From the UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA OKANAGAN CAMPUS and the “department of bad science fair submissions” comes this study, complete with ridiculous photo. There’s only one problem, most housing and office infrastructure isn’t setup to handle snow storage, and snow is most often stored in parking lots. What’s even funnier is that they had to use a model to try this….in Canada, a place where snow piles are abundant, even a nuisance.
You’d think if this was a workable idea, they’d actually try it with an HVAC system instead of modeling it. I’m sure they could find a snowpile somewhere nearby. Here is the press release below.
Snow could reduce need for air conditioning
A recent UBC study shows that snow cleared from winter roads can help reduce summer air-conditioning bills.
The UBC study, a computer modelling exercise, found directing a building’s air handling units through a snow dump–snow collected and stored from winter road clearing operations–can reduce the need to use air conditioning during warmer parts of the year.
“What this study shows is that it is possible to use snow to reduce electricity consumption in structures such as apartment buildings,” says Kasun Hewage, an associate professor of engineering at UBC’s Okanagan campus. “We also now know that using material from snow dumps to cool buildings can also help to reduce the greenhouse gasses that air conditioning units emit.”
The study included simulations for large buildings and accounted for the different types of equipment needed in both conventional systems with industrial cooling units and snow-dump based systems, which insulate snow collected during winter months to use during the summer.
“While further research is needed, the potential of this type of system to be used for large buildings and institutions looks promising,” says Rehan Sadiq, a professor of engineering at UBC’s campus in Kelowna. “Aside from making good use of waste material, this type of system could eventually help large organizations such as municipalities recoup some of the considerable costs associated with snow removal.”
The study–done in collaboration with UBC graduate student Venkatesh Kumar–was recently published in the journal Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy.
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Ot, but in light of the Wikileaks latest release, WL has provided a searchable database for the Podesta emails which contained many climate/energy emails.
WL Searchable database:
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/
Why not try it out? Select a small village, accumulate a giant snow heap on central quare and
each house gets a plastic water hose loop and a circulation pump and extracts the house needs
of cold out of the snow heap until the heap is molten away…. and if the heap were gone already in June, then doble the amount of snow……..and voila´: lots of savings accomplished and all villagers
smiling happily of being on the forefront of science and technology…..
The link to the ice bear, or ICE ENERGY, is a simple idea. At night, when the cost of electric is 1/2 the price of daytime highs, you freeze water. Then during the day you run the HVAC through the heat exchanger to heat the ice and cool the air. Hence air conditioning during the day, at the nighttimes electric cost plus lost cold and the recovery cost of the machines. If I remember correctly, you have to have about a 30% electric differential to make this work as a viable cost savings.
oaken noggins.
It all depends on local conditions. In a Swedish town, the hospital is cooled summertime from a pile of snow (200,000m3) that has to be cleared from streets anyhow.
The snowpile is covered with sawdust to prevent “natural” melting.
Like windmills and battery electric cars, storing snow and ice from the winter to provide cooling in the summer is Jurassic technology. Sadly, it is what we will be reduced to if the “environmentalists” succeed in their campaign to end industrial civilization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Jurassic_Technology
Money was available, despite the impracticality of such a project, so they took it and published. The fact no method exists to store snow without refrigeration equipment (see the irony here), often full of salt and other detritus, to use when AC is required.
Deep water cooling for A/C in very large buildings is used in Toronto which is very practical adjacent to large water bodies.
“Since August 2004, a deep lake water cooling system has been operated by the Enwave Energy Corporation in Toronto, Ontario.[4] It draws water from Lake Ontario through tubes extending 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) into the lake, reaching to a depth of 83 metres (272 ft). The deep lake water cooling system is part of an integrated district cooling system that covers Toronto’s financial district, and has a cooling power of 59,000 tons (207 MW). The system currently has enough capacity to cool 3,200,000 square metres (34,000,000 sq ft) of office space.[5]
The cold water drawn from Lake Ontario’s deep layer in the Enwave system is not returned directly to the lake, once it has been run through the heat exchange system. The Enwave system only uses water that is destined to meet the city’s domestic water needs. Therefore, the Enwave system does not pollute the lake with a plume of waste heat.”
The Toronto system sounds like a practical application of the technology. I guess it pays to be located next to a rather large and chilly body of water, especially when you already have a use for teh water withdrawn.
Two points:
1) It doesn’t need refrigeration to keep ice – before refrigeration was invented, that is exactly how it was done. Ice was cut from northern rivers and stored in ice houses for use in cooling during the summer. BTW, in Australia, ice was so valuable in the summer that ice cubes were not allowed to go to waste. Once you had finished your drink, the ice cubes were fished out an put in the next drinker’s glass.
2) Using lakes for building cooling was used in the 1970s. The Benjamin and Cameron Offices in the north of Canberra were both cooled by running cooling pipes under Lake Ginninderra.
BTW, the Cameron Offices were, in my opinion, the worst architected buildings in Canberra, possibly all of Australia. Among it’s many architectural flaws, it had active cave-making processes operating in it, to the extent that it had 5mm stalagtites growing from the ceilings.
This concept was demonstrated at a significant scale by Ted Taylor & Freeman Dyson at Princeton University in 1981 – but using snow making machines to make the snow during cold weather. It was described by John McPhee in his book Table Of Contents.
And as a Princeton area resident, I visited the installation, which consisted of a lined lagoon with heat exchange piping, and an insulated tensioned tent roof which could be raised and lowered over the lagoon. It was raised when temperatures were below freezing, and commercial air compressor aided snowmaking guns sprayed water droplets to be frozen as dense artificial snow. Then the roof was lowered to save the ice for months when air conditioning was needed.
As I recall, the system worked, but the tons of ice were not able to efficiently transfer energy due to all the melt water. Also, when you calculate the air conditioning needs, the lagoon and stored ice would have to be an order of magnitude larger, dwarfing the structure to be cooled, and vastly increasing the amount of insulation necessary to store the ice.
They measure HVAC systems in Tons of capacity, which is literally the number of tons of ice which could be produced in one day by an air conditioning unit.
Since a moderately sized home in the US has about a 3 Ton system, you can imagine he much ice would need to be stored. A system which runs 30% of the time during the summer would need one ton of ice, PER DAY, for, perhaps a 60 day cooling season. 60 tons is a lot of ice, and a commercial building would need many times this amount.
Those characters deserve to fail!
Whoever thought this was international news via grandstand press releases should be failed too.
Build a model with a “white room” containing an imaginary amount of snow.
a) There is zero cost for the room necessary to contain an imaginary amount of snow.
b) There is zero cost for collecting an imaginary amount of snow.
c) There is apparently zero cost for the building ventilation changes necessary to accommodate piping building air ducts through the snow.
d) There are apparently no problems for providing and controlling proper air/temperature exchange. We must assume it’s an imaginary perfect air exchange system someone else designed.
e) As others have pointed out, there are zero provisions for assuring the air exchange meets health and sanitary needs.
Why do I get mental images of Indian subcontinent working and living standards for the lowest classes?
Most modern and modernized office, school, laboratory and administration buildings in Western civilization use heat pumps for most air conditioning issues. Only during the hottest and coldest periods will the heat pumps be bypassed.
Of course, in places like most of Canada, Texas, American South, Southwest, West, Australia, and similar locales, that can mean most of certain seasons.
Back in the old work for the Federal Government days, the vice presidents occupied the South and West facing portions of the office tower.
Then the VPs’ had huge glass windows installed that let in great views, lots of sunlight and a tremendous amount of heat; especially during summer.
But the VPs’ preferred their offices and meeting rooms to be cool.
Maintenance channeled all of the cooling power and ventilation down to cool the Vice President offices; the rest of the floor suffered with stale warm and muggy air.
I sat in a cubicle under a large vent, hated by the women as all that air movement froze them. After the ventilation changes, the air was still.
Having a few buddies in maintenance, I taped strips of tissue paper around the vents. Then, I called my buddies in maintenance to see the lack of air movement. That was when they confessed the channel air to the vice presidents. I refused when they wanted me to take down the streamers and grudgingly they allowed a little air through.
