Sufficient Homemade Air Conditioner Free Essay Example

Introduction and Background of the Study

As day time is starting to become more and more unbearable, as fans would only constantly stir the hot sticky air S around, so the researchers ended up in choosing this topic. The researchers chose this topic mainly because of the hot weather here in the Philippines. The constant high temperature was the reason this came up to the researchers’ minds. This homemade air conditioner, also known as the “Swamp Cooler”, can help take the edge off and make a little more bearable.

Not only that, but it’s also very inexpensive, easy to make, rather effective, and can be used over and over again. Providing cool air without consuming a lot of electricity. This particular design is a low-maintenance version that requires no water drainage. It is not just easy to do, the materials that are also needed to conduct the product are also cheap and easy to find, which is very sufficient for people to make.

What more could you ask for?

The researchers aim is to quantify the performance and characteristics of the homemade air conditioner. To be able to do this, the researchers conducted a study about the said product, which is the homemade air conditioner, by making it themselves with the use of two plastic tubes, a copper tube, a cooler , zippies and an ordinary electric fan that has already been used. To make the homemade air conditioner, first , you should put the copper tube in a swirl formation on the front or on the back of the fan and to make the tube surely attached to the fan, secure them using the zippies, make sure that they are securely fastened to maintain stability.

Second, you insert each end of the copper tube inside of each two plastic tubes. Third, put ice and water inside the cooler and put the end of one plastic tube on the right corner and put the end of the other plastic tube opposed to the other one. To get the air conditioner working, insert the plug of the electric fan in a circuit, and that is how you should be able to do the product.

Statement of the Problem

The researchers would like to know the homemade air conditioner’s capacity or the distance of how much it cools up a room.

In our generation of today, Global Warming is taking place which causes climate change, which causes the thinning of the ozone layer. Global warming is an average increase in the temperature of the atmosphere near the Earth’s surface and in the troposphere, which can contribute to changes in global climate patterns. Global warming can occur from a variety of causes, both natural and human induced. In common usage, “global warming” often refers to the warming that can occur as a result of increased emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities. And due to this “Global Warming”, many people would suffer under the sun’s blazing heat. To help lessen the suffering in a more cheaper and sufficient way, so the researchers would like to know the homemade air conditioner’s capacity or the distance of how much it cools up and how cold it is.

Objectives

The researchers’ objective is to attain both the general and specific objective of the study and also the statement of the problem.

General Objectives

The general objective of the study is to provide more knowledge about this to other people and to the future researchers as well and to let them experience the sufficiency that it gives.

Specific Objectives

The specific objective of the study is to quantify the performance and characteristics of the homemade air conditioner, to determine how much it cools up, to know if it can actually cool up a room.

Scope and Delimitation

The study covers the field of studying on the capacity and characteristics of the homemade air conditioner. Focusing mainly on the performance of the said experiment.

Significance of the Study

To the community , it will help lessen the suffering from heat or simply to provide cool air to people in times when the temperature starts t rise and sweat accumulates. And most of us take the ability to warm our homes for granted, but few appreciate the benefits of being able to remove unwanted heat during the summer months. When outside air temperatures reach uncomfortable levels, the coolest temperature we can hope to maintain within our homes is the same, despite any amount of ventilation through the use of conventional fans.

The reason why this study is significant can be explained from three aspects. First, this study investigates the researchers’ perceptions, attitudes, viewpoints, and their participation towards this research. Second, the results of how the researchers’ improve their study about the sufficiency of a homemade air conditioner. Third, it is hoped that this study may help the researchers’ in providing the information of how they can improve the study.

A homemade and portable air conditioner which answers the need of cooling in a way of not destructing the environment. In the aide of the worsening effects of global warming from air conditioning units, and for the demand of cooling machines in the heat of the sun.

The homemade air conditioner uses cheap materials that only needs a small amount of power that can be used in a considerable amount of time. This experiment is a good substitute for expensive air conditioners that contributes to global warming. This experiment can also help in saving electricity bills.

As you can see in our community today, global warming is taking place. Bit by bit the ozone layer is getting thinner and thinner causing the heat of the sun to be hotter than the usual. Extreme temperature during summer also becomes a challenge for everyone. Many homes do not have air conditioning due to the expensive price and for some who has intended to minimize the use to avoid high electricity bills.

The invention of homemade air conditioner is a big help for all as the researchers believe that it can be approximately 30-50% cheaper to run as it consumes less power (if used correctly).The best part about the homemade air conditioner is its economic feasibility and will make your proximate conditions cooler and pleasant to endure summer days.

