Four space engineers have developed a zero emissions air conditioning system that won’t pollute the atmosphere when operating.
For many years air conditioning systems in homes, shopping centres, factories and offices have been recognised as major contributors to CO2 emissions, but this latest innovation aims to boost efficiency to prevent harmful emissions.
The new system marks a further step towards zero carbon buildings, with its developers gaining their expertise from the construction of complex earth and telecom observation satellites. This knowledge has now been used to design an environmentally friendly way of controlling temperature.
The system uses sunlight rather than electricity to power both central heating and air conditioning and can also be used to heat water and cool fridges.
The team behind the project consists of Charles Daniel, Yann Vitupier, Yannick Godillot and Marie Nghiem, who all worked on a range of sophisticated satellite systems such as Europe’s Jason ocean monitors at the Thales Alenia Space in Cannes, France.
The team drew on their thermal engineering skills in their determined bid to cut down on energy consumption along with their rigorous testing experience.
Nghiem said that their standards were extremely high due to the complex nature of spacecraft construction.
She said that the team left nothing to chance, with every component meticulously tested to ensure it will last through time, including through the very harshest possible conditions.
The team were searching for an idea and looked at ways they could transfer their space skills to come up with different ways of running temperature control systems in a variety of different types of buildings.
The system utilises curved solar mirror troughs which are spread across the roof of a building to focus the power from the sun on to tubes that heat water up to 200°C.
Once this water has been pressurised it goes into a different unit which provides both hot and cold water which is then circulated to set the required temperature.
