Performance Enhancement of an Air Conditioner with Condensate Mist Cooled Condenser

This paper presents a simple and efficient methodology to design a household (and can also be used for commercial air conditioning purposes) air conditioner, predicts the performance of air conditioning unit and how the thermal performance can be improved, when the water mist system is coupled with the air cooled conditioner as a pre-cool for condenser inlet air to increase the cooling capacity, and decrease the compressor power consumption. Inputs for formulation include inlet air DBT and humidity ratio, air velocity, water temperature and flow rate, and geometrical properties of evaporative medium. Generally air conditioning units are used for small and medium scale residential buildings and the large units are used for the commercial purposes. Therefore, more energy efficiency and lower cost are needed along with reliable control for the air conditioning units. The influence of condenser and evaporator inlet air temperatures on the cooling capacity and power consumption has been investigated and presented. It has been found that due to the coupling of water mist with air cooled condenser, the cooling capacity of the air-cooled,air conditioner can be increased up to 17.5%, and the compressor power consumption can be reduced up to 15.5%. Thus, it is concluded that the application of water mist condenser, inlet air pre-cooling could increase the COP by up to 37%, especially when the ambient relative humidity is low[10].