Development and Demonstration of the Nocturnal Cooling Effect in Dry and Cold/Hot Climatic Regions
摘要
Buildings use 36% of global energy and produce 16% of carbon emissions, with cooling needs contributing the most. As global temperatures rise, nocturnal cooling offers a sustainable way to meet cooling demands by radiating heat to space where it is around 3 K through the atmospheric window (8–13 µm) without using any conventional energy. A city like Ahmedabad in India is highly populated and developing very fast. It has arid climatic conditions with cold and dry winters and hot and dry summers. The cooling demand is increasing proportionally, possibly increasing the effects of urban heat islands. Therefore, it is important to identify the suitability and effectiveness of such cooling systems for such climatic spaces. Therefore, a state-of-the-art experimental setup has been developed in Ahmedabad, India, and experiments were conducted during both winter and summer, achieving a 2–10 °C reduction from the atmospheric temperature. The effect of low relative humidity and low temperature during winters on the system's refrigeration capacity was lower than that of the humid and hot summers. In addition, it was also observed that a thicker air layer improves cooling efficiency by as much as 30%.