solar air conditioner

another heat wave. A dry heat this time, which makes being outdoors not entirely unpleasant, but all the AC units are going full blast and we must presume that the power company executives are all very happy.

Here's the idea to ruin their day:

Solar air conditioner.

At one point the state of the art in home refrigeration units was gas-powered refrigerators. How these worked I am not certain, but they were quiet and very reliable -- at least the surviving ones clearly are. I imagine that some kind of sterling engine was used to run the compression components, but many intermediate linkages could be avoided by simply having two sets of pistons.

The idea is to use that technique for air conditioning.

An air conditioner that ran on a solar panel wouldn't even need to be thermostatically controlled -- when the sun shines on it it starts producing cold air.

Solar panel -> sterling engine -> air conditioner operation.

In case you are in a position to build such an item please contact me, I will be happy to let you install the prototype at my house.

a pdf about solar air conditioning applicable to california, with patent-level detailed descriptions

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