Energy and Environment, UEN002

Project Report
On

Self-Sustainable Air Cooler

2019
School of Energy and Environment
Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology,
Patiala- 147001

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 Group Details

S. no. Name Roll Number Sub-group

1 Jappreet Kaur 101903188 H2

2 Vernica Beohar 101903182 H2

3 Rahul Mishra 101915067 H2

4 Ravnoor Singh 101903189 H2

5 Kartik Gupta 101915070 H2

6 Sarthak Goyal 101915069 H2

7 Vavleen Kaur 101903190 H2

8 Harsh Kumar 101903235 H5

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 Acknowledgement

The success and result of this project required a lot of supervision and support from
many people and we are extremely privileged to have got this all along the completion
of our project.

We would like to acknowledge our debt to our mentor Dr. Tejo Prakash, Professor,
School of Energy and Environment, Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology,
Patiala. His dedication and keen interest and above all his overwhelming gesture to help
his students has been the sole reason and is mainly responsible for completion of our
project. His timely, scholarly advice and scientific approach has helped us to a great
extent in accomplishment of this task.

We would also like to recognize & thank our Teaching Assistants –Ms. Prabhdeep and
Mr. Sanjoy for his support and guidance for clearing our doubts at any time of the day
and taking out time for us.

We would also like to thank our parents and our family members for their
encouragement, blessings and motivation at each step even after being so far away.

Last but not the least, our friends (especially our seniors) who were there to advise us as
students themselves and gave their valuable suggestions to complete this successfully.

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 Abstract

With the overall rising temperature across the globe and the roasting heat these
summers, one can safely assume that households will see a furious shoot-up in their
electricity bills this year. While the urban population routes to air-conditioning to
escape the heat wave, the poor cry for shade in varied limitations. About 300 million
people in India live without easy access power.

The perfect solution for the poor to overcome the problem of rising temperatures is the
'Self-Sustainable Air Cooler', a cooling device that can run without electricity. The
process involves creating grids made from recycled plastic bottles cut in half and
installed on windows according to size. Based on the direction of the wind and the
pressure created by air, the Self-sustainable air cooler decreases the temperature by
almost Five degrees Celsius at optimum conditions.

The objective of our project is to build a device which is not only smart in a sense that it
does not consume electricity but in essence it is a way to recycle wasted raw material
for sustainable development of our society by reducing environmental pollution as
well as power usage.

According to United Nations, there are 17 different areas on which people need to work
on to transform our world into sustainably developed society. This Project comes under
Goal Number 7 which is to ensure access to sustainable, reliable, affordable and
modern energy for all.

We are optimistic that this report will contribute towards effective conservation of
electrical power and will help reduce environmental waste. We also hope to spread
awareness about this project so that it may help and provide relief to those in need.

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 Chapter 1: Introduction

“No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.”

- Barack Obama

The climate change as mentioned by Mr.Barack Obama is an insight to the issue of

Sustainable Development, the issue that is being discussed in every environment related
summit today. But what is more important to understand right now is that if we keep on
destroying the assets at this rate, our future generations will face the consequences of
unimaginable proportions.

As per the latest IMD report that the statistics ministry has released, the average
temperatures of our country has increased by 0.6 degrees Celsius from 1901 to 2018.
According to the latest report by World Bank, if the climatic situation remains the same
and no step is taken to resolve the problem, the average temperatures may rise as high
as 29.1 degree Celsius from 25.1 by the end of the century. (Source:
m.economictimes.com)

If this change continues to occur, some parts of our nation will be affected badly. If we
compare the average temperature in 2018 to that in 1950, we come to know that many
regions have already become hotter. The World Bank reports also revealed that the
central districts of India are the most vulnerable to climate change.

The above figures show that the situation in India is getting worse day by day and with
the rising heat we need to find some sustainable solutions to get rid of the heat figures.

It is extremely important that we as young citizens start planning effectively on how to

deal with this and make way for a better future.

Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology is a premier engineering college in

Patiala, Punjab. The purpose of this project is to find a suitable solution to get rid of the
heat without further harming the environment and to do so in an effective and affordable
manner.

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India, spread over an area of 3,287,263 sq. km with a population of 1,352,642,280
living in different regions with different climatic conditions. It is difficult for everyone
to afford air conditioners or coolers, at the same time if they do so they’ll harm the
environment badly.

Grey Dhaka, the Bangladesh unit of US-based multinational advertising and marketing
agency Grey Group, may have found the answer to tackle the sweltering heat. In 2016,
Grey Dhaka introduced the Self-sustainable air cooler, which is the world’s first ever
‘zero-electricity’ air conditioner. The way it works is just as mesmerising as it sounds.
What is more alluring about it is its simplicity.

The man behind the incredible idea of recycling plastic bottles to cool the air is
inventor Ashis Paul.

