Termite Inspired Climate Friendly Air Conditioning

July 7 () –

Future buildings inspired by termite nests could achieve the same effect as traditional climate control, but with greater energy efficiency and without your carbon dioxide footprint.

New research from Lund University in Sweden shows that termite mounds have a sophisticated ventilation system that allows air to circulate throughout the structure. This helps maintain and regulate temperature and humidity.

“The digitization of the design and construction processes creates enormous opportunities for how we shape architecture, and natural and biological systems provide an important model for how we can best utilize these possibilities,” he says. it’s a statement David Andréen, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Architecture and the Built Environment at Lund University, who wrote the article.

The results, published in the journal Frontiers in Materialsshow a structure for buildings based on termite mounds that facilitates indoor air conditioning.

“The study focuses on the interior of termite mounds, which consist of thousands of interconnected channels, tunnels and air chambers, and how these capture energy from the wind to ‘breathe’ or exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide with the environment. We have explored how these systems work and how similar structures could be integrated into the walls of buildings to boost the flow of air, heat and moisture in a new way.”

Therefore, the idea is to create new ways to control airflow in buildings that will be significantly more energy efficient and climate smart than traditional air conditioning, which uses the mass flow principle, typically fan-driven. Instead, it is possible to develop systems that are turbulent, dynamic, and variable.

“These can be controlled by very small teams and require a smaller power supply,” says David Andréen.

In the study, the researchers demonstrated how airflows interact with geometry: the parameters in the structure that cause the flows to arise and how they can be selectively regulated. These can be actuated without using mechanical components such as fans, valves and the like, since only electronic control is required.

“This is a precondition for a distributed system in which many small sensors and regulating devices are placed in the climate-adaptive building envelope through miniaturization, durability/sustainability and cost reduction,” says David Andréen .

This makes it possible to regulate the indoor climate of the building and control factors such as temperature and humidity without relying on large fans and heating and air conditioning systems. The mechanisms depend on being able to create complex internal geometries (on the scale of millimeters to centimeters), which is only possible through 3D printing. Through 3D printing, value can be added to the built environment to create a sustainable architecture that otherwise would not have been possible.

“It’s fascinating how the termite construction process manages to create extremely complex and well-functioning ‘masterpieces of engineering’, without having centralized control or drawings to refer to what we would need”, concludes David Andréen.