It is via his investment fund in clean technologies that Bill Gates has just put the trifle of 20 million dollars in a startup which is developing a very promising air conditioning.
The start-up Blue Frontierspecializing in air conditioning, has just received the sum of 20 million dollars from Breakthrough Energy VenturesBill Gates’ cleantech investment fund.
A major challenge for the climate
Finding new modes of air conditioning is a major challenge in the fight against global warming. Indeed, rising temperatures are encouraging more and more people to use air conditioners to withstand the heat. Unfortunately, these devices themselves contribute to global warming.
According to a scientific study conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory at the Xerox research center in Palo Alto (California), air conditioning is responsible for nearly 4% of greenhouse gas emissions. As Jason Woods, one of the engineers who worked on this study, points out:
“ It’s nice that more people can enjoy improved comfort, but it also means that a lot more energy is used and carbon emissions go up. »
Developing the air conditioners of the future
Each year, 1950 million tonnes of carbon dioxide are released by the energy used to power the air conditioning. 531 million tons are used to cool the air, 599 million to remove humidity and the remaining 820 million come from refrigerant leaks and greenhouse gases emitted during the manufacture and transport of air conditioners.
This is where the start-up comes in Blue Frontier in which Bill Gates has just invested. The company is working on an air conditioning system that uses fewer environmentally harmful by-products. Engineers used liquid desiccant that can remove moisture from the air much more effectively than liquid coolants.
An advance that allows them to use only a third to a fifth of refrigerant compared to the conventional system. Indeed, the refrigerant used by Blue Frontier is not used to cool, but to operate the heat pump which regulates the concentration of the liquid desiccant in charge of reducing the ambient humidity.
The other major advantage of the solution Blue Frontier comes from the liquid desiccant storage system directly inside the air conditioner. Concretely, this means that the device will be less dependent on renewable energies which are intermittent energy sources. Company CEO Daniel Betts told CNBC:
“ Storage also allows us to consume most of our energy when renewables are plentiful and when grid congestion is low. We avoid consuming electricity during peak periods when demand is high and systems are powered by power plants that run on fossil fuels. »
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