"Cool" Car

Reported September 2006

GOLDEN, Colo. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- The average driver uses 30 gallons to 40 gallons of gasoline each year just running the car's air conditioning. That adds up to seven billion gallons of gas annually. At the Department Of Energy's "National Renewable Energy Lab," engineers are researching ways to cool the people in the car rather than the entire car.

ADAM, the hot, sweaty manikin, reveals more about feeling comfortable than a living, breathing human being could. While he can't talk, ADAM can perspire when it's hot and shiver from the cold. Right now it's 90 degrees inside ADAM's car.

"He's uncomfortable right now. We just put him in the car, and it's been soaking. It's hot, but as the air conditioning cools the car down, ADAM will start feeling more comfortable," John Rugh, a project leader at NREL in Golden, Colorado, tells Ivanhoe.

This test would be torture for a person, but for ADAM it's a no-brainer. Mechanical engineers at NREL are researching ways to reduce gasoline consumption while increasing passenger comfort. First, solar reflective glass keeps the parked car cooler when passengers first get in. Then, small fans in ventilated seats pull hot air away from the seat's surface.

According to Rugh, the ventilated seats pull air through your clothing, causing your sweat to evaporate and using the body's natural mechanisms to cool itself. Also, thanks to acoustics the engine's excess heat is put to work cooling the inside of the car.

NREL mechanical engineer Matt Keyser says, "Essentially what thermal acoustics is, is you take heat and you convert the heat to sound, and then you use the sound to cool."

They estimate if all passenger vehicles had ventilated seats alone that would save 7 percent of fuel used for air conditioning. And reducing the amount of fuel used for AC by 7 percent a year would save 522 million gallons of gasoline a year in the United States.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Washington, D.C. 20036-5104
(202) 785-0017
ieeeusa@ieee.org
http://www.ieee.org

National Renewable Energy Laboratory
1617 Cole Blvd.
Golden, CO 80401-3393
(303) 275-4090

Drivers use 30 gallons to 40 gallons of gas each year just running the car's air conditioning! These ventilated seats cool the people in the car rather than the entire car itself.

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