Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations waross on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

High wall split air conditioners

Status
Not open for further replies.

sridhar1312

Mechanical
Jun 1, 2009
58
Recently at a residence a high wall room air conditioner burnt out resulting in immediate death of an infant and death of mother after few days. Boy recovered and alive.
what are the causes for such accidents ? is it due to incoming power given to indoor units or due to bursting of capacitor.

Would like to know the cause for such accidents and how it can be prevented?
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

There are several methods for death via air conditioning though all of them are extremely rare.

The refrigerant does not support life. If you have a small room and the entire charge of a large enough unit all leaked out into the room and there was zero turnover of the room air you could a suffocation issue.

When a refrigeration unit using a Freon as the refrigerant "burns out" the high temperatures that are present converts a lot of the refrigerant to phosgene gas. Phosgene is a deadly poison. So deadly it was used in WWI to gas enemy troops.

I doubt a capacitor fire would be sufficient to promote fatalities but I suppose anything is possible.

Before you come to ANY conclusions you should follow any investigation about this particular event to its conclusion. Oh and come back and tell what the investigation determines!

Keith Cress
kcress -
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor