SNOWBREEZE ARTICLES

Air conditioning

No sweat

Artificial cooling makes hot places bearable—but at a worryingly high cost

Jan 5th 2013

SUMMER humidity in the Gulf often nears 90%. Winds are scant. Even in the shade the heat hovers far above the body’s natural temperature. No wonder that before 1950, fewer than 500,000 lived along the whole 500-mile southern littoral. Now, rimmed by the mirrored facades of office towers, gleaming petrochemical works, marinas, highways, bustling airports, vast shopping malls and sprawling subdivisions of sumptuous villas, it is home to 20m people. Their lives are made possible by “coolth”—artificially cooled air.

Yet a chorus of critics counts air conditioning as more a curse than a miracle. Though food refrigeration is an unquestioned part of modern civilisation, chilling a room causes sniffiness. In his book “Losing our Cool” Stan Cox, a polemical plant scientist, blamed it for “resource waste, climate change, ozone depletion and disorientation of the human mind and body”. In 1992 Gwyn Prins, a Cambridge University professor, called “physical addiction” to cooled air America’s “most pervasive and least noticed epidemic”.

People fare better, too. A study of government typists in 1950s America found that air conditioning raised productivity by a quarter. On factory floors it cut absenteeism and stoppages. “Air-Conditioning America”, a book by Gail Cooper, cites a 1957 survey in which 90% of American firms named cooled air as the single biggest boost to their productivity. The late Nelson Polsby, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, suggested that air conditioning reshaped American politics, by enabling the migration of Republican pensioners to the Sun Belt. That helped break the long-standing Democratic lock on southern politics.Puritans sometimes forget that air conditioning was invented with the efficiency of machines, not the comfort of people, in mind. An early success came in 1902, at a printing plant in Brooklyn, New York, where shrinkage of paper due to humidity meant that differently coloured layers of ink could not be properly aligned. By the 1920s air conditioning had spread to public spaces such as cinemas and department stores. Their trade used to slump in the heat-sodden summer. With cool air indoors, it boomed. The same technology that cools the air also cleans it: the dust-free environments for high-tech manufacturing require air conditioning.

A mapping project devised by William Nordhaus, an economist at Yale, revealed more proof that heat wilts economies. Using a global grid system to escape the biases of national data, he identified an almost linear correlation between mean annual temperatures and productivity per head. People in the coolest climes, he found, generate 12 times the economic output of those in the hottest. Far fewer people live at those extremes than in middling climate zones, but even in the crowded temperate band of the globe, the difference in output between hotter and cooler places was big.

Cooling also lowers mortality. In studies of what epidemiologists quaintly call a “harvesting effect”, summer heatwaves have been shown to cause sudden rises in the number of deaths from cardiovascular, respiratory and cerebrovascular disease. A 2006 survey of six South Korean cities, for instance, indicated that a rise of just 1°C over normal summer peak temperatures prompted a rise of between 6.7% and 16.3% in mortality from all causes. On the hottest days during a 2003 heatwave in Spain, according to a health-ministry survey, the increase over normal mortality rates was around a quarter.

Live cool and long

Studies of heatwaves in American cities during the 1980s and 1990s observed that a good predictor for falling ill was poverty, and specifically a lack of air conditioning in the home. Surveys since then suggest that the dramatic fall in the number of Americans who sicken or die during heatwaves is a direct result of widening air-conditioner ownership, from 68% of American households in 1993 to nearly 90% today. An academic paper on deaths in Chicago related to a 1999 heatwave concluded bluntly that “the strongest protective factor was a working air conditioner.”

A statewide study of summer admissions to hospital in California, published in 2010, adjusted for household income, found that for each 10% increase in ownership of air conditioning there was an absolute reduction in cardiovascular disease of 0.76%, and of respiratory disease by 0.52%, for people over 65. For places less blessed than California, where risks include insect-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, or high levels of toxic particulate matter in the air, the benefits of wider air-conditioning use could be far greater.

