Cooling

With the World Cup always held in the European off-season in June and July, the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar offers the prospect of players and spectators sweating through the hottest part of the year. Doha sees an average top temperature of 41 degrees Celsius (106°F) in these months with the possibility of top temperatures as high as 50°C (122°F). While shifting the World Cup to the cooler month of January has been mooted and since rejected, a team of engineering scientists from Qatar University (QU) have taken a more high-tech approach to solving the problem – they've reportedly developed a type of artificial "cloud" designed to float above the World Cup venues and provide fans and players with relief from the blazing sun.  Read More

Any time there’s a prolonged power outage in warm weather, chances are that one of your first thoughts is “What’ll happen to all the food in my fridge?”. Well, imagine if instead of a week’s worth of groceries, your unpowered refrigerator was full of vaccines, vital to the well-being of an entire African village. In rural third world countries, power failures are common, as are high temperatures – not a great combination for things that need to be kept cold. Fortunately, some aid agencies have the option of using a True Energy Vaccine Refrigerator. It can store US$30,000 worth of medicine below 10C (50F) in 43C (109F) ambient temperatures, for over ten days at a time, without power.  Read More

The lack of cooling in large open areas inevitably sends people scurrying for air-conditioned buildings on hot days. Taking a leaf from traditional Islamic architecture that dealt with the harsh desert climate with Mashrabiyas – a projecting latticework window that provides shade from the hot sun while allowing cool air from the street to flow through – London-based design firm PostlerFeruson has designed a kind of three dimensional Mashrabiya that can cool the immediate area in an energy-free way.  Read More

One of the downsides of the lithium-ion battery systems used in electric vehicles is that their performance, reliability, safety and durability can be negatively affected by extreme temperatures. When the all-new Ford Focus Electric debuts later this year in the U.S. it will be powered by a lithium-ion battery – no news there. What is interesting, however, is that the battery system will use cooled and heated liquid to regulate battery temperature, which should extend battery life and maximize driving range.  Read More

LED lamps may soon be able to go much longer between fixture replacements thanks to a new graphite foam cooling system developed at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The graphite foam works by passively wicking heat away from the lamp via its lightly-packed, open skeletal structure – and given that a ten-degree decrease in operating temperature can double the lifespan of LED lighting components, the benefits of keeping them cool are clear.  Read More

MSI has launched its latest performance gaming laptop, the MSI GX660. This laptop is designed with high performance and ease of use in mind. It features MSI’s TDE (Turbo Drive Engine) technology and Dynaudio sound. It also comes with dual 500GB SATA hard drives, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 discrete graphics card and has three DDR3 RAM slots which allows up to 12GB of RAM. MSI has built two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports into the machine as well as an eSATA port.  Read More

An advanced cooling technology being developed for high-power electronics in military and automotive systems is capable of handling roughly 10 times the heat generated by conventional computer chips. The new type of cooling system can be used to prevent overheating of devices called insulated gate bipolar transistors, high-power switching transistors used in hybrid and electric vehicles. The chips are required to drive electric motors, switching large amounts of power from the battery pack to electrical coils needed to accelerate a vehicle from zero to 60 mph in 10 seconds or less.  Read More

Many readers would be familiar with the electrical blackouts that occur in the summer months resulting from the extra load placed on electricity supplies by air conditioners. A new “smart” metal being developed by researchers at the University of Maryland (UM) could help cool homes and refrigerate food 175 percent more efficiently than current technology, not only giving strained electricity networks a bit of relief, but also drastically cutting summer electricity bills and greenhouse gas emissions.  Read More

IBM has announced that its first-of-a-kind hot water-cooled supercomputer has been installed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich). Named the Aquasar, the system not only consumes up to 40 per cent less energy than an air-cooled machine but the direct utilization of waste heat in the building's heating system translates to an 85 per cent cut in carbon dioxide emissions.  Read More