question for refrigeration people

[000]

I noticed that my dryer part of my compressor ices over, would it be good to insulate that?

Is it better to have the dryer hot or cold? If it needs to be hot I can route some heat to it.

I'm planning on make a cooler for the compressor (to hopefully keep it from shutting down), if the dryer needs to be hot I could route some of the hot water that came from the compressor to around the dryer, but if it needs to be cold I'll insulate it.

So which is it hot or cold?

Thanks,

-Sidney

[Tiger]

As far as I know its not that important. To dry the gas it has to be gas and its on the low side anyway and is still absorbing heat so it shouldn't make any difference.

[000]

I wasn't sure if the dryer was there as a extra precaution to make sure no liquid reaches the compressor. If it was then I thought that insulating it might possibly allow liquid into the compressor.

So I guess I'll go ahead and insulate it then.

Thanks :)

-Sidney

[kevin_bouchard]

no dont insulate it, if it ices over its might be because there is still some liquid in there, if you insulate it there wont be any heat to be absorbed by the liquid so that i can turn to gas and if that happens say good bye to your compressor. Best case would be to route some heat there, but dont superheat it or the compressor wont be able to compress the gas.

[NascarFool]

That is the dryer and metering device. Should have two or more small tubes coming out of one end. The icing indicates one of these problems:

1. the coil inside the freezer needs defrosted

2. low on freon due to a leak

3. Possible bad fan on the evap coil

4. leaky door seals causing to much runtime

5. dryer could be partially restricted

It has been a while since I have worked on refrigeration. My normal job is heating and air conditioning. ;)

[000]

Ok, so no insulation, it sounds like if I get water flow through the evaporator the icing may stop, I'll try that.

If that doesn't work then I'll route some of the copper tubing I'm going to use to cool the compressor around the dryer, that should probably keep it around room temperature (as long as my evaporative cooler will keep up with the heat generated by the compressor)

How does that sound?

Thanks for the help :)

-Sidney

[|PuNiSh3R|]

I'm thinking about water cooling my compressor now..

I am going to put my whole condensor into a 10gallon fish tank.. and then pump water out to a home made radiator on a small box fan.. thinking about wrapping copper tubing around my compressor and just pumpin the water through there.. then to the radiator.. but it seems that a small real quiet low CFM is enough to keep the compressor cool and running on a non-stop duty cycle..

[000]

|PuNiSh3R|,

So your compressor shuts off also? Do you know how long yours runs before shutting off?

After doing some more experiments (timing temperature drops actually) I have the suspicion that possibly the controller is still turning off my compressor. Because it seemed to be turning off every 10 minutes and then turning back on after 1 minute. What does your's do?

About your water cooling the radiator, If you do that how were you thinking of getting the water to go through it (I'm currently trying to think of the best way to do that for my evaporator).

I guess your radiator/condensor may not quite be like mine but I have fins on it and so I'd have to make some kind of shroud some how, and I haven't quite figured out the best way to do that yet.


Thanks,

-Sidney

[|PuNiSh3R|]

When you put your evaporator into the water.. the liquid that moves through the evaporator that absorbs the heat.. takes a TON of heat out of the water.. so your compressor gets really hot.. Mine used to shut off after bout 30 minutes or so.. but I noticed that once i got my condensor coils out into the air.. it didn't get so hot n e more.. but also a low CFM fan on the compressor works too...

I took my condensor and coiled it up..

I am going to put the condensor into a 10gallon fish tank.. and have a pump in the fishtank.. pump water out to a home made radiator and then back to the tank.

My condensor used to be in my frige walls.. it's the new dumb design so there is a flush back.. so u can put the frige right up to a wall.

Anyway.. Once I got those out.. I noticed that my evap temps dropped really quick and got down to a max of -18.4F when I had a fan blowing on the one side.. (3 sides of the condensor since it spiraled back and forth up the left, top, and right side of my frige)

So I figure once I water cool the condensor.. I will see really really good temps.. like -30F easily...

Just take your temp sensor.. and place it outside of the frige.. or out of the resevior.. so it reads the ambient air... The compressor will never shut off then.. unless it gets to hot...

[000]

I figured out why my dehumidifier compressor was turning on and off.

It seems that if you disconnect the temperature sensor (at least on my model) that it defaults to running 10 minutes and then resting for 2, anyhow I plugged the temperature sensor back in but left the humidity sensor out and it now runs constantly.

The other thing I discovered yesterday was that styrofoam ice chests may leak (mine did), and that the plastic ice chests aren't near as good at insulating as the styrofoam ones.

With just a little (4 gallon) plastic ice chest with the top opening covered in rubatex (to seal the hole needed to put the tubing in) my temperature wouldn't go much below -2 celcius, I then put about 7 layers of towels around and over the chest and it started to go down some more.

I left it running all night and this morning it was at -33.2 celcius, but I think my insulation could be better still because once I turned it off it quickly dropped down to -32.5 celcius (in a few minutes).

What do people generally use to keep their water insulated?

Thanks,

-Sidney

[|PuNiSh3R|]

Well.. that's interesting..

Insulation is the god of phase change cooling..

This really depends on how much money you want to spend.. but I'd suggest more of the rubatex.. or get the thickest neoprene rubber you can find.. Rubatex is neoprene rubber.. just sticky on one side..

I'd suggest for looks.. just Rubatex that sucker up.. 5 layers should do it good.. but do as many as you can..

[kevin_bouchard]

as you guys probably know now, condensing water adds alot of unwanted heat to your cooling systems, so thats why insulation is a must, even if you waterproofed your whole pc(which wouldnt be a bad ideal).:D

[000]

Rubatex does look pretty nice, I wonder if I got some styrofoam sheets (I think they may have some at hobby lobby?) and then rubatexed those around the whole thing?

That might make it a little cheaper to get it nice and thick what do you think? Is neoprene much better than styrofoam?

-Sidney

[kevin_bouchard]

i personally think styrofoam is a better insulator because its not as dense as the neoprene foam.

[000]

Cool (pun intended :D ) Then I'll see about doing that then, should save a little money also.

[|PuNiSh3R|]

Yea.. That styrofoam idea is good.. do that.

U could use some SuperGlue to keep the styrofoam in place at first..

[kevin_bouchard]

when i used styrofoam, i cut it to fit my block nicely and used tape to hold it in place, superglue would work better but its a more permanent way and most people like to take their blocks off once in a while(upgrades,cleaning,redrawing L1 bridges).

just add it to the list of ideals:D

[Gerst240]

Originally posted by |PuNiSh3R|
Yea.. That styrofoam idea is good.. do that.

U could use some SuperGlue to keep the styrofoam in place at first..


i may be wrong here but oh well i thought superglue ate styrofoam so i dont think that would work out