Air conditioning without conditioning air?

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-09-04 01:00

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Life would be hard without air con, but it's a power-hungry and inefficient way of keeping us cool, so Chinese scientists set out to develop a more environmentally friendly way of beating the heat. They've developed a prototype of a 'personalised thermal management device' that uses a heat sink to cool air which is then radiated towards the user from a super-cold surface. In tests on artificial skin, they found the device can lower skin temperature by 7.3°C, and they say it uses around half the energy a standard air conditioning setup would use to cool a building in the summer. They also say it overcomes some other problems with air-con, including the potential spread of airborne pollutants and diseases in conditioned air, and noisy fans. This is not the first 'radiant cooling' system, but previous efforts have not been powerful enough and have been hampered by condensation forming on the cooling panels. Their new model has more than tripled the cooling power available to up to 220 watts per square metre, and a double coating of plastic on the cooling panel stops condensation from settling.