But what about the health of the planet? America uses more electricity for cooling than Africa uses for everything, notes Mr Cox. Hotter summers and larger homes helped American energy consumption for air conditioning to double between 1993 and 2005. Cooling buildings and vehicles pumps out almost half a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.

That sounds a lot. Yet air conditioning still only accounted for 8% of household power consumption in 2005, according to the most recent comprehensive survey by America’s Energy Information Agency. That compares with 41% for heating, and 20% for making hot water, the necessity of which is seldom contested. (Significantly, overall energy use per American household has not risen in 30 years, because of things like better insulation and more efficient gadgetry.) Air conditioning is more energy-intensive than heating. But people use less of it. The shift in America’s population from northern to southern states has cut the nation’s total energy bill.

Yet rising incomes in poor countries are associated with American-style spending on air conditioning there. Between 1995 and 2004 the proportion of homes in Chinese cities with air conditioning rose from 8% to 70%. Asia already accounts for more than half the global air-conditioning market, and China alone for 70% of production. Sales of air conditioners there, boosted by government schemes that also encourage purchase of more efficient models, have rocketed. Global warming will further stoke demand. Research in the Netherlands (see chart) by Morna Isaac and Detlef van Vuuren reckons that energy demand for air conditioning will rise forty-fold this century.

Given that dirty coal-fired plants still produce some 70% of China’s current energy output, anything that stokes its electricity consumption is particularly damaging in global-warming terms. But with the use of air conditioners rising inexorably, their share in energy consumption is rising too, with the added trouble that heatwaves bring sudden spikes in use, meaning that spare capacity has to be built in to provide for summer peaks in power demand. The big blackouts over swathes of India in the summer of 2012 were widely blamed on its burgeoning middle class’s desire to keep cool. That may be unfair: though air-conditioning certainly stokes demand, political meddling in the power industry hampers its ability to keep the current flowing.

Thankfully for lovers of coolth, air conditioning is becoming more efficient. In the past 30 years, more stringent standards for air conditioners in developed countries have more than doubled the energy efficiency of new units. For decades, air conditioning has used the same compressor technology that runs refrigerators. But Coolerado, an American company, claims to have cut energy costs by 90%, using only water as a coolant: its devices feature specially designed plastic plates that chill by evaporation. They blast half the air, sodden and warm, back outside and send the rest, cool and dry, inside. The machines can even be solar powered (though their thirsty habits may not suit all hot places).

Where’s my desiccant?

Conventional air conditioning has to overcool the air in order to rid it of moisture. This dehumidifying is the most expensive part of the process. An Israeli-founded firm called Advantix is one of a number of companies using “liquid desiccant” technology: it forces air through a strong brine solution which sucks out the moisture. Advantix says its machines cut energy consumption by half. Using plentiful night-time energy to iron out daytime peaks can work, too. A Californian company has a product called Icebear that makes and stores ice cheaply at night to cool buildings during the day.

Such changes are even more beneficial if they avoid using refrigerant chemicals such as freon. These air-conditioning coolants leak into the atmosphere and are among the more potent greenhouse gases. Even less polluting coolants that have widely replaced earlier kinds produce warming effects that are 2,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide’s. International protocols have only slowly phased out the worst, ozone-eating gases. But in the meantime, much slow-to-replace old equipment in rich countries, as well as factory-fresh units in poor ones, still rely on older pollutants which are, to boot, still smuggled in large quantities to countries where they are meant to be banned.

What may be harder to mitigate are the subtler negative impacts that air conditioning has had on the environments where people live and work. Since the 1940s, climate control has prompted architects to lower ceilings and scrap such pleasant features as balconies and porches, which leak costly cooled air into the outside world. Instead of being spaced to allow air to circulate, or being built around courtyards, buildings have tended to be boxlike and tightly packed together. That can create “heat canyons” where each building’s air-conditioning unit runs at full throttle in a futile race against its neighbours. In the sprawling conurbations of the American South, as in the Gulf and cities such as Singapore, people seeking company find fewer free communal open spaces, and are herded instead into commercialised indoor venues such as shopping malls.