In a country where most of the population still reside in rural areas and access to
electricity is limited, the Self-sustainable air cooler can be considered as somewhat of a
miracle. A large part of our country’s population lives in corrugated tin houses which
amplify the sun’s heat. During the summer time, the scorching heat can get unbearable
with temperatures as high as 45 degrees Celsius.

Here is where the Self-sustainable air cooler steps in. It has already brought relief to
thousands of people for whom the invention’s cost-effectiveness and simplicity make it
instantly appealing. In recent times, like the Self-sustainable air cooler, many works of
innovation have come out with a particular focus on the disadvantaged section of
society. Being a developing country, India faces a horde of economic, social and

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environmental challenges which require out-of-the-box solutions. For these solutions to
have considerable impact, they need to be simple, cheap and efficient. The Self-
sustainable air cooler checks all the boxes and perhaps that is the reason behind its
immense success.

Our project has an immense scope in future as we have acquired and analyzed the
problems related to the rising temperatures. As state of art electrical appliances are
already being used, we have proposed some unorthodox techniques which will cost very
less and provide relief from the unbearable heat.

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 Chapter 2: Literature Review

India is a tropical country with temperatures soaring high during summers. In the
scorching heat, while the privileged people living in urban areas have access to ACs and
coolers, there is no relief for the poor living in rural areas who cannot afford and avail
these luxuries.

Air conditioning units are expensive devices both to buy and to run. When they stop
working, that’s also an expensive problem to solve. Even so, if you live in a location
with unbearably hot summers, an AC unit is essential. Not everyone has that option as
in the rural and poor areas, electricity is sparsely distributed and mostly unreliable. But
they no longer need it because of the Self-sustainable air cooler.

The Self-sustainable air cooler is an air conditioner that requires no electricity to

function and is created using waste products. These simple air coolers are constructed
using affordable, used plastic bottles. In this way, we are reducing the amount of plastic
waste in the environment and reusing it efficiently and in a productive manner. This
system is unique in that it doesn’t need any energy or cooling mechanism to run and
produces a cooling effect, thus helping with the much needed energy conservation. It is
also very cheap and easy to build without any major resource requirements.

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 www.vankool.com

Working of Self-sustainable air cooler

As hot air rushes into each plastic bottle, it is pushed to the rim where it begins
expanding. This expansion then leads to the cooling of the air as it enters the target
room. This cooling results from pressure change. As air enters the plastic bottle’s wider
part it comes out the bottleneck with higher pressure. As it quickly disperses into the
room, its temperature drops. The temperature drop is around 4 to 6 degrees which can
be quite a significant relief during the intense summers of our sub-continent for the poor
people.

Current Scenario

The Self-sustainable air cooler was first invented in Bangladesh in 2016. Grey Dhaka
teamed up with Grameen Intel Social Business Limited (a partnership between the non-
governmental organisation Grameen and Intel) and distributed units of Self-sustainable
air cooler for free in different parts of the country. Grey sent their teams to villages
where people were taught how to make an Self-sustainable air cooler.

Today, more than 25,000 households have an Self-sustainable air cooler in their homes.
It has been installed in places such as Nilphamari, Daulatdia, Paturia, Modonhati and
Khaleya.

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These Self-sustainable air coolers have also found their way to villages in India and
Pakistan but we need to spread more and more awareness about them so that maximum
amount of people can benefit from this. There is a lot of scope for this project to reach
the under-privileged households and provide them with relief in the intense summers.

In conclusion, the Self-sustainable air cooler saves energy and money, and reduces and
reuses plastic waste in the environment.

Chapter 3: Principles behind the working of Eco Air Cooler

1.Equation of Continuity

When a fluid is in motion, it must move in such a way that its mass is conserved. The
equation of continuity states that for an incompressible fluid flowing in a tube of
varying cross-section, the rate at which mass enters the system is equal to the rate at
which mass leaves the system plus the accumulation of mass within the system i.e. mass
flow rate is constant. The equation of continuity can be reduced to:

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 www.online-sciences.com

Generally, the fluid density remains uniform and it is simply expressed as:

2. Bernoulli’s Principle

Bernoulli’s principle states that an increase in the speed of a fluid occurs simultaneously
with a decrease in pressure or a decrease in the fluid’s potential energy.

It can be derived from the principle of conservation of energy. This states that, in steady
flow, the sum of all forms of energy in a fluid along a streamline is the same at all
points on that streamline. This requires that the sum of kinetic energy, potential energy
and internal energy remains constant. Thus, an increase in speed of the fluid – implying
an increase in its kinetic energy – occurs with a simultaneous decrease in its potential
energy and internal energy.

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3. Gay-Lussac’s Law

Gay-Lussac’s law is a gas law which states that the pressure exerted by a gas (of a given
mass and kept at a constant volume) varies directly with the absolute temperature of the
gas. In other words, the pressure exerted by a gas is proportional to the temperature of
the gas when the mass is fixed and the volume is constant.

