Ice cooling buildings

On hot sunny days, electricity consumption in New York alone was equal to Chile. But with the ice cooling system that some buildings have deployed, this number can be reduced significantly.

The mechanism of this system is quite simple. At night, when the demand for electricity decreases, the system begins to cool ethylene glycol solution below freezing temperature. This solution will then be put into the pipe inside a reservoir to freeze the water. During the day, cool air from ice during melting will be pumped throughout the building, much like the cooling of traditional air conditioning systems. At night, the melted ice will be frozen again and the cycle will repeat.

Depending on conditions, one can only use this system alone or coordinate it with traditional air conditioning systems to reduce the load during peak hours. If used in the second way, every year, only the office of the Metropolitan Life office of Credit Suisse (one of the pioneers in installing ice-conditioning systems in New York) was also saved. 2.15 million kWh, equivalent to the annual demand of about 200 US households. This also means that the cost of building operations is significantly reduced.

Metropolitan Life Building in New York, USA, is using ice cooling system.(Photo: adrem.ua.ac.be)

That is not to mention the environmental benefits. Also in the case of the Metropolitan Life building, the use of an ice-conditioning system benefits the equivalent of stopping 223 cars or planting nearly 770,000 hectares of forest to absorb the CO2 that will arise. If using traditional air conditioning system. If you count New York City with thousands of large and small buildings, the numbers will be extremely impressive.

Defect

Besides the great benefits, the system requires a large space. To cool an office area with a total floor area of ​​nearly 177,000 m2 as of Credit Suisse, one has to build 3 cold chambers with 64 tanks, each with a capacity of more than 3,000 liters. The cost to complete this system is $ 3 million, a figure that can discourage modest companies.

But for large companies and large, power-consuming buildings, this is clearly a beneficial solution. It is estimated that there are about 3,000 ice cooling systems in the world. Some corporations, such as Credit Suisse, have taken into account the installation of this system in all their buildings globally.