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North American Air Conditioning

Giant Refrigerant Pipeline North to South
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Goal: reduce energy used for heating and cooling.

North uses a lot of energy to heat buildings.

South uses a lot of energy to cool buildings.

Build a giant refrigerant pipeline, big enough to make friction low and distributed grids to pump the heat around. Take or deliver heat. system would look a little like our arteries and veins.

jmvw, Mar 14 2012

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       I like this very much.   

       It might be most efficient, in the long run, to undermine the USA and install ammonia-filled heat pipes, converting the continent into a sort of giant heatsink.   

       As a bonus, this could be used to cool Yellowstone and postpone a very embarrassing supervolcano event.
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 14 2012
  

       //postpone a very embarrassing supervolcano event// Nothing doing! We've already got tickets.
mouseposture, Mar 14 2012
  

       I'd hate to imagine what the diameter of a pipe would have to be, such that a journey of a thousand or so miles wouldn't heat up the contents enough to be a pointless exercise. [ ]   

       [marked-for-category]
FlyingToaster, Mar 15 2012
  

       I dunno. I'm sorta hot and cold on this idea.
AusCan531, Mar 15 2012
  

       Having a good enough speed of air current, like in an aerodynamic tube, would probably transfer the air quicker than it would take for it to cool down. Someone needs to do the math.
Inyuki, Mar 15 2012
  

       I'm not going sofar as to say "baked", but isn't this how weather and ocean currents work? Warm tropical air and water move north keeping the UK warm(ish), and polar air moves south keeping North Dakota a hellishly cold wasteland.
DIYMatt, Mar 15 2012
  

       I think an evacuated heat pipe would be better, if they can go that far.
marklar, Mar 15 2012
  

       I think [MB] has it right with using heat transfer fluids rather than air.
AusCan531, Mar 15 2012
  

       Wouldn't it be easier to use the hot air generated in D.C. to heat the north?
cudgel, Mar 15 2012
  

       no thanks, we already get enough of that from our own hot-air generators in Ottawa.
FlyingToaster, Mar 15 2012
  

       If we keep screwing with the weather long enough, maybe the jet stream will turn sideways?
RayfordSteele, Mar 15 2012
  

       I want my winter back. Who took it?
Alterother, Mar 15 2012
  

       I wonder what would happen if you just dug a very wide, very very long tunnel from north to south?   

       Temperature differentials ought to do something, but it would also create a Coriolesque centripugal force, driving air towards the equator. Maybe.
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2012
  

       //Coriolesque// That's a noun, not an adjective. It's a form of music hall performance involving a woman sitting on a child's swing -- the kind suspended by a single rope. The rope is twisted so she spins round, slowly at first, removing an article of clothing on each rotation. As the performance continues, she pulls in her arms and legs, increasing the speed of rotation so that, by the time she's nude, she's moving too fast to see clearly.
mouseposture, Mar 15 2012
  

       Well, who would've imagined such a thing?   

       Ah. According to Google, you did.
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 17 2012
  

       This is baked on a very small scale, variable refrigerant flow systems can use areas that have a constant cooling load (like computer rooms) to provide heat for areas that have a heating load. Basically, some coils act as condenser coils and others act as evaporator coils, making for a very efficient system. So, just make the system a million times larger, and run some pipelines, and there you have it.
cblunds, Mar 22 2012
  

       // It might be most efficient, in the long run, to undermine the USA //   

       Yes, I've often thought so.
BunsenHoneydew, Apr 07 2012
  

       I just stumbled across this quote by Nicola Tesla (while searching for tension in rotating rings):   

       "Another one of my projects was to construct a ring around the equator which would, of course, float freely and could be arrested in its spinning motion by reactionary forces, thus enabling travel at a rate of about one thousand miles an hour, impracticable by rail. The reader will smile. The plan was difficult of execution, I will admit, but not nearly so bad as that of a well-known New York professor, who wanted to pump the air from the torrid to the temperate zones, entirely forgetful of the fact that the Lord had provided a gigantic machine for this very purpose."   

       Now there's an honorary halfbaker candidate for you.
spidermother, Apr 08 2012
  

       The honor is all ours :)
theircompetitor, Apr 08 2012
  


 

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