coolspaces 4 life
About
Description
COOLSPACES focuses on the development, implementation and diffusion of pioneering technologies to improve energy efficiency in public buildings using a solar-powered building cooling (BC) system, applicable Europe-wide. This technology will significantly reduce carbon emissions and produce economic and environmental benefits for local populations in the form of heat management; while being a perfect mitigation strategy that ought to be incorporated into municipal climate action plans to counteract Urban Heat Island formation. The project will deploy a novel demonstration plant with a prototype of cooling device that will be using refrigerants with negliglible impact on the greenhouse effect and photovoltaic modules as the main energy source thus developing an innovative, BC system. Implementation will be supported by economic and policy studies, with recommendations on regulatory issues, public innovative procurement and especially ambient air-quality directives. After obtaining satisfactory results from the developed at the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology (Poland) prototype, we will analyse the application’s viability for incorporation into another geographical location, namely University of Almeria (Spain) campus’s institutional facility. Our main goal will be to evaluate how much we can reduce both the emission of specific urban pollutants; at the same time improving air quality, reducing energy consumption from cooling/heating and air pollution in both studied locations. COOLSPACES comprises a consortium of 4 European organisations from Poland and Spain, combining a wide range of technical, institutional and business expertise. COOLSPACES aims to bring together all the required, highly-qualified specialists to support and promote an innovative technological solution to improve urban air quality, with an emphasis on model application under the European Programme for the Environment and Climate Action under the priority area of Climate Change Mittigation and sub-programme in the areas of fluorinated gases and ozone depleting substances.
Objective
The related main qualitative objectives of COOLSPACES are:
1) Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the consumption of primary, non-RES energy to drive air conditioning systems that provide building’s thermal comfort. The first objective is the development and fabrication of a solar-powered climate-friendly refrigerants (CFRs)-based building cooling (BC) system for an institutional building ensuring the involvement of one of the main pollution generation sectors. COOLSPACES will demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of a novel demonstration plant with a prototype of cooling device that will be using refrigerants with negliglible impact on the greenhouse effect and photovoltaic modules as the main energy source, and thus developing an innovative. The goals here are to assess the feasibility of adopting a new eco-design in an institutional building located at the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology (WUST) campus (Poland).
2) Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by using refrigerants with a negligible global warming Potential, potentially replacements for currently used F-gases.
3) The search for the most suitable heat storage material to bridge the mismatch between renewable energy supply and energy consumption, as a strategy to fight climate. The third objective is to model the behavior of the selected heat storage material into the designed of solar-powered CFRs-based BC applications.
4) The optimization, control and metering of solar-powered CFRs-based BC system, ensuring decreased annual electricity consumption. The actions will address testing and performance of all system components such as a cooling device, cold thermal storage tanks, photovoltaic electricity production system as well as smart metering and control solutions. The main focus will be on the integration of all these subsystems into an energy autonomous smart system.
5) Demonstrating the potential of solar-powered BC systems in Almeria’s (southern Spain) public facility. After obtaining satisfactory results from the developed at the WUST site prototype, we will analyse the application’s viability for incorporation into another geographical location, namely University of Almeria campus’s institutional facility.
6) Application of Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing analysis as instruments for policy support with the aim of designing and implementing adequate air quality and climate change abatement strategies and practices.
