(long, but bear with me)

This is an actual Engineering lecture in Thermodyamics.  I can testify to it
because I was there.  It was an undergraduate lecture and under the EE 
catalog I was required to take thermodynamics.

The professor at Fresno State (more formally California State University,
Fresno) our professor for this class was also an HVAC consultant. This was
termed "Professor Bevel's Chicken Shit Lecture" and was part of many 
semester classes at Fresno State.

One of his clients was Foster Farms Chickens (a big retail label in California).

Anyway, seems like Foster Farms had a problem with their chickens.

When the temperature in the chicken coops got to hot the chicken shit used
to generate ammonia gas.  That wasn't so bad, but the ammonia gas used to
etch the cornias of the chickens and then they would go blind and not find
the food to eat and not gain weight.  This was not so good for the chickens
and especially not good for Foster Farms.

As a reference to the problem (one of many, I'm sure) is:
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/PS031

It's amazing what you can find on the internet, but I digress.....

The professor was called in as a paid consultant.  Well, he found that
putting a sprinkler system on top of the chicken coops would wet down the
tops of the roof of the chicken houses and then the water would evaporate,
cool down the chicken house, the temperature would not be high enough for
the chicken shit to generate excessive ammonia gas, the cornias of the
chickens eyes wouldn't get etched, they wouldn't go blind, they could find
their food and gain weight.  This made the chickens very happy.  It also
made Foster Farms very happy as well.  So the professor billed Foster Farms
(he tried billing the chickens, but they wouldn't pay). 
And everybody was happy.

Well, that's not the real part of the story.  That was just the setup.

After a couple of years, the folks at Foster Farms noticed that they didn't
have to use as much water as they did originally to keep the chicken coops
cool.  So they called him up and asked him why.  Well, turns out the
water in the Fresno area (in fact most of the southern San Joaquin valley
is pretty alkaline, which was sprayed on the roofs of the chicken coops
(remember the chicken coops.  They hold the chickens inside).  The alkali
of the water turned the roofs of the chicken coops white, which the white
reflected more heat, and hence, they didn't have to use as much water with
the white roofs.

Now, here's the kicker.

My instructor then billed Foster Farms *AGAIN*

I learned alot about engineering from that class.  Maybe not too much
about thermodynamics, but a whole lot of engineering.........

  Cheers,

   Rich S.




> 
> It would, but many of these same parts of the US are under drought and have 
> restrictions such as NO outdoor water use. I personally would like to see the 
> effect of evaporative cooling on an area-wide scale on the local weather.
> 
> I think they do this in the southwest US, or at least as air conditioning. One 
> of the requirements for efficient operation is low humidity - somethign that 
> doesn't exist in most of the needed areas.
> 
> 
> Marcel Birthelmer wrote:
> > More interesting (to me) than white tiles would be evaporative
> > cooling, but I don't think this is something that is really available
> > for residential applications. But I'm sure the effect would be even
> > more pronounced in summer than what lighter tiles could do.
> > Regards,
> > - Marcel
> > 
> > On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Dr Skip <drskip@gmail.com> wrote:
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