Research Pick: The air-conditioned nightmare - "Thermoeconomic diagnosis of an air-cooled air conditioning system"

Air-conditioning systems are become more and more widespread and will play a important and ironical role as climate change pans out over the next decades. As temperatures rise, so will demad for cooling of buildings, which will inevitably require more energy and most likely produce more carbon emissions unless sustainable zero-carbo energy sources are found and implemented. Researchers from Korea and Turkey have looked at how the thermodynamics costs of an air-conditioning unit increase when he unit begins to malfunction and how the changes might be a useful diagnostic tool facilitating system repair.

Yoo, Y., Oh, H-S., Uysal, C. and Kwak, H-Y. (2018) ‘Thermoeconomic diagnosis of an air-cooled air conditioning system’, Int. J. Exergy, Vol. 26, No. 4, pp.393–417.