I left one streamer up.
As others above have explained, there is a lot of heat generating equipment throughout offices. Laser printers and copier machines are huge offenders, but many monitor and desktop or tower computers also put out significant warmth.
Room where telecommunications and networks are channeled, controlled and allocated from are hot stuffy places too.
So, two British Columbia students and at least one teacher should be released upon the world to establish their own snow collection and air cooling services.
In th interests of technology transfer and saving the planet, they should be give free air travel to India, where they can be paid to develop the idea.
Well the West Antarctic peninsula is about to collapse. Before it does, can we swing the US Navy down that way with tow ropes? A few solid ice stakes with ropes and we should be able to tow that baby to Canada to chop up for AC use.
https://www.amazon.com/Curve-Binding-Energy-Alarming-Theodore/dp/0374515980/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1476473934&sr=1-1&keywords=the+curve+of+binding+energy
In this biographical look at the life of Ted Taylor who was a brilliant engineer, who designed nuclear weapons during and after the Manhattan Project and worked on the original Orion project to use nukes to drive space craft, McPhee devotes most of it to revealing how close the world of the early Seventies, when it was written, was to terrorists being able to build a nuclear weapon. But, in filling in the details of Taylor’s later life, he devotes a chapter to his proposal to use large piles of ice and snow for just this purpose. Admittedly, on the surface, it seems to be a rather bizarre notion but, if you bother to read Taylor’s analysis of the idea, I think you’ll be less inclined to be completely dismissive of it., Of course, even nearly a half century ago, his thinking was light years ahead of these bozoes.
It is quite obvious that these two have never heard of Ice Houses or Ice Boxes, two items from bygone eras.
All that is needed is to bring back the horse drawn carts the Iceman used for deliveries!
“Those who are ignorant of history….”
And then we can contemplate the problems of horse waste pollution.
In India they dry dung and use it to cook, so no problem with that.
These sorts of ideas are less than half-baked. Perhaps those who worked on it though were completely baked.
This has given me a great idea; in fact a brilliant idea. But, in presenting it I must remind the reader that I am merely standing on the shoulders of great men: Sadiq and Hewage.
You see, the idea that piles of snow can cool our buildings during summer got me to wondering if there might be piles of something that could heat our buildings and homes during winter. And, I came up with an idea … Ready? … semi-solid piles of human bodily waste products. See, what I mean about standing on the shoulders of great men (a position I may wanna be in when in proximity of those piles)? Think of it; all natural (unless it’s from Dennis Rodman), never ever ever depleteable, green (figuratively speaking), massive piles of steaming human feces emanating gentle radiant heat at about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh, and also emanating soothing humidity to keep the sinuses open during harsh, dry, winter weather. Flies may pose a problem, but I’m sure our boys at NASA can figure it out.
You know what they always say: The best ideas are 3% inspiration; 97% perspiration. Not true. The best ideas are 3% inspiration; 97% waste product generation.
Or perhaps more accurately, “Green ideas are 3% inspiration; 97% waste product generation.”
Snow piles, not for A/C, but for winter recreation. When I was in elementary school in Wisconsin, we would have a great time after a snow storm. With a thick coat of snow on the ground, we would play tackle football on the playground during recess. After the snow was piled into a giant mound, we would play King of the Mountain. Of course they do not have recess anymore from what I understand.
Not allowed to play king of the mountain either. Apart from the fact that it presupposes a winner, the king, which isn’t allowed anymore because it might hurt fragile children’s feelings if they don’t win. Worst, though, is that it is sexist. Where is the queen of the mountain? Not to mention Bisexual, Lesbian, Inter-sexual, Gay and Transgender (BLIGT).
One of the proposed methods for building an energy efficient house that came out of the ’70s oil crunch was to build the house over a large water tank and install a heat pump with the secondary coil in the tank. It would work by pumping heat from the water into the house in the winter thus freezing the water in the tank. In the summer it cooled the house by pumping heat from the house back into the water. This was similar to what they attempt to do with some in-ground geothermal systems today. When I did a preliminary look at this type system for a house I was designing it appeared to me that it would only work in the right (i.e., balanced) climate. I am suspicious that both the in-ground and multi-well geothermal systems have the same problem today.
