New member here! I just found out about this place through a mentor. I’m building a prototype water chiller and wonder if any members here have experience or know someone with experience in copper tubing assemblies or refrigeration?
sorry Tim, @TBJK might be exactly who you’re looking for.
Hit up a Thursday tool time with Tim and he’ll get you sorted
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Well, What kind of refrigerant? What kind of Compressor? What types of heat Exchangers? What kind of metering device?
Refrigerant is R134a. I also have a design utilizing R290 (propane) that I will want to build eventually. But R290 has more stringent requirements due to flammability. The compressor is a 0.75 TR 110VAC reciprocating. The evaporator core is a 2.4kW brazed plate heat exchanger. The condenser is an automotive parallel flow thin core design.
As far as metering device, I don’t have any of that personally. After the system is assembled, I will take it to an independent residential HVAC company I have contracted to test and charge.
I’d advise against any micro channel coil. On paper they look great. In the real world they are crap.
What water temperature? Brazed plate are very finicky with flow. If you get any frost buildup internally they freeze up quickly.
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Tim,
Thank you for all of the replies here. There are very specific functional requirements for space and weight driving that choice. And their used ubiquitously in automotive applications. Water temperature needs to cool from 100F+ down to 35F. Luckily, flow will never been an issue since it will always be constant at 3.3 GPM.
Do you have experience with bending copper tubing and brazing by any chance? Or even designing these assemblies?
I might have a little bit. Full disclosure. I work for a major manufacturer & have for 23 years. Chillers are what I do.
What do you intend on using for a flow switch? I’d recommend the IFM Efector thermal dispersion. All the big manufacturers use them.
Our small tonnage stuff (25-90 tons) we still use TXV’s for those.
I calculated your load with a 65 delta T at 3.3 gpm to be 8.9 tons.
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Tim,
Mind if I shoot you an email? There are some details I need to withhold from the public domain for the time-being. Patent application is filed but I’m still pre-launch.
Will you be there this evening?
I will be in Machine Shop this evening. Do feel free to Email me at our Makerspace email.
Every member has a Makerspace email. It’s the person’s user name (in Tim’s case tbjk – usernames are always all lower-case) @dallasmakerspace . com. You can’t always predict a person’s user name from their talk handle. Talk is a completely separate program, so folks aren’t required to match their username to their Talk handle. That’s one reason that you’ve actually got to request your Green Dot that denotes membership and gives members access to the Members-Only categories. There are just a few M-O categories.
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Thank you for the explanation here Beth. How do I request my green dot? I joined a couple of weeks ago. Is there a newbie thread I missed somewhere?
Possibly…
includes “green dot” info
and other hints/tips/information helpful for folks to learn about Talk & our implementation of Discourse.
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Done. Thank you!
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