Related Literature

A dehumidifier is typically a household appliance that reduces the level of humidity in the air, usually for health reasons. Humid air can cause mold and mildew to grow inside homes, which pose various health risks. Very humid climates or air make some people extremely uncomfortable, causing excessive sweating that can’t evaporate in the already-moisture-saturated air. It can also cause condensation that can disrupt sleeping, or prevent laundry from drying thoroughly enough to prevent mustiness. Higher humidity is also preferred by most pests, including clothes moths, fleas, cockroaches, woodlice and dust mites. Relative humidity in dwellings is preferably 30 to 50 percent.

By their operation, dehumidifiers produce an excess of water which has been removed from the conditioned air. This water, usually called condensate in its liquid form, must be collected and disposed of. Some dehumidifier designs dispose of excess water in a vapor, rather than liquid form. Energy efficiency of dehumidification processes can vary widely. Dehumidifiers are also used in industrial climatic chambers, to control relative humidity within certain rooms to stay at levels conducive to processing of products.

Processes
Thermal condensation

These methods rely on drawing air across a thermocline. Since the saturation vapor pressure of water decreases with decreasing temperature, the water in the air condenses on the cold surface, and is separated from it.

Mechanical/refrigerative

Mechanical/refrigerative dehumidifiers, the most common type, usually work by drawing moist air over a refrigerated coil with a small fan. The cold coil of the refrigeration device condenses the water, which is removed, then the air is reheated by the hot coil. This process works most effectively with higher ambient temperatures with a high dew point temperature. In cold climates, the process is less effective. They are most effective at over 45 percent relative humidity, higher if the air is cold.

Air conditioners

Air conditioners inherently act as dehumidifiers when they chill the air, and thus there is also a need to handle the accumulated condensate. Newer high-efficiency window units use the condensed water to help cool the condensing coils (warm side) by evaporating the water into the outdoor air, while older units simply allowed the water to drip outside. Central air conditioning units typically need to be connected to a drain. A conventional air conditioner is very similar to a mechanical/refrigerative dehumidifier. Air in a dehumidifier passes over a series of cooling coils (the evaporator) and then over a set of heating coils (the condenser). It then goes back into the room as drier air with its temperature elevated. The water which condenses on the evaporator in a dehumidifier is disposed of in the drain pan or drain hose.

However in an air conditioner, air passes over the cooling coils (the evaporator) and then directly into the room. Spent refrigerant then is pumped by the compressor through a tube to outside the space being cooled, to where the heating coils (the condenser) are located. The waste heat is transferred to the outside air, which passes over the condenser coils and remains outside. The water that condenses on the evaporator in an air conditioner is usually routed thorough a drain channel to the outside of the window, thus removing extracted water from the conditioned space.

Electronic

Electronic dehumidifiers use a Peltier heat pump to generate a cool surface for condensing the water vapor from the air. The design is simpler as there are no moving parts, and has the benefit of being very quiet compared to a dehumidifier with a mechanical compressor. However, because of its relatively poor Coefficient of Performance (energy efficiency), this design is mainly used for small dehumidifiers.

Makeshift dehumidifiers

Because they operate in the same basic way as mechanical/refrigerative dehumidifiers, window air conditioner units are sometimes used as makeshift dehumidifiers by sending their heat exhaust back into the room instead of outside the space. This can produce the same net result as using a dehumidifier, a room atmosphere that is much less humid but slightly warmer.

This improvised arrangement may not be as energy efficient as a machine designed for the purpose, since most window air conditioners are designed to dispose of condensate water by re-evaporating it into the exhaust air stream, even if the air conditioner is modified to allow some of the condensed water to be drained away instead. In addition, most air conditioners are controlled by a thermostat which senses temperature, rather than the humidistat typically used to control a dehumidifier. While temperature and humidity in a closed space are related, it is difficult to control humidity by sensing only the temperature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumidifier | 12/04/12 1:25 PM

An evaporative cooler (also swamp cooler, desert cooler, and wet air cooler) is a device that cools air through the evaporation of water. Evaporative cooling differs from typical air conditioning systems which use vapor-compression or absorption refrigeration cycles. Evaporative cooling works by employing water’s largeenthalpy of vaporization. The temperature of dry air can be dropped significantly through the phase transition of liquid water to water vapor (evaporation), which can cool air using much less energy than refrigeration.

In extremely dry climates, evaporative cooling of air has the added benefit of conditioning the air with more moisture for the comfort of building occupants. Unlike closed-cycle refrigeration, evaporative cooling requires a water source, and must continually consume water to operate. Air washers and wet cooling towers use the same principles as evaporative coolers but are designed for purposes other than directly cooling the air inside a building. For example, an evaporative cooler may be designed to cool the coils of a large air conditioning or refrigeration system to increase its efficiency.

