The University of Córdoba combats sticky warmth with pine wooden mud and a 3D printer

People residing in coastal cities and cities use their air conditioners day-after-day to chill the air. However, in these locations the principle downside shouldn’t be normally the temperature, however the excessive humidity of the setting, liable for that ‘sticky warmth’ so completely different from the warmth in inland areas.

The consolation situations inside an enclosure are marked not solely by the temperature, but additionally by the relative humidity of the air, which have to be between 40% and 60%. Conventional air con tools cools the air to saturation situations, and causes condensation of water. This course of has a excessive vitality consumption.

Air therapy tools of a sure measurement, resembling these used to air-condition a cinema or a hospital, embrace specialised dehumidification programs that take away moisture from the air with out the necessity to cool it. These programs, normally primarily based on desiccant supplies, enhance the general vitality effectivity of the tools.

In addition, they don’t use refrigerant gases, and permit the usage of warmth generated by renewable vitality sources or residual warmth from different processes. This warmth is the truth is used for the regeneration of the desiccant materials. Of course, these drying parts have a excessive price.

In this context, analysis employees from the Escuela Politécnica Superior of the University of Córdoba have designed, manufactured, and evaluated a low-cost, high-efficiency desiccant system. This system has been manufactured by 3D printing, utilizing a filament developed by the Jaen firm Smart Materials 3D. The filament, of natural and biodegradable origin, features a excessive share of pine wooden mud, a cloth identified for its excessive adsorption capability. This materials is a by-product of the business devoted to the manufacture of furnishings, so the usage of these drying parts may favor the round financial system within the area.

Dehumidification system.CEDED

The developed desiccant system has been examined within the Air Conditioning Laboratory of the University of Córdoba, demonstrating a excessive desiccant capability and excessive vitality effectivity underneath completely different weather conditions. Thus, the promising potential of 3D printing and inexperienced desiccant supplies for the manufacture of ecological air dehumidification programs is demonstrated.

Currently, the group that has carried out this work, made up of professors from the areas of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering, Manufacturing Process Engineering and Thermal Machines and Engines, continues to check methods to enhance adsorption capability. of those novel desiccant gadgets.

The outcomes obtained have just lately been revealed within the Applied Thermal Engineering journal and introduced on the worldwide congress organized by the Manufacturing Engineering Society (MESIC2023), the place the curiosity of the analysis neighborhood has aroused.

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