Fan dances

Perhaps the most ambitious response to such problems comes from Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a think-tank that promotes energy efficiency. He argues that a combination of thoughtful design and new technology can minimise or even eliminate the need for air conditioning. His approach starts with architecture: avoiding dark-coloured external surfaces, using trees and other shade providers, and installing proper insulation and modern windows that let in light but reflect heat. These may be expensive to install, but hugely cut the need for cooler air—and hence the cost of providing it.

Nor is air conditioning the only way to lower the temperature indoors. Spraying water on a roof provides natural chill through evaporation, as do draught towers. “Many civilisations mastered these arts millennia ago,” Mr Lovins notes. A profusion of indoor plants help cool a room, as do cleverly designed floors that conduct heat into the ground. Modern fans and mesh chairs can reduce the sensation of uncomfortable heat: the aim, after all, is to cool people, not buildings. For all that, the millions who have experienced the invigorating blast of cold, dry air on a hot muggy day will be loth to abandon it.

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M.B. Lal                                                                                                         August 29, 2012 D-30 Press Enclave, Saket, New Delhi – 110 017, Ph. 26863321, 4051-4993 E-mail saroj_lal@yahoo.com Website : www.greenairconditioner.org  “Darkness At Noon” "Ice Energy"  Air Conditioning could have averted the tragedy To The Editor Out Look             “Darkness at Noon” is the title of the two-page illustrated survey by Newsweek magazine of August 14, of the countrywide power break down for at least eight hours on two consecutive days (July  31 and August 1)  in India . New York Times and other world papers have described it as the world’s worst electricity failure in history. Only a few weeks earlier NYT had run a story saying that unrestricted expansion of air conditioning in India and China were among the primary causes of the spectre of global warming looming before mankind.              At the same time power shortages everywhere are hampering the economy, specially industrialization and electrification of rural areas where networks of poles and wires stand without power. Since most of the high demand for power during summer is caused by air conditioning on a massive scale, the power shortage witnessed this year could have been substantially reduced if we had replaced the conventional air conditioning systems with ice-based air conditioning which is already in vogue in parts of Europe and America . The title of the Newsweek story "Darkness at Noon" also fits our situation, speaking figuratively. We have the means to partly alleviate the recurring power crises but not the will to do so. Over the past six summers, after developing over 30 variegated models of Snowbreeze, a mild ice-based air-conditioning system, partly funded by Government of India, we have at last come to a model which you can make yourself without any help. It is a perfect low intensity air conditioner, both for cooling and dehumidifying a room. It consists  only of a plastic bucket, some aluminium pipes and an exhaust fan. Total cost of materials: Rs 3,500. In winter you can convert it into an energy saving and humidified room heater. A large Chinese company manufacturing electrical appliances is the first to undertake commercial manufacture and marketing of various models of Snowbreeze. (Seehttp://zjmore.manufacturer. com/product647 4348-Snowbreeze+Mini+Air+Conditioner.html). When will India wake up? The energy economics of ice air conditioning is very simple. One unit of power makes 20 kilograms of ice in an ice factory. A 1.5 ton AC consumes two units per hour of electricity, which can produce 40 kg ice. If Snowbreeze is used at its optional capacity of 4 to 5 kg ice per hour to bring down the air temperature by 10oC (18oF) in a 150 sq ft room it would be using only 10% of the power used by an air conditioner. Home delivery of cheap ice can reduce global warming. I would request you to kindly send a reporter to see for himself the wonders that this small, cheap and easy to make gadget can do to our everyday lives, both in summer and winter. I am attaching to this mail a detailed pictorial description of the latest model of Snowbreeze air conditioner. For further information he can visit our website www.greenairconditioner.org. With warm regards M.B.Lal Retired Bureau Chief and Assistant Editor, The Statesman Attached: A pictorial description of the latest Snowbreeze PS:       Till about two years ago the old models of Snowbreeze received some coverage from the Press and TV. But it is only now that the issue has assumed urgency. The new model presented here is based on an entirely different, cheaper and simpler technique which anyone can himself fabricate. It does away with the expensive copper coils and tullu pumps used in the old model and uses only aluminium pipes for cooling and dehumidifying a room.

