Researchers have built the first refrigerant-free system to reach sub-zero temperatures, a breakthrough that could reduce food waste and greenhouse gas emissions.

Imaging if this technology could cool a data centre.

Edit: I was not involved in this project. You are wasting your time asking me questions.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.socialEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    This made me wonder how much heat/emissions are generated creating liquid nitrogen. 🤔

    You just compress the gas to make it liquid, right? But then, I guess you’d need to provide pure nitrogen and I’m not sure what the main source of that is other than the atmosphere itself. How do you separate it?

    • MalReynolds@slrpnk.netEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      How do you separate it?

      Fractional distillation of liquid air I believe (like separating petrol and diesel).

    • Fondots@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      I’m sure it’s more complex than I’m making it out to be, but each gas in the air has its own freezing/melting boiling/condensation/sublimation points, so I’d imagine you could just kind of take advantage of that

      Basically just cool it down to x temperature at y pressure, and all of the carbon dioxide should be solid, the oxygen a liquid and the nitrogen still a gas, and they’ve all sort of separated themselves out. Fish out the dry ice, siphon off the oxygen, and you’re left with nitrogen.

      Might need to do a couple more rounds of that on each of those to account for other gases in the mix depending on how pure you need it to be, but in theory I imagine it could be that simple (again in practice I’m sure there’s probably a lot of details I’m missing)