listeroid air conditioning

[bergfire]

Does anyone know of a junkyard that specializes in refrigerated truck trailers?  I was thinking about hooking one of those refrigerant compressors up to a lister.  I think if I do that i don't have to as big of generator or can get by with an inverter instead.  Does anyone have experience using propane in refrigerant systems?

[mobile_bob]

most of the refer truck compressors are direct drive, attaching to the engine bellhousing
which would preclude their use on a lister i would think

have you considered automotive compressors?

driving with r22 a york/climate control compressor (the 10cu/in model) can do about 4 tons of cooling iirc

as for propane, yes it makes an excellent refrigerant, but
very dangerous for obvious reasons, and not something i would use in an air handling system.

bob g

[bergfire]

Propane is not dangerous if care is taken in its use.  If your car got in an accident and the fuel tank runtures, what would your preferance be?  sitting on top of a puddle of gasoline that runs down the roadside, or a cloud of propane that disipates a bit quicker?    Using propane around stuff that is already flamable is not a problem, just takes the correct precautions, like not mixing it with air.  I have worked on a building where a couple of HVAC guys where sufocated by leaking refrigerant.

[mobile_bob]

ok, so you build your air conditioner with propane

a small leak happens in the air handler

propane being heavier than air, seeks the lowest level
perhaps in a basement, where there might be a pilot light for
a furnace or hotwater tank...

then what?

there is a reason propane is not an approved refrigerant

precautions are fine, but unless you are an expert hvac guy
or hire one, probably not something you wanna take a chance on?

as for gasoline, it burns, generally does not explode unless it is vaporized
propane is already a vapor, making it much more readily mixed and explosive
in my opinion.

having said all that, do as you like, just don't get anyone else hurt.
bob g

[M61hops]

One of the reasons that refrigeration and air conditioning took off in the late 20's was the invention of freon and one of it's best features was that it was non-flamable.  The most popular referigents before R12 were flamable.  Nothing wrong with using R134 or R22 in a automotive compressor driven by a Lister(oid).  I plan on making a heat pump with my 6-1 Metro and I'm sure it will work fine with either R22, my first choice, or R134!  I will get a compressor that uses a serpentine belt from a junkyard.  I'm way behind schedule on my CHP Listeroid project, as well as everything in my life, due to a spine injury but will post details when it's up and running.  I'll be lucky to get it done in the next year or two so I might not be much help to the forum on this  .                Leland

[mobile_bob]

r22 is my refrigerant of choice,

actually r12 would be if i had enough of it left!

haven't worked much with r22, have built several custom refrigeration systems
with r12 years ago, and found it easy to work with.

it is tempting to use propane though, and i might use in in an outdoor system to drive an
ice house or somesuch.

bob g

[bergfire]

My plan is to use it on one of those hydronic systems.  One of the ones that puts individual air handlers in each room.  I've wired many as upgrades/remodeling in old school buildings.

[mobile_bob]

i have been kicking around a system such as this

take a compressor driving r22 or even propane in an outbuilding that is well ventilated if
propane is used (i have a sanden rotary mounted and belted on my trigernator waiting for connection
when it is placed in service)

because the compressor is engine drive, i would put my air intake down to floor level, let it vacuum up
any leaks should there be any. (if propane is used as a refrigerant)

use the cooling to make perhaps 500 gallons of cold (if not slushy water or brine,  perhaps even ice if possible)

then pump the cold water into the air handlers inside the living space.

i figure a couple things are in the plus column

1. safety from leaks

2. ease of splitting cooling for zones without ducts

3. storage of cold for use when the engine is not running, which allows the engine to run under a higher
and more efficient loading when it is running, and be able to provide for other AC and DC loads while running
so the water tank becomes a BTU battery bank of sorts, and

4. the system could be reversed and store hot water for space heating in winter

i ran the calcs a couple years back and it appears in a superinsulated home i need 1 gallon of slushy water for each square foot of
living space i am trying to cool.  so maybe i make my tank big enough to provide for 2 gallons per sq/ft and then start the process of
testing to find the exact volume to space ratio vs engine run time. and maybe on really hot days i shutdown other areas that don't need cooling so as to maximize the efficiency of the system.

years ago this was a very popular method of cooling churches, where a very small (relatively) compressor drive made ice all week to
provide cooling for the church on sundays for a few hours.. as we know churches have lots of windows, lots of folks coming in
horrendously high volumes of heat to remove, no insulation to speak of, generally insufficient shading, etc.

fwiw, the beauty of an engine driven system is not only the ability to drive a compressor system, but the ability to drive an absorption
system off the exhaust heat in the summertime as well, a time when the exhaust heat would generally be of no use for space heating.

so coupling an engine driven compressor with an exhaust heat absorption system overall efficiency would be very good, especially if one could also make use of and/or store the waste products (electricity and hot water from the coolant)

other technologies are useful when scaled down as well, for instance the cooling tower

a decent cooling tower will cool water ~10 degree's below ambient, so you wait to recool your btu battery return water
till after midnite when the ambient outdoor temps are generally at their lowest, drop as much temp as possible within
the time available and then start the engine drive up perhaps an hour before breakfast so you have electrical power, hot water for
a shower and time for the chilling to get a head start on things.

i also have and have considered using a thermoking refer unit for bulk cooling, such that if i come home at the end of the day
and it is hotter than hell in the house, i can simply start the Tking and drop the internal temp in a hurry. allowing the Tking to do
what it does best would take a huge load off the basic chiller system which could them be turned on to maintain temps.

i think there is a lot of very interesting things that can be done successfully if one can get his mind around a smaller superinsulated house
that are much more difficult to do in a McMansion that is poorly sited, no shade, millions of windows and little to no insulation.

i know i have lived in houses that would tax a 25/2 just to cool in the middle of july or august, just as i have lived in one that
a 3/1 would probably been adequate.

certainly a small highly efficient superinsulated home has some interesting possibilities.

btw, there is no reason why one could not use the first chill for driving a holdover plate for a freezer/refrigerator
r22 gets so cold that the return pressure drops very low causing seals to leak on the compressor in such systems anyway
so drive the holdover plate first and then expand the r22 in the thermal btu battery, this would take away all the available cooling
and in the process the return pressure would be above ambient so the seals would do as they were designed in the compressor.

personally i think airconditioning is a noble use for a listeroid/chanfa/X engine, as a heat pump the COP can be very high
compared to just producing electrical power

bob g

[WGB]

Don't know where to start with this one!
Just going to throw some thoughts out there.
I thought I was the only one thinking about  this!