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Snowbreeze- Beat the heat this summer

| Feb 28 2008

Gone are the days when you had to sulk in hot desiccating summer or spend a good sum on buying room coolers and air conditioners that used to take a lot out of your bag. Coming are the days when you can experiment with science and apply a masterwork of a journalist who built his own air conditioner, home-based, that too at a much lesser cost than you can expect. Moreover, this home-based air conditioner or cooler doesn’t need a bustling electric supply to work on, this way shedding the burden on energy and environment.

Local products are usually ignored by us citing reasons beyond imagination. However, when sizzling hot summers stand tall on your head and the need of the hour is a cooling temptation, and the burden on your pocket drags you two steps back, why not try home-based air conditioner that would help reduce the burden on you, your pocket, environment, and energy. Snowbreeze, as its progenitor has nicknamed the indigenous air conditioner, needs tons of ice, a rotating 23-watt fan, a container bucket, an ice drum to keep pounds of ice, an aluminum foil, and two wheels to move the gadget on. The safer part is that the gadget can be made in two days with least expenses. All you need is two carpenters and the above-mentioned products that are easily available everywhere without burdening your pocket much.

The most beautiful aspect of the Snowbreeze is that the survival of the machine is based on no electricity, but ice, with a 23-watt fan to cool and swell the cooling effect. So, all you need is to freeze tons of ice to make your Sonwbreeze work. The better part is that it de-humidifies the air and takes away the extra humidity from the room atmosphere. The progenitor of this home-based air conditioner assures a guaranteed supply of cooling even long after the usually power cuts and load shedding, as the gadget doesn’t need much electricity supply and can do wonders in rural areas deprived of continuous power supply.

So, don’t wait much and start producing tons of ice for your Snowbreeze to assure you a guaranteed cooling in no time and anywhere, possible because you can easily move it from place to place, thanks to its wheels. The device has certainly fascinated me, what about you?

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Times of India

and

Economic Times

Snowbreeze: Why going green is so cool

22 Mar, 2011 –– TNN [Kim Arora]

M B Lal with Snowbreeze. Photo by Anindya Chattopadhyay

NEW DELHI: It was a sweltering, hot afternoon in the summer of 2007 --- the kind that could melt the tar on a Delhi road. Retired journalist M.B. Lal, then 78 years old, sat comfortably in his air-conditioned residence in Saket when there was a power cut. And it wasn't back on for the next seven hours. A ceiling fan running on an inverter wasn't enough. When his wife placed a large tub full of ice under the fan, it gave him some respite --- and an idea to build his own device.

He calls it Snowbreeze, a cooling device that uses ice, water, as much electricity as a cooler and a couple of small electric pumps. Not only does it run easily on power backup, the cooling effect produced is quite similar to that of an AC as it doesn't make the room humid. The inventor claims that the apparatus running for an hour in a closed room can bring down the temperature by seven degrees centigrade in an hour. It saves energy too. Compared to an average 1.5 ton AC guzzling 2,000 watts, Lal's device with its 12-inch fan draws 100 watts.

The retired journalist is looking to patent his invention soon. "I don't want anyone else to file for a patent and monopolise production. Everyone should be free to make and use it," says Lal who has got the entire method of making a Snowbreeze up on his website www.greenairconditioner.org. A Chinese electronics company called Zhejiang More is already manufacturing and selling the equipment in China, he says.

In March 2009, Lal received a grant of Rs 1 lakh from the Ministry of Science and Technology under their Technopreneur Promotion Programme (TePP) to develop the contraption further. "I've spent almost Rs 4 lakh on this in the last four years. Government recognition and funding really helps," says Lal, who has also written a story discussing the future of air-conditioning in India.

There is little that can diminish Lal's enthusiasm. "I still have to perfect this model," he says.

Since that hot summer day, Lal has developed quite a few models of Snowbreeze. He has different models of the contraption made out of plastic drums, metal boxes and desert coolers. The desert cooler is the most effective. The plastic drum model can cost about Rs 5,500 and the desert cooler type might set you back by Rs 15,000. The box type would cost anywhere between Rs 5,000 and Rs 6,000 depending on the amount of copper used. Now he wants to make a model that uses less copper as it has become expensive. But the latest one, as he puts it himself, "makes its own ice".

The earlier models, built inside large plastic drums, worked on having an air chamber pull in hot air and cool it with copper coils carrying ice-cold water. A fan would blow cool air out of this chamber. But there was one problem. "Because the ice and water were kept together, the consumption of ice was very fast," says Lal.

Sometime late last year, while thinking about convection currents and formation of clouds, Lal figured out a way to reduce ice consumption to around 1 kilo per hour. "The working principle is simple. You can find it in a junior school textbook," he says.

There is energy in Lal as he demonstrates the equipment. That he has to use a stick to stand and walk doesn't deter him as helpers wheel in the model. It's a desert cooler with a chamber at the bottom, which opens out like a drawer. A metal drum inside it is a jumble of coils and pipes with two tullu pumps sitting at the bottom of it all. But the crudeness of the model is nothing to go by. Half the drum is filled with water, and a mesh of PVC pipes is placed over it. Blocks of ice are loaded on top of the mesh. It functions simply. "This is what happens in the Himalayas. River and seawater evaporate and rise up to form clouds. When clouds hit mountains, water turns into snow and flows back down into the rivers," explains Lal, who calls the device "a green Gandhian air conditioner."

"The greatest achievement is that it has given the world a new source of energy called ice energy. One has to spend a lot to tap solar or wind energy, but a person can use ice energy sitting at home. It is also a hot topic of research abroad," says Lal, gingerly typing on his iPad, and going to his webpage to testify.

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Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 26, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version
Beating the heat with a home-made AC
Kunal Diwan
It’s simple: A guide to make ‘Snowbreeze’ at home, by inventor M.B. Lal.
NEW DELHI: In an age where open-source technologies such as Wikipedia and Linux
are re-defining the world, seasoned journalist M. B. Lal has come up with a simple nonpatented
invention that aims at helping people keep cool during the sizzling hot summers
– and all at a fraction of the cost required to run conventional air-conditioners and aircoolers.
All that is needed for the functioning of the ice-based “Snowbreeze” is a 23-Watt fan that
consumes less energy than the regular light bulb.
How to make
A movable device, “Snowbreeze” can be assembled from scratch at home with the
following easily available components -- a container bucket, a few strips of plywood, an
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ice drum, a roll of aluminium foil and, obviously, loads of ice. At the heart of the
machine resides a powerful 23-Watt fan that propels cool air while wheels at the base
ensure that the device can be moved around without too much trouble.This is what the
veteran Mr. Lal, the brain behind “Snowbreeze”, has to say: “Power shortages, outages
and the resulting pollution are being widely discussed these days. This new invention has
the potential of cutting down energy consumption by air-conditioning and room heating
by at least half. It also ensures uninterrupted service during power breakdowns, no
pollution and pre-humidified hot air during the winters.”
Man behind machine
According to Mr. Lal, who retired from The Statesman, New Delhi, after a long, eventful
innings as a journalist, the proposed new gadget may prove to be of unimaginable service
in our power-starved rural areas. “It can be rigged up by two carpenters within two days
and I have not patented it so others are free to modify it further as per their requirement,”
he adds.
Multipurpose
Not a device to hibernate during the winters, “Snowbreeze” can also double up as a room
heater with the minor addition of a 500-Watt quartz halogen bulb that is suspended in the
upper part of the aluminium drum.
A point to note is that “Snowbreeze” is not just an air-cooler but an air-conditioner that
de-humidifies air like any conventional air-conditioner. The overall cost of operating it
may not be significantly more than the running costs of a desert cooler.
To make things simpler, Mr. Lal has come out with a do-it-yourself book on the subject.
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