An airport cooled by natural ventilation

comrade1234

The smell of jet fuel often (not always though) gives me a splitting headache.

plantain

Every time I have been in one of these "naturally ventilated" facilities designed to "not need AC" due to "passive cooling", they've been uncomfortably hot. It just feels like industrial scale gas-lighting, and no one in charge can admit it doesn't work afterwards because too much was spent on it. Is stacking solar on the roof and AC's inside really so uneconomical?

fouc

>“Our objective is to maintain an indoor air temperature identical to the outdoor temperature while generating an airflow of 1 metre per second to reduce the perceived temperature for passengers.” so it's not "cooled" at all

nitwit005

> Ceiling fans with a 7.5-metre (24.6ft) diameter help to circulate the air. Giant fans are rather different than "natural ventilation" mentioned in the headline.

markdown

> Ceiling fans with a 7.5-metre (24.6ft) diameter help to circulate the air Big Ass Fans FTW! < https://bigassfans.com/fans/?attr_Diameter=24+ft. >

athrun

Funny seeing an article about Reunion island on HN. I’m very familiar with this airport, and from my perspective the engineers behind the project did a very good job designing a building that can take best advantage of its location. See, the airport is located alongside the coast, and the sea breeze there can be pretty powerful. Note that this is a new building (dedicated to arrivals), and is adjacent to the original building, which is still in use for departures. The old building is also mostly passively cooled, and the difference in perceived temperature between the two is striking. The old terminal behaves more like a concrete bunker and can get very stuffy. In contrast, this new arrival hall feels a bit like you’re on the deck of a ship at sea. I have plenty of other issues about other elements of the new building, but that part works pretty well!

hyperpape

> “That is to say that if you reduce air conditioning throughout your life … when you get to 30 degrees in the office, you won’t be hot. In La Réunion, people are used to 30 degrees.” Your mileage may vary. I live without air conditioning, but when it’s 30, I’m pretty tempted to defect. But I also tend to run hot.

rayiner

> Ceiling fans with a 7.5-metre (24.6ft) diameter help to circulate the air. In the 30C (86F) humid heat of Réunion’s wet summers, which last from around November to April, the resulting breeze reduces the perceived temperature by four to five degrees, to almost the same level usually set for air conditioning. Who sets their air conditioning to 82F? Doing this in a tropical country is penny-wise and pound foolish. As Lee Kuan Yew said, you need air conditioning to be able to think in a tropical country: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/09/air-conditioning-on... "Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics. Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning hours or at dusk. The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This was key to public efficiency."

raincom

pressure reducing is a key element here. In HVACs, they use metering devices to reduce the pressure of the refrigerants.

seemaze

Psychrometrics[0] is a long studied field of perceptual human comfort in relation to temperature and humidity. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychrometrics