Application of evaporative cooling on the condenser of window-air-conditioner

Reduction of energy consumption is a major concern in the vapor compression refrigeration cycle especially in the area with very hot weather conditions (about 50 degrees C, where window-air-conditioners are usually used to cool homes. In this weather condition performance of air condenser window-air-conditioners decrease sharply and electrical power consumption increase considerably. These problems have activated the research programs in order to improve the performance of win dow-air-conditioners by enhancing heat transfer rate in the condenser. In this article, a new design with high commercialization potential for incorporating of evaporative cooling in the condenser of window-air-conditioner is introduced and experimentally investigated. A real air conditioner is used to test the innovation by putting two cooling pads in both sides of the air conditioner and injecting water on them in order to cool down the air before it passing over the condenser. The experimental results show that thermodynamic characteristics of new system are considerably improved and power consumption decreases by about 16% and the coefficient of performance increases by about 55%. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.