Cooling
While beer is best served chilled, everyone who’s tried it knows that beer and ice generally aren’t a good mix. Most options to keep the beer cold once out of the fridge, like beer koozies or the Chill Puck, work from the outside in, but a new device called the Chillsner turns things around. This freezable metal spike fits inside a beer bottle to keep your brew ice cold from the inside out. Read More
Where the first generation of Thermaltake's GOrb portable cooler merely lifted the back of a laptop to give the underside some room to breathe, the new GOrb II sports 70 mm (2.75 in) fans running at 2200 RPM to stop things heating up. Read More
Nano-engineered panel passively cools buildings by emitting heat into space
Studies have already shown us how white-painted roofs can help cool buildings by reflecting sunlight, while "green" roofs beat the heat by blocking sunlight and providing a source of evaporative cooling. Now, a team of scientists from Stanford University have created a panel that not only reflects sunlight, but it also draws heat from within the building and emits it into outer space. Read More
Skylights are a nice way of letting daylight into your house, and if they can be opened, they’re also effective at letting out the hot, stuffy air that rises to the ceiling. Depending on their location, however, they can be difficult to open without running electrical wiring up to them. That’s why Velux has introduced its no-wiring-required Solar Powered Fresh Air Skylight. Read More
Chill Puck designed to keep drinks colder, longer
Beer koozies (aka coasties, coldy-holdys, stubby holders and a multitude of other names) are a summer staple for keeping cans of drink colder, longer. Not satisfied with the cooling capabilities of these foam cylinders, Curt Peters created the Chill Puck, a small hockey puck-shaped disc that fits on the underside of a can. Read More
Breakthrough laser cooling system could save space and energy
A research team at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has successfully used a laser to cool down a semiconductor material known as Cadmium Sulfide. The results of the recently published study could lead to the development of self-cooling computer chips and smaller, more energy efficient air conditioners and refrigerators that don't produce greenhouse gases. Read More
GE's "dual piezo cooling jet" could enable even cooler gadgets
Despite their shortcomings, fans do a good job of cooling things down inside PC chassis. Unfortunately, their bulky shape and drain on battery life doesn’t make them a viable option for thinner form factors, such as tablets and smartphones, limiting the processing grunt that can be crammed inside such devices. Inspired by lungs and by adapting technology that improves airflow through jet engines, researchers at GE have created a super-thin cooling device they say will enable thinner, quieter and more powerful tablets and laptops. Read More
New mat cools buildings by letting their roofs sweat
We're used to the thought of humans sweating to cool down, but what about buildings? Researchers at ETH Zurich have applied the biological cooling mechanism to the task of keeping a building cool, and in the process have hit upon a novel and inexpensive method of cooling houses which could prove useful for homes in both developed and emerging nations. Read More
ORNL roof-and-attic system keeps houses cool in summer, warm in winter
Heating and cooling a house are two of the biggest ongoing costs for homeowners and are responsible for the bulk of the average household’s energy consumption. A new kind of roof-and-attic system field tested at the DoE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) improves the efficiency of both winter heating and summer cooling. Importantly, the new system can be retrofitted to most existing roofs. Read More
Scientists from Spain’s Universidad Politécnica de Madrid have created a new type of drywall, that they claim can reduce a building’s energy consumption by up to 40 percent. Its secret? Lots of tiny beads of paraffin. Read More
