the pursuit of energy-efficient cooling systems a top priority, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday.

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Air conditioning

Air conditioning refers to the cooling and dehumidification of indoor air for thermal comfort. In a broader sense, the term can refer to any form of cooling, heating, ventilation or disinfection that modifies the condition of air. An air conditioner (often referred to as AC or air con.) is an appliance, system, or mechanism designed to stabilise the air temperature and humidity within an area (used for cooling as well as heating depending on the air properties at a given time), typically using a refrigeration cycle but sometimes using evaporation, most commonly for comfort cooling in most buildings and motor-cars.

The concept of air conditioning is known to have been applied in Ancient Rome, where aqueduct water was circulated through the walls of certain houses to cool them. Similar techniques in medieval Persia involved the use of cisterns and wind towers to cool buildings during the hot season. Modern air conditioning emerged from advances in chemistry during the 19th century, and the first large-scale electrical air conditioning was invented and used in 1902 by Willis Haviland Carrier.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA