Night sky cooling system

Abstract

A cooling system that can be used to cool water and to cool an air supply to a building. The system employs a stand alone cooling tower and a night sky cooler. As a result, the water can be cooled below the ambient wet bulb temperature.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to a system for cooling water, and in particular to a system for cooling water to be used to cool the air supply to a building.BACKGROUND[0002]Conventional chiller units are commonly used to cool the air supply to a building. In a compression type conventional chiller, vaporized refrigerant is compressed in a compressor which causes the refrigerant to heat up. The hot gas is directed to the condenser where the refrigerant is cooled and condenses. Typically the condenser is cooled by water or air. Many such chiller systems utilize cooling towers to provide a supply of cooled water to the condenser to absorb rejected heat. The liquid refrigerant from the condenser passes through an expansion valve into the evaporator. As the fluid passes through the expansion valve, the pressure of the refrigerant is reduced causing vaporization of the liquid, which results in a large reduction in temperature. The cold refrigerant in an evapora...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0021]In one embodiment the heat exchange element comprises finned cooling coils. In one embodiment there is a single stratified storage tank that is used to hold both warmed and cooled water. In one embodiment, there is an additional hea

Problems solved by technology

Conventional chiller units can quickly cool the interior of a structure, but they consume large quantities of electricity, particularly when ambient temperature and humidity are high.

Absorptive refrigerators are popular in situations where electricity is unreliable, costly, or unavailable, where noise from the compressor is problematic, or where surplus heat is readily available.

These systems are effective but are complex, expensive and require the use of potentially harmful materials.

Like conventional chiller units, DX systems can quickly cool the interior of a structure, but they consume large quantities of electricity, particularly when ambient temperature and humidity are high.

Because evaporative coolers use the latent heat of evaporation to cool process water, such evaporative systems do have some operational limitations and disadvantages.

This means that the use of evaporative coolers is limited on days when hot and humid conditions are being experienced, and is impractical in regions experiencing prolonged periods of hot and humid weather.

Evaporative cooling units are usually not able to cool a fluid to a temperature less than the wet bulb temperature of the ambient air.

However, particularly on clear dry nights the effective sky temperature can be very low, drawing very large amounts of heat from the earth through this radiant exchange.

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