gas cooling water or some other type of media in alternate embodiments of the invention heat could be removed from the second ends of the heat pipes using a different type of heat exchanger 70 for instance a flow of a liquid or a gas through the heat exchanger 70 could also be used to remove heat from the second ends of the heat pipes in still other embodiments the second ends of the heat pipes could be embedded in a solid heat conducting material and the solid heat conducting material could be placed in a liquid or gas flow that serves to remove heat from the second ends of the heat pipes also as described above the heat removed from the second ends of the heat pipes could be used for a beneficial purpose in that instance the way in which heat is removed from the second ends of the heat pipes could depend on the purpose to which the heat energy is being put for example the thermal energy could be used to power an absorption chiller to provide cooling to a building in the embodiment illustrated in fig3 the first ends of the heat pipes are simply shown as being located in the flow of air passing through the cooling air duct 50 in some embodiments a heat exchanger unit 60 could be used to transfer heat from the flow of air.