Greening buildings with Snow

Snowboarders and Skiers have been known for taking snow and utilizing it in many ways, such as building jumps. Now engineers in Canada, Sweden, and Japan have started experimenting with large piles of snow to see what other ways it can be useful. One way is by cooling off buildings in the hot summer months. A company called Snowpower has been testing it on the Swedish Sundsvall hospital. To replace traditional-scale air conditioning, a large snow-pile is covered by an insulating layer. Then the melted water at the bottom of the snow-pile is gathered and fed into a heat exchanger which helps cool down the air inside the hospital. This helps buildings become greener, instead of using an A/C system which emits greenhouse gases, ozone-depleting HCFC, and uses a lot of electricity.

China’s engineers have also found a way to artificially make snow fall in Beijing, while Russia wants to use this technology to drop the snow-level! Even if there is no snow in Russia, these snowboarders know how to create it. Here’s a clip from WestCom jib session in Russia.