UN Sustainable Development Goals Addressed
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Goal 7: Affordable & Clean Energy
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Goal 11: Sustainable Cities & Communities
2018 Ray of Hope Second Place Winner
Mexico City, Mexico
Innovation Details
Large buildings require large amounts of energy to operate, with the majority of their energy usage focused on heating and cooling. The BioThermosmart team applied lessons from animals’ circulatory systems to develop a heating and cooling system for buildings that harvests waste heat and cycles it back into the system, reducing costs, fossil fuel emissions, and energy.
BioThermosmart mimics the way the veins in elephants open and close to release or keep heat. The team’s goal was to use liquid in the same way that nature uses liquid to move heat, in a passive way. They designed a series of patches or stickers that are connected to each other by insulated hoses; when the temperature rises or drops, a low-power pump releases or captures heat as needed. The system is operated by a controller circuit that sends data to a cloud server.
See Related Strategy
Product rendering