Using Firn Air for Facility Cooling at the WAIS Divide Site.

摘要

The National Science Foundation s United States Antarctic Program (USAP) is constantly striving to introduce materials and methods that will increase efficiency and reduce costs of their logistics and operations activities. Heating and cooling air in the polar regions consumes a high percentage of available energy resources. Polar firn contains a large natural repository of cold air, and accessing this cooling capacity could save fuel and reduce logistics costs at remote field camps where it is critical to maintain proper temperatures to preserve sensitive deep ice cores. We assessed the feasibility of using firn air for cooling at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide ice core drilling site as a means to adequately and efficiently refrigerate ice cores during storage and processing. We used estimates of mean annual temperature, temperature variations, and firn permeability measured at adjacent sites in West Antarctica to predict firn air cooling efficiencies. With a coefficient of performance (COP) of 5.9, the most conservative scenarios indicated cooling with firn air at the WAIS Divide site is almost twice as efficient as with conventional systems (COP 2.5). This report recommends conducting tests at the WAIS Divide site to verify our estimates of physical properties and cooling efficiency to properly design a full-scale cooling system.