Researchers at Haifa’s Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Cornell Tech in New York City have taken an ancient Middle Eastern method of cooling down a room and given it a modern twist.

In their peer-reviewed study, the scientists say they have developed an eco-friendly method for making quick, low-cost hollow ceramic pipes that cool their surroundings via the evaporation of water, without polluting or using a power grid.

The research was conducted before the Cornell student assembly voted to cut ties with the Technion last week, alleging that Technion’s involvement with the Israeli military violates international law. Resolutions approved by the assembly are brought to the university president, who can accept or reject them.

The system, called CeraPiper, was developed by Ofer Berman, 40, a visiting assistant professor at the Technion specializing in industrial design, under the supervision of Thijs Roumen, assistant professor at Cornell Tech and director of the Matter of Tech Lab, and Ethan Zhi Ming Seiz, an undergraduate summer intern at Cornell Tech.

Berman told The Times of Israel that his research is in response to severe climate change, explaining that 2023 was the hottest year on record since meteorologists began tracking annual temperatures 174 years ago.

The heat has made air-conditioning systems “increasingly essential,” he said. “They cool things off inside but send hot air back into the environment.”

His concern for the way air conditioners pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, adding to dangerous rises in the earth’s temperature, prompted his development of a sustainable cooling system he called CeraPiper.

Berman’s proof-of-concept study, recently published in The Association for Computing Machinery, could pave the way for the development of pipes that provide........

© The Times of Israel