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« on: March 31, 2006, 11:59:35 PM »
Ok,
So I've had this idea in the my head for a while, but I want to see someone build it. Here's what you need
1) A/C unit, and preferably the equipment to dis/re charge it properly
2) An open lake, river, stream or large continous supply of water that isn't your drinking water that's cooler than the outside air
3) Some small pumps
Now, lets say you have a window A/C unit. (This part of the experiment we can all try) Wait for the hotest day on record - set it to max and allow it to try and cool a very large room. (Use fans in the room to cirulate as much air as possible. Let's say it's 30C out, and your A/C can get your room down to 25C. Now go outside with your garden hose and set it to spray cold water one the condenser, and you'll notice the A/C can take it down a couple of degrees, lets say to 23C.
So that just gets you warmed up to my idea. Here are some of the factors limiting how much your little A/C can cool:
1) Surface area of evaporator
2) Aluminum/Air heat exchange coefficent of evaporator
3) Amount of air the you can move over the evaporator
4) Amount of refrigerant compressor can actually move through the lines
5-7) Items 1-3 of the condesner
So, we cant adjust item #4 without getting a bigger compressor, ie new air conditioner and away from the point.
Items 1 & 5 are hard to adjust, so for the purposes of the discussion, we'll leave them alone too.
So, we pump water from our lake over the condensor (outside) portion of our air conditioner and return the slightly heated water to waste (or some other use??). This accomplishes two things. The heat capacity (by volume) of water is greater than that of air, and the efficency of moving heat from Aluminum to water is much better than Aluminum to air. So on both accounts, we have removed more heat than the stock setup. The more water and the colder it is, the better this will work.
Ok, but dont get your mig welder out yet. The Evaporator coils on the inside of your house will be much cooler than they were before, and the water that normally condenses on them freezes up and then your whole evaporator becomes a block of ice. Your A/C stops cooling because no air is flowing, this is not good. So, you need a bigger fan or bigger evaporator, either will do; but here is the third way:
Run water over the evaporator and pump it to a big radiator or smaller radiators in other areas of your house. You may wish to use anti-freeze in this system in case it falls below freezing. The efficively increases the suraface area of your evaporator and allows for different fan setups...... Keep in mind that you dont want thiese other radiators to fall below freezing, or the water will freeze on them as well.
You've effectivley greatly improved the efficency of your A/C. The EPA will hate you for warming up the fishes water and leaking all that freon when you take the AC apart, but will hug you for using less kW*hrs to run your A/C. Not tested past experiment stage. Your milage may vary....
Steve
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