Feasibility of Pre-Cooling Freon with Water Heat Exchanger
Feasibility of Pre-Cooling Freon with Water Heat Exchanger
(OP)
In "residential water-cooled air conditioning" thread403-200396: residential water-cooled air conditioning: gepman states "There are also one pass through water-cooled systems (sometimes used where there is a large source of surface water such as a river, lake, or ocean)."
What are the pros/cons and feasibility of pre-cooling the freon in a water source heat exchanger between the air handler and a non-modified condensing unit if there is plenty of water from a lake available?
What sources of information are available?
What are the pros/cons and feasibility of pre-cooling the freon in a water source heat exchanger between the air handler and a non-modified condensing unit if there is plenty of water from a lake available?
What sources of information are available?





RE: Feasibility of Pre-Cooling Freon with Water Heat Exchanger
In your piping watch out for oil traps; make certain that oil can return to the compressor; make certain that liquid freon does not back flood the compressor.
Depending upon the relative temperatures there is a chance that all the freon could pool in the HX and there could be instances of suction pressure faults on start up.
Additionally you will want to have some sort of head pressure regulator going on. Either adjust flow through the HX or with a refrigerant flow device.
I have a similar design for my home where I use the swimming pool as a heat sink to recover the heat to keep the pool on the warm side.
RE: Feasibility of Pre-Cooling Freon with Water Heat Exchanger
So conceptually, it worked wonderfully-it did what it was designed to do. In reality, it didn't work well at all. I helped a buddy install one and after seeing his results (we both had young kids too and the wife balked-and I really mean balked at having 180F water coming out of the HW taps in the house) I didn't even install my two-I had 2 A/C units in my home hence the need to dispose of these two units now some 30 years and one house move later.
I live in a part of the country where when we need A/C (almost 8 months of the year) we could also use some means of chilling the pool water, not heating it, so that was not a candidate for a heat sink. Ground water would have been a candidate, but then in my day job I do heat transfer and cleanliness and fouling are something that give me great pause with respect to using raw water of any type in a Hx this small.
Imok2, I have a hard time equating residential pool chemical maintenance with cooling tower water maintenance. I see cooling tower water as much more diverse, demanding and complicated. However, if some system were to come onto the market that was technically viable, I see a real niche for some company to go around and do the service like some pool service companies do. BTW, and as an aside, I won't have a pool and that is one battle I have always won with the wife and kids. I kept up one as a young man at a youth camp and I never wanted any more of that.
rmw
RE: Feasibility of Pre-Cooling Freon with Water Heat Exchanger
Thanks to all for the expert knowledge and insight in these threads. Most impressive group of contributors.
RE: Feasibility of Pre-Cooling Freon with Water Heat Exchanger
Ok the freon temp into the exchangers is hot - too hot for home h/w. why not do it the other way round do the air first and then the water? Any thing wrong with that??
-Phil
RE: Feasibility of Pre-Cooling Freon with Water Heat Exchanger
I wish I'd read rmw's post before I got the pool, I've ended up doing all the maintenance
RE: Feasibility of Pre-Cooling Freon with Water Heat Exchanger