Abstract
In order to make lower environmental effect of domestic air conditioning system, we propose a new air conditioning system using cooling tower principle for outdoor unit. By performing experiment with a testing system, which is modified by replacing the air-cooled condenser by a water-cooled condenser, we confirmed a possibility to make lower condenser temperature. Moreover, the proposed system's performance is simulated using vapor compression cycle theory at a condition of the common cooling load for existing system. We compared the amount of power consumption with the conventional case. Saving power consumption is possible as outdoor temperature increases and it reaches up to 30% in the summer at temperatures of outdoor between 27 and 37 ℃. Amount of external exergy loss of the air-cooled condenser due to high temperature exhaust heat can reach to about 300 W at outdoor temperature of 37 ℃ and exhaust heat of 1.1 kW, while it is assumed to be nearly zero in case of the new system due to no temperature difference between condenser and the environment. Last but not least, a prototype of new heat exchanger is proposed and tested in summer weather. The results shows that heat-transfer coefficients are at least 4 times higher than the compact-heat-exchanger which is popularly used in air-cooled condenser of conventional air conditioning system.