Evaporative cooling is a physical phenomenon in which evaporation of a liquid, typically into surrounding air, cools an object or a liquid in contact with it. Latent heat, the amount of heat that is needed to evaporate the liquid, is drawn from the air. When considering water evaporating into air, the wet-bulb temperature which takes both temperature and humidity into account, as compared to the actual air temperature (dry-bulb temperature), is a measure of the potential for evaporative cooling. The greater the difference between the two temperatures, the greater the evaporative cooling effect. When the temperatures are the same, no net evaporation of water in air occurs, thus there is no cooling effect. The wet-bulb temperature is essentially the lowest temperature which can be attained by evaporative cooling at a given temperature and humidity.

A simple example of natural evaporative cooling is perspiration, or sweat, secreted by the body, evaporation of which cools the body. The amount of heat transfer depends on the evaporation rate, however for each kilogram of water vaporized 2,257 kJ of energy (about 890 BTU per pound of pure water, at 95°F) are transferred. The evaporation rate depends on the temperature and humidity of the air, which is why sweat accumulates more on hot, humid days, as it does not evaporate fast enough. Vapor-compression refrigeration uses evaporative cooling, but the evaporated vapor is within a sealed system, and is then compressed ready to evaporate again, using energy to do so.

A simple evaporative cooler’s water is evaporated into the environment, and not recovered. In an interior space cooling unit, the evaporated water is introduced into the space along with the now-cooled air; in an evaporative tower the evaporated water is carried off in the airflow exhaust. Air washers and wet cooling towers use the same principles as evaporative coolers but are designed for purposes other than directly cooling the air inside a building. For example, an evaporative cooler may be designed to cool the coils of a large air conditioning or refrigeration system to increase its efficiency. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler | 12/04/12 1:41 PM

Cold water pitting of copper tube occurs in only a minority of installations. Copper water tubes are usually guaranteed by the manufacturer against manufacturing defects for a period of 50 years. The vast majority of copper systems far exceed this time period but a small minority may fail after a comparatively short time. The majority of failures seen are the result of poor installation or operation of the water system. The most common failure seen in the last 20 years is pitting corrosion in cold water tubes, also known as Type 1 pitting. These failures are usually the result of poor commissioning practice although a significant number are initiated by flux left in the bore after assembly of soldered joints. Prior to about 1970 the most common cause of Type 1 pitting was carbon films left in the bore by the manufacturing process. Research and manufacturing improvements in the 1960s virtually eliminated carbon as a cause of pitting with the introduction of a clause in the 1971 edition of BS 2871 requiring tube bores to be free of deleterious films. Despite this, carbon is still regularly blamed for tube failures without proper investigation.

Copper Water Tubes

Copper tubes have been used to distribute potable water within building for many years and hundreds of miles are installed throughout Europe every year. The long life of copper when exposed to natural waters is a result of its thermodynamic stability, its high resistance to reacting with the environment, and the formation of insoluble corrosion products that insulate the metal from the environment. The corrosion rate of copper in most potable waters is less than 25 µm/year, at this rate a 15 mm tube with a wall thickness of 0.7 mm would last for about 280 years.[1]

In some soft waters the general corrosion rate may increase to 125 µm/year, but even at this rate it would take over 50 years to perforate the same tube. Despite the reliability of copper and copper alloys, in some cold hard waters pits may form in the bore of a tube. If these pits form, failure times can be expected between 6 months and 2 years from initiation. The mechanism that leads to the pitting of copper in cold hard waters is complex, it requires a water with a specific chemistry that is capable of supporting pit growth and a mechanism for the initiation of the pits.

Pitting

The pits that penetrate the bore are usually covered in a hard pale green nodule of copper sulfate and copper hydroxide salts. If the nodule is removed a hemispherical pit is revealed filled with coarse crystals of red cuprous oxide and green cuprous chloride. The pits are often referred to as Type 1 pits and the form of attack as Type 1 pitting.

Water

The characteristics capable of supporting Type 1 pits were determined empirically by Lucey after examining the compositions of waters in which the pitting behaviour was known.[2] They should be cold, less than 30°C, hard or moderately hard, 170 to 300 mg/l carbonate hardness, and organically pure. Organically pure waters usually originate from deep wells, or boreholes. Surface waters from rivers or lakes contain naturally occurring organic compounds that inhibit the formation of Type 1 pits, unless a deflocculation treatment has been carried out that removes organic material.

Type 1 pitting is relatively uncommon in North America and this may be a result of the lower population density allowing a significant proportion of the potable water to be obtained from surface derived sources. In addition to being cold hard and organically pure, the water needs a specific chemistry. The effect of the water chemistry can be empirically determined though use of the Pitting Propensity Rating (PPR) a number that takes into account the sulfate, chloride,nitrate and sodium ion concentrations of the water as well as its acidity or pH. A water with a positive PPR has been shown to be capable of propagating Type 1 pits.