It implies that the ratio of the initial pressure and temperature is equal to the ratio of the
final pressure and temperature for a gas of a fixed mass kept at a constant volume. This
formula can be expressed as follows:

(P1/T1) = (P2/T2)

Where:

 P1 is the initial pressure

 T1 is the initial temperature

 P2 is the final pressure

 T2 is the final temperature

Therefore, as air escapes the bottleneck with high pressure and quickly disperses into
the room where its temperature drops to maintain the constant ratio.

4. Joule-Thomson Effect

In thermodynamics, the Joule-Thomson effect describes the temperature change of a

real gas or liquid when it is forced through a valve or porous plug. This procedure is
called a throttling process or Joule-Thomson process. At room temperature, most of the
gases cool upon expansion by this process when being throttled through an orifice.

The gas throttling process is commonly exploited in refrigeration processes such as air
conditioners, heat pumps, and liquefiers.

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 Chapter 4: Construction and working of Eco Air Cooler

Construction

1. To make an Self-sustainable air cooler you take a piece of board cut to the size
of a window on your house.
2. Then drill holes in the board big enough to push a plastic neck through.

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3. Gather some old plastic bottles and cut the bottoms off, then slide the neck of
each bottle through the holes and secure them with the cap. Do this until the
board is full.
4. Hang the board on the window and watch the temperature inside drop.

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Working

The simple design works on the same principle as blowing air out of your mouth. To
test this, hold your hand up to your mouth then open your mouth wide and breathe out.
The air is warm, right? Now do the same thing but with your mouth closed to typical a
blowing position. The air leaving your mouth is cold, right? The bottles work in the
same way: the larger end takes in the warm outside air and the change in pressure as it
passes through the neck pumps cooler air into the house.

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The warm air enters from the broad end of the bottle and exits from the narrow end.
When the air is travelling in the broad part, the area is greater and therefore, the velocity
is less. As the air moves towards the narrow side, the area begins decreasing and the
velocity begins increasing, as we saw in the equation of continuity. From Bernoulli’s
principle, we know that pressure decreases when velocity increases. As the air is pushed
to the rim, it begins expanding and this expansion leads to cooling of the air. As the air
exits the bottle and disperses into the room, the pressure decreases and so does the
temperature to keep the P/T ratio constant, according to the Gay-Lussac’s law.
The thermodynamics principle here is called the Joule-Thomson effect, and the process
is known as throttling. Liquefiers, refrigerators, heat pumps and air-conditioners work
using the same principle.

The change in temperature using an Self-sustainable air cooler is at least 5 degrees

Celsius. That may not seem like much, but when you’re living in a tin hut with no
power that can reach 45 degrees in summer, it makes all the difference.

Recommendations

 The Self-sustainable air cooler works better for houses which are made with
corrugated tins. Since most of the houses in Bangladesh are made in this way,
the cooler works miracles for them. Even India can endorse this technology in
the rural sections of the country, given that most of our rural house-structures
echo the corrugated tin houses of Bangladesh. This simple idea could bring

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 much-needed relief to the millions suffering the heat, not only in Bangladesh but
in India as well.

 The system works but has very little effect, most likely 4-6 degree Celsius. If the
panel mounting the bottle necks is opaque and blocking direct sunlight it will
have a much greater effect. Ideally, the panel should be two layers with some
insulation between.

 When the time comes to consider a new air conditioning system for your home,
you will want to put some serious thought into an eco-friendly system. Since an
eco-friendly system saves you money on your energy bills, it can pay for itself
over time. An eco-friendly system will also cool your home and keep your
family comfortable without the tremendous noise that usually accompanies an
air conditioning system.

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 Conclusion

After the successful installation of the self-sustainable air cooler, which we designed,
we came to the conclusion that it is really an effective device to lower the temperature
of the room in which it has been installed by 4℃ to 6℃.

Moreover, this device has been made by reusing used plastic bottles collected from
waste and therefore, it is highly cost effective as well as eco-friendly. Taking into
consideration the 3-R Principles, we are REUSING the plastic bottles which further
reduces the environmental degradation and money to be expended on recycling plastic
bottles.

Utilizing eco-friendly air conditioning systems reduces your energy bills. When you
reduce how much energy you utilize, you are reducing the amount of harmful emissions
that are put into the atmosphere by the power plants in your area. But air conditioning
units also give off their own emissions and many of these eco-friendly solutions reduce
or eliminate those emissions completely.

India being a tropical country, is exposed to severe heat during certain months of year
causing hundreds of deaths due to heat stroke, mainly in rural areas. So, its cost
effectiveness makes it affordable to even those people which belong to the poorest strata
of the society.

As people become more concerned about the environment, eco-friendly solutions are
becoming more and more popular. We hope this project gets more exposure and helps
as many people as possible and tackle climate change at the same time.

Thus, this report can be concluded by the thought:

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“The future will either be green or not at all.”

- Bob Brown.

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