Air Conditioners’ Exhaust

Objective:

Demonstrating excessive heat exhaust from air conditioners by comparing time required for the evaporation of ice.

Outcome:

Students will realise that our urban ‘Thermal-excess-comfort’ is causing great discomfort to all the invisible, silenced, excluded, marginalised and is a major contributor for GHG emissions in turn causing climate change.

Requirements:

Working AC’s in the college building, 2 boxes with ice cubes, stop watch

Prerequisites:

None

Procedure:

Step 1: Switch on the AC’s of one of the spaces within the college building. 

Step 2: Gather students in the vicinity of outdoor units of the AC’s, during noon around 12 pm (peak or mid summer).

Step 3: Form two groups within the students – ask one group to stay next to the exhaust of the outdoor unit with one box of Ice cube and another to stay next to a window without any AC, on the same side of the wall with another box of Ice cube placed on the window sill. 

Step 4: Note down the time during the beginning of the demonstration

Step 5: Ice will begin to melt eventually. Note down the time once ice has completely evaporated.

Step 6: Record the readings in the tabular column.

Sl No	Experiment stage	Exhaust of AC	Outside room window
		Time of Measurement	Time of Measurement
1	Beginning – Ice intact stage
2	End – Ice evaporated stage
	Total Time taken ( minutes )

Step 7: Introspect and discuss around the following:

• Imagine the amount of heat and gases that might be thrown out of the tremendous amount of ACs that are used currently.
• Is there any change in the temperature of air that is passing through the window without any AC due to the ice box placed on the sill through Evaporative cooling principle?
• How can we as Architects be more mindful and design spaces without AC as a requirement or minimal Active cooling requirement?

References:

None