A Novel Dew Point Cooling Technology and its Application in Building Air Conditioning

Professor in Low Carbon Society, Prof Xudong Zhao discusses the impact of air conditioning units on the environment and the alternatives.

Frequent summer warm spells, improved insulation for buildings and growth of indoor facilities have led to an increased requirement for air conditioning of indoor environment. The conventional mechanical compression air conditioning systems consume a significant amount of electrical energy that is largely dependent upon fossil fuel. This mode of air conditioning is therefore neither sustainable nor environment-friendly. Evaporative cooling utilizes the latent heat of water evaporation, a natural energy existing in the ambient, to perform free (or nearly free) air conditioning of buildings, and is therefore a potential replacement of the conventional systems. Evaporative cooling has its limits but a recently emerged dew point cooling technology breaks these limits and allows the supply air to be cooled to a level below the wet bulb and above the dew point of the inlet air, resulting in an increase to the systems cooling capacity. In the lecture, Professor Zhao presents the details of the new dew point cooling technology and explores its potential application in building air conditioning.

Professor Xudong Zhao is the Professor in Low Carbon Society at Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development, De Montfort University. He is experienced in building services and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) technologies, sustainable/renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency technologies. He has published 66 peer-reviewed papers on sustainable energy/building technologies in refereed journals and conferences, co-authored a book and chaired several international conferences/forums. He has been an member of editor board of the ‘International Journal of Sustainable Cities and Society’, External Reviewer of the Hong Kong Research Grant Council, Guest Professor of Harbin Institute of Technology and Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, and the regular reviewer for several international journals including ‘Applied Thermal Engineering’, ‘Applied Energy’, ‘Energy and Building’ and ‘Building and Environment’.

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