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Economic Multipliers (116)
Do you know what these are?
They help CREATE wealth in systems.
Understanding a simple concept about cooling could be an economic multiplier for the world (Example 1).
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I never heard the term ‘polar vortex’ until this past year. The area I live in is experiencing abnormally low (subzero) temperatures with wind chill numbers even lower … the result of a polar vortex.
If we get extreme heat this summer, the polar vortex will be long gone and people will be looking for ways to stay cool.
Cold and heat are interesting things: If human beings are (thermally) comfortable and have adequate heat and cold for cooking and food preservation, the world functions quite nicely.
When fuel shortages occur or people can’t cook their food or take advantage of refrigeration to prolong the shelf life of food, the world doesn’t function very well at all.
Lots of things create ‘coolth’ like the polar vortex.
What fascinates me the most though is that compounds like ordinary table salt (NaCl) can ‘steal’ heat.
Imagine having lots of seawater and living in a tropical environment. You’d have:
salt if you evaporated the water using the native heat of sunlight,
distilled water if you collected the evaporated condensate using radiative cooling,
salt that could be added to water (even seawater) to steal heat from the water (or cool it) … it just needs to ‘go into solution’ … and
salty water that could be evaporated to re-extract the salt.
Is it possible to set up a practical and economical process whereby seawater could be used to create ‘coolth’ to extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables in tropical climates where heat and seawater are abundant?
I don’t know.
All I do know is that millions (possibly billions over the years) of people have used salt to create enough ‘coolth’ to make ice cream.
The ‘coolth’ is temporary but the fact that it exists at all provides food for thought.
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