air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
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air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
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RE: air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
All new window air conditioners I've seen are now designed so that condensate from the evaporator coil drains to the bottom of the condenser coil where the hot refrigerant is cooled and re-evaporates the condensate. That saves energy and eliminates the unsightly dripping from the air conditioner. Condensate does not contain dissolved minerals but there is still some degree of corrosion that occurs with time. I don't think most window units are designed to last more than three or four years.
RE: air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
RE: air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
I'm very, very suspicious of anything "wet" regularly going across my A/C condenser's nice clean heat exchanger plates.
The only advantage of this would be the increased heat transfer by water droplets evaporating as they go across the HX surface. Which is an advantage of course, but I'm not convinced its practical in the real world.
RE: air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
>>I'm very, very suspicious of anything "wet" regularly going across my A/C condenser's nice clean heat exchanger plates.
snip
Are you equally suspicious of wet going across a/c evaporator's plates? They're made of the same stuff.
RE: air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
I've seen plenty of AC condensors where the home owner complains that the system doesn't keep up like it uise to. Go outside and look at the condenser and the beautiful white arc across the unit from where the sprinkler system is spraying water on it. The mineral build up is restrict air flow and lowering the heat transfer rate.
RE: air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
Isn't that good enough for you?
But yes, turning the condenser coil into a wet coil will definitely increase performance.
RE: air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
Removing minerals from domestic water is not new tech.
RE: air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
RE: air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
On two story homes, the AC units are in the attic. The emergency drain drips from under an eve of the roof. The amount of water dripping during emergency draining is 5 to 7 gallons per day on a 3 ton AC.
RE: air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
I once tried to recover condensate in an industrial application thinking that it was just good "distilled" water, right? This was in a wood dryer that had a refrigeration dehumidifier and had lots of available condensate. Turns out that that particular atmosphere was full of what ever it was that it took to make tannic acid and it tore up what ever it was that the condensate was collected for use in. Sorry but I can't remember any more details than that but I DO remember the takeaway that evaporator condensate isn't always that pure.
I could very easily pipe mine (I live in Houston and I would question dcasto's 5-7 GPD and think like it is more like 5-7 GPH.) from the evaporator (second story attic) to the condenser (outside on the ground) but after getting burned at the wood plant, I never have.
I have gone out on some VERY hot summer days when the unit was just laboring along and struggling to keep up and hosed it down with a garden hose for a few minutes. Not too many minerals get deposited with that limited use.
And I have on a couple of occasions when relays or capacitors on the fan motor (or the fan motor itself on one occasion) went out on a weekend (when else would it go out?) put a garden sprinkler right inside the unit and let it sprinkle directly on the tubing all weekend until I could go out on Monday and buy the necessary part (that wasn't in Houston, but in a small town where the side walks were rolled up on Friday afternoon before moving here) and fix it.
rmw
RE: air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
B.E.
RE: air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
RE: air conditioner water spray on the condenser coil
I live in the southwest and have a whole-house forced air evaporative cooling system. It uses around 200 W to cool the house to about 20F below ambient. During the drought that sort of ended a couple of years ago one of the brain trust legislators suggested that they outlaw evaporative coolers to "save water". Someone pointed out to him that generating the electricity used to air condition a house (I think the air conditioning load was around 14 kW but I'm not certain) evaporates around 30 gallons/kW or 370 gallons per day as opposed to an evaporative cooler directly evaporating 1-5 gallons/day.
David