April 22, 2013

Solar air con

Philippines   | April 22, 2013

One of the solar devices is the solar aircon.  Some of these are being marketed in the internet and at malls.   It is not however powered by solar panels.  

The idea is to get a little help from the sun in running the air con refrigeration system.

The aircon cools the room by evaporating the refrigerant;  the principle that liquid that turns into gas absorbs heat and that it releases heat as it becomes liquid.  Now the evaporation process is done by a compressor using Boyles law, ie that by compressing, the temperature rises (to say l70 C). In a solar air con, the refrigerant passes through a coil heated the sun which superheats/preheats the refrigerant.  This process reduces the power requirement of the compressor (as not much energy is needed) to vaporize the refrigerant.   So there is an additional coil outside the aircon unit.  Any aircon unit can be converted to solar.

Power savings is estimated to be 50%

Some are hybrid system that uses:  both the passive system and solar panel

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