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There is a new HVAC technology for the United States called a “chilled beam” system that has been widely used in Australia and Europe. This system saves a considerable amount of energy compared to a conventional system that uses air to heat and cool a room. Chilled Beam systems can blend in with ceiling designs or installed just above the ceiling. It actually looks similar to a fluorescent lighting fixture because it is mounted from the ceiling. “If you peek under the cover of a baseboard heater, you'll see a pipe studded with many thin fins, looking like a car radiator. Chilled beams are based on a similar design, except instead of one long straight pipe, their pipes snake back and forth like the security line at the airport. And instead of heating air with hot water, they cool it with cold water,” says Deborah Halber, MITEI correspondent. The chilled beam system uses water instead of air like conventional HVAC systems to heat and cool a room. There are two types of chilled beam systems, active and passive. B.J. Novitski described the process on a passive chilled beam system in an issue of Architectural Record, “chilled water is piped to a coil, which usually consists of aluminum fins on copper tubing within a perforated metal casing. There, it cools the surrounding air, which drops into the room. Natural convection drives the warmer, more buoyant room air up to the ceiling and into the casing, where it is cooled and naturally drops again. A small space between the top of the chilled beam and the underside of the structure allows the warm air to rise above the beam, turn, and accelerate past the fins of the heat exchanger.” An active system “ties into the building's air supply ducts, mixing supply air with cooled air and distributing it through diffusers, “ says Halber. When comparing the chilled beam system to a conventional HVAC system, the chilled beam system had some nice advantages. The chilled beam system saves a considerable amount of energy, “because water is many times more dense than air, it can provide equivalent cooling energy in a fraction of the volume. And the pumps that move the water require less energy than the fans that move the larger volumes of air.” The system also saves a considerable amount of space. "One of its advantages over conventional air conditioning is that it can be retrofitted in buildings that can't accommodate conventional air-conditioning equipment," says Peter L. Cooper, manager of sustainability engineering and utility planning for the Department of Facilities at MIT. The chilled beam system also saves money. “Neither passive nor active chilled beams have moving parts so they typically have long lives and low maintenance costs,” says Alla Katsnelson in an article in Building Operating Management. “Chilled beams can be part of a constant volume primary air system or a variable volume air system. They can also be controlled by regulating or isolating water flow through the beams,” says Katsnelson.