Air
Conditioning System
The idea of our homemade air conditioner with cool
water is very simple. Get a few bottles of freezing cold water, empty them in a
tank, and use it to cool the room by circulating it through a simple coil/fan
mechanism set up.
The set-up utilizes very ordinary low cost items
such as a water cooler, copper tube or coils, a table fan, a motor and a few
bottles of cold water.
A water cooler is used as the main storing
compartment for the passive energy in the form of the cold water. A small motor
is placed in the water cooler to ensure easy circulation of water. A conduit copper pipe is attached to the
water cooler through the rubber pipe which further forms into a large spirally
wound coil having a diameter equal to the procured table fan for the purpose.
The end of this copper spiral ultimately terminates again into the water cooler
to ensure the circulation of water.
The water cooler is first filled with freezing cold water.
The thick insulating lining in the water cooler helps keep the near-freezing
temperature of the water intact and allow its exhaustion very slowly so that
the low temperature of the dripping water through the copper coils is sustained
for a longer period time.
As soon as the cold water fills-up the whole “copper
spiral,” copper being extremely good conductor of heat instantly starts
radiating the coolness through its outer walls into the atmosphere around it.
However this makes only the air immediately around the coils colder and will
not help to serve the purpose we are up to.
We need to “shoot” or rather spread the low
temperature created around the coils over the entire enclosed area or the room
where it has been installed.
This is simply done using a table fan. Make sure
that the diameter of the fan exactly matches to that of the copper spiral or
vice versa for maximum efficiency.
By keeping the fan very close to the copper spiral
and switching it ON amazingly initiates the generation of fresh cold breeze all
over the place.
A control cock fitted at the end of the copper
piping is used to control the flow of the seeping water into the collector
tank. This is directly proportional to the rate of cooling the room: the faster
the water escapes from the tap, the greater the radiation of the cooling
effect.
The design has a striking advantage over the age old
ordinary evaporative type of coolers where the cold air is also accompanied
with moisture undesirably raising the RH of the premise to uncomfortable
levels. Here copper being non porous allows only the freezing temperature to
circulate, restricting the water content from shedding into the surrounding.
The following data will confirm the high efficiency
of the above homemade air conditioner using cool water, compared to a
conventional air conditioning system.
·
Set- up cost no more than 20% of
the commercially available units.
·
Electric consumption less than
50% compared to the conventional ACs.
·
The main cooling agent being cold
water is available very cheaply or is derived from the home refrigerator itself
costing less than a dollar per month.
·
Each filling of the tank with
cold water lasts for more than 15 hours of air cooling.
Dehumidifier
Another
effort which has been made by our Satyans, is the designing of a dehumidifier,
which is not only cost- effective, but also helps to combat the problem of
reducing humidity.
How to make it
Parts needed
1.
Shoe
box with a lid (Box 1)
2.
A
bigger shoe box,Box 1 should fit in the top of this box.
3.
Silica
gel (we used about 200 ml)
4.
A
mesh big enough to cover the bottom of the plastic box.
Do small holes in the bottom of
the small shoe box, and then place the wire mesh over it. Fill the box with approximately 200gm of
silica gel. After this place this shoe box inside the bigger box and make holes
in the lid of the bigger box. Place the lid (with holes) over the bigger shoe
box.Relative humidity went down from 84% to 45%, that's far above our expectations. Drying the silica gel (and re-using it) is easy.
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