I haven’t read the UBC study but I can imagine plenty of similar problems when trying to match the proposed system to the local climate. I doubt the authors have done much in the way of cost analysis for other than average local weather conditions, if they even did that. Off hand, it appears to me that for some winters you could wind up with full storage areas early in the season, and for some summers run out of stored snow early in the season. Ddesigning the system to handle both these conditions could easily be cost prohibitive.
This is a simple engineering problem. Big air conditioners are rated in tons. A ton is 12,000 BTU/hour. It refers to the heat required to melt one ton of ice in 24 hours. link
This summer my house would have required around 20 tons of ice. That’s about 20 cubic meters or 20 cubic yards roughly. With insulation that would require a structure around 10 x 10 x 10 feet. It’s not impossible. If electricity cost five bucks per kWh I would consider it.
“This is a simple engineering problem. . . . If electricity cost five bucks per kWh I would consider it.”
If the whole world were this rational, electricity would cost less than five cents per kWh.
Indeed, it would.
I googled on Too cheap to meter. It was different than I thought.
In 1954 they were secretly working on fusion reactors and that gave rise to the phrase. Fusion didn’t happen because the required breakthroughs didn’t happen. This should be a cautionary story for the greenies who think renewable energy will somehow become practical. Breakthroughs can’t be planned.
Very practical system so long as you are guaranteed to collect 20 tons of ice (maybe 30 or 40 for backup) each winter.
snow collected and stored from winter road clearing operations–can reduce the need to use air conditioning during warmer parts of the year…
How the snow is stored cold for a few months is a mystery…
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
This study is flawed from the outset! Unfortunately, the UBC researchers didn’t add the most important line of code into their models: “Snowfalls are now a thing of the past.” (Dr David Viner, senior research scientist at the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, March 2000).
Given the statement that it apparently is a published paper – I have very serious doubts about the quality of the peer review at that publication.
These guys are academics. What more needs to be said?
I’ve seen a few historic ice (not snow) storage buildings, but only small local use ones. One was a well built double-wall structure about the size of a 2-car garage with sawdust between the walls. Sawdust is mentioned in this, the (wiki) story of the Ice-Trade industry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade
Lots of b/w drawings and images.
I can just see that idea working in Melbourne in January! Do I need a sarc/?
I think that Melbourne ice was shipped by sailing boat from North America. It was cut from frozen rivers. When steam-powered refrigeration plants were first set up, there was a terrific advertising campaign that river ice was better because it didn’t have bubbles in it. But in the end, they simply couldn’t compete with the manufactured product because there was such a large price differential.
Yes, I live in Rockport Maine, and we had a booming ice business based on cutting ice from Lily Pond, a small lake close enough to the harbor to just drag the ice over to the wharfs to be packed in sawdust and shipped south. The local museum still has the saws on sleds that were used to make the clean cuts for rectangular blocks. The industry was wiped out by refrigeration, of course, but in its day Lilly Pond ice had a great reputation for quality and purity.
And of course, made with very little CO2 emissions, unlike the ‘coal-powered’ (electricity-produced) ice we use today /sarc off
Toronto is obviously more advanced than California North. The denizens of office towers in downtown Toronto, known locally in chaff-talk as ‘the downtown core’ have been expanding their snow-cooled air con systems each year. They collect the snow, that portion of it that doesn’t melt naturally, and dump it in Lake Ontario.
In the lake it does its magical thermodynamic thing and cools the lower strata to about 4 degrees C. This cold water is pumped through heat exchangers in the ‘downtown core’ buildings where it picks up heat and is returned to the surface of the lake at a temperature that pleases fish.
It is a climate change and control fantasy scale engineering project that actually works. The more it warms, the more it will snow, we are told. Great. We will use snow and the lake and the pumps to keep cool.
It is the inverse of district heating, an idea that has totally escaped those same Torontonians.