Unique New Cooling Technology for Energy Savings in Refineries and Data Centers: Technology and Two Case Studies

Cooling is a major energy use in both refineries and data centers. An invention
[1]
developed by researchers at Stanford University may alleviate both energy consumption and water usage in numerous applications. This cooling technology uses a band in the atmosphere infrared spectrum that has minimal attenuation of this wavelength. This technology can significantly cool fluid below ambient during the day with incident sun on a panel. The atmosphere is basically “transparent” to radiation from 8 to 13
μ
m. This allows light in this wavelength band to escape our atmosphere to outer space, which can be modelled as a blackbody at approximately 2 K. This is done using a “nano-photonic radiative cooling” surface made on a film that can be economically fabricated in square meter sizes. Currently, the system can radiate about 100–400 W/m
²
depending on ambient temperatures. Current photovoltaic solar can produce about 200 W/m
²
with an input of about 1000 W/m
²
. The current prototype systems have the same form factor as solar panels; so much of the “rest of plant” is already designed. This article examines the technology and then two case studies: refinery water and energy usage, and energy use for cooling in computer data centers. This article is a revision of the original article presented at the 2021 IEEE PCIC Conference in San Antonio, Texas in September 2021
[2]
.