Energy-Saving Air Conditioner

Keeping air cool in homes and offices this summer will be expensive--about 5 percent of the energy used in the United States each year goes to running air conditioners. But researchers at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO, have come up with a new air-conditioner design that they say will dramatically increase efficiency and eliminate gases that contribute to global warming.

"The technology we have today is nearly a hundred years old," says Eric Kozubal, a senior engineer at NREL. Kozubal and colleagues have come up with an air conditioner that combines evaporative cooling with a water-absorbing material to provide cool, dry air while using up to 90 percent less energy. The desiccant-enhanced evaporative, or DEVap, air conditioner is meant to addresses the old complaint, "It's not the heat; it's the humidity," more efficiently.

Source: technologyreview.comAdded: 21 June 2010