I've have plenty of refrigeration and HVAC experience. I would love to use ammonia for refrigeration, it takes about 1/7 the horse power to do the same cooling as R-22. Heck you could cool your house and still make electricity at the same time with a 6/1 !
I did a tour of Beatrice Foods in the late 70's they had numerous 3 phase, motor driven, open drive ammonia compressors that had been running 30 to 40 years flawlessly. One DRIVE in freezer was kept -10.

Back in the 70's I read a book about a guy in the UK that lived in a hundreds of years old castle like building with a water wheel.
He took two large Worthington * open drive compressors and had been heating mostly and cooling some, the place for free. At that time it never had be worked on for 30 years, I'm sure he's long gone, he looked old in the 70's. Still have the book some where.

I have a 3 ton open drive water cooled condensing unit that was on a walk in cooler, thought about using it for something, driven of the 6/1 Listeroid I have.  I use the compressor for a vacuum chamber to pull air out of silicone now, I can post a pic if anyone want's to see..

The old Delco R-12 wobble plate car compressors were awesome, they would work well with a Listeroid, fully loaded they would pull 6 to 7 hp. Had a mechanic friend that used one for a air compressor on his service truck, going to the job he would switch the electric clutch on to have air when he got to the service call.

Back in the 80's York had a unit that had a Briggs and Stratton natural gas engine driven, variable speed heat pump.  Super cheap to run. It was very expensive, never caught on. Don't remember if they had a LP unit.

Hope some of this will be food for thought.

Hope this thread goes awhile.

[matt]

Yes I too hope this thread goes a while WGB!!
Please post pics of the condensing unit and also pics from that book of the guy cooling his castle with a water wheel driven compressor.

Guys I know you use "ton" units to measure air conditioning in the USA, but this means nothing to the rest of us.
Can you use BTUs or HP instead?

The air output values are something like a 24,000 BTU air conditioner equals somewhere around 2 1/2 HP iirc. Does this explain it?
How many BTUs or HP is a 1 ton A/C

How much of a house could a car A/C compressor cool?
This stuff is interesting!!!

Matt

[AdeV73]

Guys I know you use "ton" units to measure air conditioning in the USA, but this means nothing to the rest of us.
Can you use BTUs or HP instead?

The air output values are something like a 24,000 BTU air conditioner equals somewhere around 2 1/2 HP iirc. Does this explain it?
How many BTUs or HP is a 1 ton A/C

This link provides a ton (sorry...) of information on what a ton of A/C is (in short: 12,000BTU/Hr).

How much of a house could a car A/C compressor cool?

Not a lot, I suspect... whilst a car is predominantly steel & glass (&, therefore, basically a mobile greenhouse), it's also true that there's only a tiny space to cool compared to even the smallest room in your house. I also reckon that most of the cooling effect of a car's a/c is the cold air blowing on you, rather than the actual ambient temperature...

[carlb23]

Most interesting discussion .....
This brings back thoughts of my heat issues inside the engine enclosure. I run at about 60C inside the enclosure and I would like to reduce this to about 30C to 40C. Venting could be used but it would be a bit of a waste since I use the engine primarily for house heating. So, what I would like to do is remove heat from the engine enclosure and shove it into the cooling water loop.
I have no experience with refrigeration and I don't know if it is even possible to use standard refrigeration stuff when the hot side temperatures are up at close to 100C.
Comments ?

Jens

Jens,

If you used an old auto a/c setup in reverse, in other words put the condenser inside and the evaporator in the engine compartment, in winter the when you were running it it would work as a heat pump and with the evaporator inside the engine bay with all that hot air it would be a win / win.  The evaporator needs to shed the cold and the engine compartment needs to be cooled.  I suspect you could have a very effective heat pump since the amount of heat is proportional to the amount of cold you can loose from the evaporator and the evaporator being in with the hot engine will loose a lot of the cold.

carl   

[mobile_bob]

the upright york style compressors now made and sold by climate control
came in three sizes ~6 cu/in displacement and commonly used in cars
~8 cu/in displacement commonly used in larger vans and station wagons
and the 10 cu/in which was commonly used in heavy trucks

from memory the dodge Vtwin was about 12 cu/in

i don't know about the rotary compressors, but i suspect there are some large displacement
units as well.

supposedly the 10 cu/in climate control will do ~50k btu with r22 at around 4000rpm

bob g

[bergfire]

What kind of equipment is used in ammonia refridgeration?  Why is it used so little if it is so effective?

[mobile_bob]

i don't know much about compressor driven ammonia systems but large chillers and ice houses were and may still be
ammonia absorption systems.

of particular interest to me is the use of rock salt as the absorption medium, it has sufficiently high melting poiint to stay
in a crushed rock form at temperatures that the diesel exhaust systems operate in as well.

the ability to use black pipe is a huge plus as well, you just gotta be a good welder.

and then have a good friend to charge the system with ammonia when you are done.

i would like to hear more about compressor drive ammonia systems though.

bob g