This Building Cools Itself Naturally

“Nearly all dwellings and buildings require heating and cooling, now more than ever in the face of climate change,” says ThermoTerra. “The increasing use of air conditioners transfers heat from the inside to the outside of buildings, and this in addition to the CO2 emissions resulting from air conditioning energy use only exacerbates the problem.”

To address this, the company has developed a cooling and heating technology that avoids CO2 emissions and heating the environment and uses carbon capture materials. Its pilot structure at Ben-Gurion University demonstrated passive cooling continuously to 24°C (75F) solely using water collected from the relatively humid night air.

“Our technology has successfully overcome two of the main challenges in evaporative cooling: water requirements, and potential discomfort from increased humidity,” ThermoTerra continued. “We use an absorptive material and an airflow gap within the building envelope, and a controlled airflow system.”

The notion that cooling and heating costs may be lower than lighting costs sounds far-fetched. The possibility that this can be achieved by simple, solid-state technology using natural materials, is even more so. That such a system would not increase building or product costs appears, on the surface, to be science fiction. But this leap forward has been achieved by the use of a novel combination of technical knowledge, practical considerations, and intelligent algorithms. ThermoTerra has engineered a construction element to be integrated into buildings that reduces, or even eliminates, the need for heating, cooling, or humidity balancing.

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ThermoTerra is a green heating, ventilation, and air conditioning company working towards sustainable solutions to heating and cooling. The company’s Co-founder and CTO, Jeremy Rutman, is a Technion alumnus.