Use of Gray Water in Cooling Air Conditioning Condenser

Abstract

Arid and semi-arid countries experience challenges especially in the use of air conditioning units which tend to consume more electricity in the summer due to the effect of the heat on the compressor. The solution to this problem is the use of spray cooling with the spray targeting the compressor to cool it through evaporation as a result of the absorption of the latent heat of vaporization. However, a problem still exists in these countries mainly because they lack adequate water and have to resort to the use of gray water. This paper, therefore, investigates the use of gray water as a spray coolant and its effects on nozzles of various sizes.Gray water contains minerals and chemicals which are bound to accumulate at the tip of the nozzle in a process called scaling. Scaling results in the narrowing of the nozzle affecting the spread diameter, nozzle diameter and the cone angle of the resultant spray. The experiment highlighted in this paper will use tap water and gray water both of which are tested using two nozzles. The diameter of the nozzles is measured with the utilization of a microscope while the cone angle of the resultant spray is measured with the use of images taken from a high-resolution camera.It is observed that both tap water and gray water produce a certain amount of scaling at the tip of the nozzles. The scaling affects the cone angles and the spread diameters. While tap water has a small reduction in the cone angle, the gray water results in a larger reduction. The tap water also results in an increase in the effective spread diameter while the gray water results in its decrease. However, because water is scarce in the arid countries, gray water is the most suitable with the solution to the problem being the constant replacement of the nozzles after a particular period.