Economic evaluation for cooling and ventilation of medicine storage warehouses utilizing wind catchers

Renewable energy consumption has become a dominant issue in many countries because of environmental crisis, pollution, climate change and increased costs of non-renewable sources like fossil fuels. Because of global warming and energy prices designers are refocusing on the low carbon credentials of new equivalents. In this context, the main target of the proposed study is to present a new innovative method of cooling the non-refrigerator medicine storage warehouses in order to minimize energy costs and environmental hazards for the city of Yazd in Iran. For this purpose, warehouses with absorption chillers, underground warehouses, and underground warehouses including wind catchers have been analyzed. Then, the equivalent uniform annual cost (EUAC) method was applied for evaluating the costs of the three alternative systems. The results of this study show that the use of wind catcher is far more economical than the absorption chiller cooling system. Moreover, it is concluded that the construction of an underground warehouse with a wind catcher is the most economical option for the storage of medicines than the other warehouses in this case study.