Experimental study for the effect of pre-cooling the condenser inlet air of split type air conditioning unit

Abstract

Reducing electric power consumption is a critical issue, especially in areas with elevated temperatures such as Iraq. In Basra city, the electric power consumption, due to the air conditioning units (ACU), is extremely high. In this work, an evaporative cooling unit (ECU) is fabricated and tested, being retrofitted with the condenser part of a split-type air conditioner. The experimental procedure is done in Basra Engineering Technical College. The present work is categorized with two cases. In case one, the system runs without using the ECU, while in Case Two the system is tested with the ECU. Results show that decreasing the inlet air temperature to the condenser will reduce the condensation and evaporation temperatures. Furthermore, it decreases the compression pressure ratio and increases the refrigerant mass flow rate. With this modification, it is found that the consumption power is decreased by 26% and the COP increased by 90% compared with case one. The second law analysis of the modified system shows that using an ECU will decrease most of the exergy destruction and losses in the components. Only exergy destruction in the evaporator is increased. The second law system efficiency is improved by 69.5%.