Experimental Test of Locally Fabricated Public Water Cooler

Abstract

The main challenge in the rift valley and low land regions of Ethiopia, the society directly utilize ground hot water for both drinking and shower due to this cause the society is forced to buy cooled bottled mineral water daily. The use of locally fabricated public water coolers seems to be a solution to this problem. The objective of this study is the performance evaluation of locally fabricated public water cooler using a vapor compression refrigeration system. The four basic components of the water cooler, namely, the condenser, evaporator, compressor and the capillary tube are designed and selected separately. The amount of water to be cooled(0.083m^3), ambient air temperature(28℃), water temperature (44℃), the time required to cool water and the evaporator heat load(cooling load of water is 12847.87 KJ) are the predetermined parameters. The raw materials used to fabricate public water cooler are aluminum sheet, compressor, evaporator coil, condenser coil, capillary tube, filter-dryer, refrigerant fluid, water tap, insulator and thermostat. A comparison of experimental and theoretical results has been done and the COP of the cooling system from the theoretical analysis is 3.89 and correspondingly that of an experimental result is 3.17. This shows some variation is observed because of the ideal assumption of the vapor compression refrigeration processes. Also, a Comparison of the present study with literature has been done.