OT: Air conditioning was [some crap]

Tell us about air conditioning; you might know something about that.

Well, it's like a 'fridge, but puts the heat outside.

I wonder if you could make a solar AC by using gas fridge principles? ;-)

Thanks, Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise, Plainclothes Hippi
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Of course you can, and they made (make?) natural gas powered airconditioners for houses. They use the same ammonia cycle that was coinvented by Einstein.

-Chuck

Reply to
Chuck Harris

An absorption cooler is possible though not practical.

Reply to
Lord Garth

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John

Reply to
John Larkin

"Rich Grise, Plainclothes Hippie" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@doubleclick.net...

Ignore Larkin, he's just another monkey pretending to be something he's not and craving attention:-

"The monkeys called the place their city, and pretended to despise the Jungle-People because they lived in the forest. And yet they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to use them. They would sit in circles on the hall of the king's council chamber, and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men; or they would run in and out of the roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster and old bricks in a corner, and forget where they had hidden them, and fight and cry in scuffling crowds, and then break off to play up and down the terraces of the king's garden, where they would shake the rose trees and the oranges in sport to see the fruit and flowers fall. They explored all the passages and dark tunnels in the palace and the hundreds of little dark rooms, but they never remembered what they had seen and what they had not; and so drifted about in ones and twos or crowds telling each other that they were doing as men did. They drank at the tanks and made the water all muddy, and then they fought over it, and then they would all rush together in mobs and shout: "There is no one in the jungle so wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as the Bandar-log." Then all would begin again till they grew tired of the city and went back to the tree-tops, hoping the Jungle-People would notice them."

-- The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Not AFAIK. Even Stirling cycle engines don't seem to have been sufficiently efficient. There's a type of large AC unit called a rotary centrifugal compressor which uses a somewhat similar principle (a mixture of liquids but not freon IIRC) but it still needs a large electric motor.

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Reply to
Homer J Simpson

What am I pretending to be? I'm an EE by education and a circuit designer by trade. Being that this is an electronic design newsgroup, I figure I'm not out of place here.

Hey, random cutting and pasting has its own charm.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

Random?

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Reply to
Homer J Simpson

What are your thoughts on absorption air conditioning, specifically solar-powered versions of same? Is the energy density of sunlight high enough to make this economically useful?

Existing solar cells powering conventional (mechanical) refrigeration doesn't look anywhere near sensible to me.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

The only contender I have ever seen that might work is a mirrored solar collector that can raise steam to power an AC compressor. Otherwise the best you can do seems to be to use heat to generate drafts to help with cooling. I like the idea of a tower chimney painted black which can pull air through a house.

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Reply to
Homer J Simpson

Homie have you ever heard of a natural gas fired air conditioner? It works using the absorption cycle, and has no compressor. It does have a fan, because it needs to get rid of the heat it transports out of the house. Otherwise, there are no moving parts. They were very popular in the 1960's when natural gas was "too cheap to meter".

There is also a whole series of domestic refrigerators that work using the same principle. I have one by Dometic which uses a propane flame, about the size of the flame on a water heater pilot light. It is very economical, easy to use, and makes ice too... and again, no moving parts.

I could easily make the Dometic fridge work using a solar collector to provide the heat now provided by the flame.

-Chuck

Reply to
Chuck Harris

Well sure. And you can run an engine on natural gas, or most any fuel source, even coal. But for things like solar it becomes tougher. Obviously if you have wind to run a sizable generator you probably don't need cooling. Hydro or even tide power can run AC but you are really using electricity once agan.

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Reply to
Homer J Simpson

I am not talking about running a conventional R22, or Puron air conditioner with a gasoline engine as the power source. This is quite different. I would have thought with your extensive HVAC expertise you would know about it. Hundreds of thousands of units were sold in the '60s. They are super reliable, and as such, most are still in operation. The refrigerant is ammonia, and water.

Here is a website that will help you understand how they work:

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Perhaps if you ask your employer about them, he will send you to a school where you can learn how to install and service them. Who knows, you might get a promotion?

-Chuck

Reply to
Chuck Harris

Or better yet, breath in some of the refrigerant ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

Not only do I know how the silent ammonia cycle works, I have brought these units back from the dead. Since you claim to greater expertise than mine, tell me how I did it. I am not talking about the basic electrical repair of a silent unit, but what to do when they stop working after several years despite a working heat source.

Put up or shut up.

Reply to
Homer J Simpson

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Have you ever worked on an open ammonia unit?

Reply to
Homer J Simpson

Sure. The ammonia-absorption cycle needs only a heat source and a heat sink. The usual source is a gas flame, and the usual sink is the atmosphere, but a thermal solar collector and a shaded or buried heat exchanger would work. The problem is that nobody makes standardized components for this sort of thing, so you would need a lot of cu$tom design and fabrication.

Reply to
Stephen J. Rush

I wonder why there isn't a solar powered steam generator in orbit?

Reply to
Lord Garth

It probably has to do with moving parts, and the temperature of outer space. It is kind of hard to keep water around [Back in the days of yore, most satellites were spin stabilized, and the antenna bearings were a big problem.].

But, I remember reading that there was a thermally driven Stirling cycle power source put in orbit as an experiment. I seem to recall that it used hydrogen as the pumping gas.

-Chuck

Reply to
Chuck Harris

Same reason we don't have steam cars. The steam generator isn't the problem. The engine certainly isn't the problem. The problem is the condenser.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

How do you get a temperature differential with a bunch of heat flowing under those conditions? On earth you've got a big free heatsink.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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"it\'s the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
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Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

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