Initiation

Many waters in both the UK and Europe are capable of supporting Type 1 pitting but no problems will be experienced unless a pit is initiated in the wall of the tube. When a copper tube is initially filled with a hard water salts deposit on the wall and the copper slowly reacts with the water producing a thin protective layer of mixed corrosion products and hardness scale. If any pitting of the tube is to occur then this film must be locally disrupted. There are three mechanisms that allow the disruption of the protective deposits. The most well known, although now the least common, is the presence of carbon films on the bore. Stagnation and flux residues are the most common initiation mechanisms that have led to Type 1 pitting failures in the last ten years.

Carbon films

Copper tubes are made from the large billets of copper that are gradually worked and drawn down to the required size. As the tubes are drawn they are heat treated to produce the correct mechanical properties. The organic oils and greases used to lubricate the tubes during the drawing processes are broken down during the heat treatment and gradually coat the tube with a film of carbon. If the carbon is left in the bore of the tube then it disrupts the formation of the protective scale and allows the initiation of pits in the wall. The presence of deleterious films, such as carbon, has been prohibited by the British Standards in copper tubes since 1969.[3][4] All copper tubes for water service are treated, usually by grit blasting or acid pickling, to remove any films produced during manufacture with the result that Type 1 pitting initiated by carbon films is now very rare.

Stagnation

If water is left to stand in a tube for an extended period, the chemical characteristics of the water change as the mixed scale and corrosion products are deposited. In addition any loose scale that is not well adhered to the wall will not be flushed away and air dissolved in the water will form bubbles, producing air pockets. These processes can lead to a number of problems mainly on horizontal tube runs. Particles of scale that do not adhere to the walls and are not washed away tend to fall into the bottom of the tube producing a coarse porous deposit. Air pockets that develop in horizontal runs disrupt the formation of protective scales in two areas.

The water lines at the sides and the air space at the top of the tube. In each of the areas that the scale has been disrupted there is the possibility of the initiation of Type 1 pitting. Once pitting has initiated, then even after the tube has been put back into service, the pit will continue to develop until the wall has perforated. This form of attack is often associated with the commissioning of a system. Once a system has been commissioned it should be either put immediately into service or drained down and dried by flushing with compressed air otherwise pitting may initiate. If either of these options is not possible then the system should be flushed though regularly until it is put into use.

Flux

In plumbing systems fluxes are used to keep the mating surfaces clean during soldering operations. The fluxes often consist of corrosive chemicals such as ammonium chloride and zinc chloride in a binder such as petroleum jelly. If too much flux is applied to the joint then the excess will melt and run down the bore of a vertical tube or pool in the bottom of a horizontal tube. Where the bore of the tube is covered in a layer of flux it may be locally protected from corrosion but at the edges of the flux pits often initiate. If the tube is put into service in a water that supports Type 1 pitting then these pits will develop and eventually perforate the sides of the tube. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_water_pitting_of_copper_tube | 12/04/12 1:50 PM

Why are copper tubes used in air conditioning units?

Modern technology has drawn on the unique combination of properties of copper and copper alloys in the form of tube and pipe products. Copper tube is used extensively to convey potable water in buildings and homes. Copper alloys are selected to convey many diverse fluids for the oil, chemical, process and marine industries. Copper tube’s second largest application is in air-conditioning and refrigeration systems; its fastest-growing use in is fire sprinkler systems and fuel gas distribution systems in residential and office buildings. Copper is used for plumbing tube principally because of its corrosion resistance, machinability and high level of heat transfer.

Chief tube applications for copper in the transportation industry are for automotive and truck radiators, air-conditioning systems and hydraulic lines like copper tubes for air conditioning and refrigeration copper tubes. In marine service, copper and copper alloy tube and pipe are used to carry potable water, seawater and other fluids, but the chief application is alloy tube bundles for condensers and auxiliary heat exchangers. The food and beverage industries also use copper to carry process fluids for beer, spirits, cane sugar refining and other food processing operations.

Benefits of Copper Tubes

In large diameters or small, for liquid or gas, for high- or low-pressure systems under a wide range of temperatures, you can depend on copper and reduce costs for any mechanical system. Key benefits offered by copper tube include:

* Versatility
* Variety of applications
* Wide range of sizes
* Problem-free performance
* Long lasting and maintenance free
* Corrosion resistance
* High thermal conductivity
* Easy to join and install
* An abundant resource

Moreover, copper is durable enough to embed in concrete without worry. We can manufacture tubes in shape of square, rectangular or any other shape according to customer requirement.

Variety of Applications

In mechanical systems of all kinds, copper does more than ever before. Today copper tube has proven superior for: Key benefits offered by copper tube include:
* Water distribution systems
* Chilled water mains
* Drainage and vent systems
* Heating systems (including solar)
* Fuel-oil systems
* Oxygen systems
* Non-flammable medical-gas systems