High-Level Project Summary
We have developed a portable AC that uses thermal electric generators instead of coolants. This solution solves our challenge and does more. We researched areas disproportionately impacted by heatwaves and found that these areas had different levels of impact because many people didn't have the resources to fight against them. The most effective method against heat waves is using air conditioners, but many disadvantaged communities can't afford them. Our AC is first cheaper because the thermal electric generators are self-sufficient and would largely lower the energy bills. It also doesn't use coolants that harm the environment, so customers can buy environmentally friendly ACs for less.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Our AC unit is currently unavailable due to technology however the technology required will be produced in the foreseeable future. A less powerful version of the technology required is already in existence. Planning for our future will be important. Our AC unit uses Thermoelectric generators to eliminate the use of coolants and reduce the use of electricity.
The image you are looking at is the internals of the ac of a side view. I will explain how it works and its parts, and if you look to the right, there is a key to help understand each part of the unit. There are two places that emit cold air, these places are the places where you see blue arrows, the top, and the bottom area. Looking at a front view it is the two circles, the grayish circles are a mesh material so nothing goes into it while air comes out.
Thermoelectric generators work in two different ways. They are pieces of material that transfer heat into electricity and electricity into heat. If you put energy into it one, it will generate a hot and cold side. And if there is a hot and colder area, you can put a thermoelectric generator there to produce energy. Our AC unit will utilize this kind of technology. We have made the thermoelectric generator much bigger so we can demonstrate how this unit works. We have also simplified the ac circuitry so it's easier to understand. If needed when reading the next part of the project description, refer to the side internal image. An outside source of electricity will put electricity into the bottom thermoelectric generator, which we will call 'C', and the top the one which we will call 'A'. When putting electricity through 'A' it will create a hot and cold area around the bottom half of the pipe. we will suck the air out of the room through the top. The chamber will allow the air to slow down and cool down more before being pushed through a smaller part of the pipe so the air is more powerful and sent farther. The insulation is to prevent the hot air in the ac to heat up the barrel. The bottom of one will have fans to push the hot air around the chamber. The areas around this part will be hot. The hot air will be sucked outside so it does not overheat. The chamber that is now hot will be utilized to create electricity. The power outlet will send electricity to 'C' as well. When 'C' has electricity it will create hot and cool air. The hot section will be sucked out and the cool area will be used to create cool air for cooling down the room faster and to power 'B' as well. When ‘B’ has both a cold and a hot side, it will start generating electricity that can be used for ‘A’, ‘C’, the controls, and any other uses like pieces of technology to make sure that the ac is running properly. This will cut down on electricity uses helping the environment and the person to save money. For our project, we used Lucidspark In order to be able to work together to brainstorm and create our ideas.
Space Agency Data
We used NASA's observations of US regional effects from climate change. We were able to see different kinds of effects and how each one worked. We decided to do heatwaves and so obviously we researched this topic. We were already interested in air conditioners and heatwaves. Nasa already had many of the effects of heatwaves and how to counter them. However, the solution was to have ACs. Air conditioners are good against heat but the coolants used are bad for the environment. Some thermoelectric devices are already used in space, so eliminating coolants would be possible.
Hackathon Journey
I would describe our Space Apps journey as exciting and educational. We learned a lot more not only about our project (the environmental impacts of ACs, the socioeconomic inequality of different areas, and disproportionately impacted areas by climate change, heatwaves in particular), but also what makes high-level project summaries, good presentational videos on our projects, and useful tools to represent our brainstorms and ideas.
What inspired us to choose this challenge is that we have personally been impacted by climate change. We experienced the large heatwaves along the west coast of America first hand, as well as the Sonoma County fires that forced us to evacuate multiple times, both of which were results of climate change. We wanted to help identify areas and design solutions to try and prevent more of these climate disasters from occurring or at least help people deal with them.
Our approach to this project was to first identify a climate disaster, identify disproportionately impacted areas by them as well as why that was the case, and then create a solution. In our case, we chose heatwaves as our disaster and found areas of lower incomes were most affected by them since they couldn't afford air conditioners. We decided this was our solution since we were both interested in ACs and other household technologies anyways and would gladly take the chance to research more about them.
Some challenges we found were finding reputable information to support our cause which we overcame through long, dedicated research times. We also had problems with finding good websites to chart our projects and electronic glitches with the video, both of which we overcame with time and effort.
With the completion of our project, there are multiple value people we would like to thank. We would like to thank Dominique Paige, for going in-depth and explaining to us different projects on the website and valuable insights on filming our demo video, Bianca Ascencio for teaching us what our written submission should be like, Angell Liao for helping us decide on a project as well as giving us encouragement and helping organize check-ins with our teachers, and Matt Hirsch for teaching us practically everything about the NASA Space Apps Challenge. We could not have done this project without the help of all these people.
References
Tags
#NASA, #AirConditioner, #SpaceForChange, #Heatwave, #CoolingUnit, #CosmicParadox, #ACUnitNASA2021
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.