Looking to the past for sustainable ways to beat the heat

The project is called the Evaporative Cooling Partitions Project. We are developing prototypes of this partition system composed of columns which are filled with sand and water. And the idea behind them is that they cool through evaporation. We all are familiar with the headlines that we've seen record heat. And heat is not only a question of discomfort, it's also a question of life and death. Air conditioning is often used as a means of making us comfortable and managing heat, but it also consumes a lot of energy. We're exploring ancient technologies and seeing if these passive energy free technologies could have relevance today. We gain valuable insights from this project by learning from the past and employing new technology and sustainable technology. Like 3D clay printing, 3D clay printing offers various advantages in terms of the speed, efficiency, design flexibility, and thermal resistance. And it also saves cost and resources. We're using computational tools like Rhino Grasshopper, which is quite helpful in creating 3D models and to analyze the model and also creating texture on top of the surface of the model. Because as you increase the surface area, you'll get more chance of evaporative cooling in the geometry. Having this technology come back, it's enchanting because it's like using something people develop thousands of years ago. But putting it now to basically lower CO2 emissions. We've always had a series of students involved both at the graduate and undergraduate level. It gives them the opportunity to be engaged in research, in fundamental research, questions that are happening at the university, in other areas, and to be very hands on. And to be involved in the narrative where this research goes.