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A new cooling technology freezes food without warming the climate
(www.anthropocenemagazine.org)
this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2026
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Technology
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Im sure that this doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics, but the headline makes it sound like this magics away the heat without using electricity or putting the heat anywhere.
Ye canna change the laws of physics, Captin.
Also Titanium is a bitch to extract if I recall correctly, hence the price. Still, options are good.
No, but you can write a bullshit article that has very little bearing on reality.
Goes quadruple for its title.
Agreed. But you can cool without heating the planet. It doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics because it just uses a larger system - I.e. nocturnal radiative cooling.
In this case they just mean its not contributing to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
But it is possible to do cooling without heating the earths atmosphere, if you manage to yeet the heat into space somehow, e.g. Paint that reflects the heat as light that passes through the atmosphere into space: https://youtu.be/KDRnEm-B3AI
I did watch a real good set of videos by Tech Ingredients, the chap's gotta be either a lecturer (and) or his special interest is DIY-ing everything from pulse detonation rocket engines (that turned out better than the ones ol muskrat's using) to using an underground heatsink made of plastic tubing and carbon saturated cement outside his workshop for an in-window AC unit, turning an 800W drain down to a 300W drain for the same cooling.
He was using some kind of fine particle paint to create a large Infrared radiating surface that shed heat so well it got below ambient air temp because it was shedding IR directly up out into space
The only unfortunate limit is shielding it from catching any outside radiation and making sure all the IR actually leaves the system, he had to build a shade to protect it from trees and buildings which would have been effectively shining IR back into the system.
This video;
https://youtu.be/dNs_kNilSjk
No it said it does it without refrigerant.
The headline reads "A new cooling technology freezes food without warming the climate". It doesnt mention the lack of (gaseous) refrigerent.
The thing about machines that make them bad for the environment in general is the fact that they use up energy, which is nowadays still mostly created in a process that also releases massive amounts of CO2.
Its unlikely that the environmental impact of the gaseous refrigerent is as big as the impact of the CO2 that is created to run the fridge over its lifetime. It makes sense then to assume this fridge doesnt use power, since right now thats the only way it could cool without heating up the planet.
Im not saying this tech isnt interesting, but the headline is total BS
Old school refrigerants were absolutely horrendous ghg even modern ones are pretty bad with R134 being 1430x worse of a ghg than CO2
If we can reduce that, that’s good! And metals like titanium are recyclable so yes initially extracting them is bad but the full lifecycle isn’t as terrible
Modern refrigerants don't use R134
https://www.freon.com/en/industries/refrigeration/residential-refrigeration
R134 was the “safe” refrigerant to replace R-12 because R12 is 11000x more potent of a ghg than co2
There are some new refrigeration units that use R600 but the vast majority of refrigerators are still R134
R600 being a highly flammable gas (it’s butane) has slowed its rollout a lot. Hence why a solid state non volatile refrigerant is still a cool development
In EU new installments using refrigerants with GWP of over 150 will be straight up banned next year, at least for home usage
Maybe it whisks the heat away to space?
What through a wormhole?
There's a lot of air between the refrigerator and space I think it might get in the way
It is possible to get IR radiation out almost directly to space, its the same principle for why clear nights are always colder- no cloud layer to bounce the IR back at the surface and keep it warm
I know, I was kidding
It doesn't use refrigerant, which is full of HFCs, HCFCs and CFCs.