SBIR Phase I: Radiative Sky Cooling-Enhanced Refrigeration System

This SBIR Phase I project seeks to significantly reduce the electricity consumed by cooling and refrigeration systems. Cooling systems consume nearly 10% of the electricity generated in the United States. During summer months, cooling and refrigeration systems are needed the most, but are also when they are the least efficient. This results in a significant strain on our nation's electricity grid. By improving the efficiency of cooling systems, less electricity will be needed at the utility scale, particularly during peak hours and in the summer. Furthermore, operators of commercial cooling systems could reduce their overall electricity expenses and increase their revenues and profits. The project?s outcomes will also create a pathway to improve the efficiency of cooling systems that does not involve the use of increasingly scarce freshwater resources, and could eventually lead to more water-efficient cooling systems at the largest scales. Finally, this project's approach harnesses renewable resource, the sky, which is source of cooling that is currently untapped. The technical innovation being proposed harnesses a renewable resource, the sky, through a mechanism known as radiative sky cooling, to dramatically improve the efficiency of cooling systems. By using specialized optical surfaces that reject heat as thermal radiation to the sky, while simultaneously reflecting nearly all incident sunlight, it is possible to passively cool below the air temperature 24 hours a day. In this project, a refrigeration system incorporating such surfaces will be developed with the aim of demonstrating improved efficiency over conventional systems. In this process no water is evaporated and the only electricity needed is for pumping. Furthermore, modeling will be performed to understand how such a system could be scaled up for use in larger deployments. At the end of the
Phase I project, a pathway towards large-scale deployment of a transformative clean energy technology, used to improve the efficiency of cooling systems, will be demonstrated.