As incomes in developing countries continue to rise, demand for air conditioners is expected to triple by 2050. The surge will multiply what is already a major source of greenhouse gas emissions: Air conditioning is currently responsible for almost 20 percent of electricity use in buildings around the world.
Now the startup Transaera is working to curb those energy demands with a more efficient air conditioner that uses safer refrigerants to cool homes. The company believes its machine could have one-fifth the impact on the climate when compared to traditional ACs.
A Transaera engineer says that the thing about air conditioning is the basic technology hasn’t changed much since it was invented 100 years ago.
That will change rapidly if Transaera’s small team is successful. The company is currently a finalist in a global competition to redesign the air conditioner. The winner of the competition, named the Global Cooling Prize, will get $1 million to commercialize their machines.
At the heart of Transaera’s design is a class of highly porous materials called metal organic frameworks, or MOFs, that passively pull moisture from the air as the machine works. The team members see the materials’ commercial advancement as an important part of their mission.
MOFs have a lot of potential applications, but the thing that’s held them back is unit economics and the inability to make them in a cost-effective way at scale. What Transaera aims to do is be the first to commercialize MOFs at scale and lead the breakthrough that brings MOFs into the public domain.
Most people think air conditioners only cool the air in a space, but they also dry the air they’re cooling. Traditional machines use something called an evaporator, a cold coil to pull water out of the air through condensation. The cold coil must be made much colder than the desired temperature in the room in order to collect moisture. Pulling moisture out of the air takes up about half of the electricity used by traditional air conditioners.
Transaera’s MOFs passively collect moisture as air enters the system. The machine’s waste heat is then used to dry the MOF material for continuous reuse.
News Source: MIT
