Introduction to VARS

Vapor absorption refrigeration

cycle
 Our Project
Development of a 500W air
conditioner which operates on
absorption cycle
Since 500W is small scale when it
comes to VACs, its feasibility too is
a milestone we would reach
 For the feasibility
development
Market surveys were done with the
help of Mohammad Furqan (a former
design engineer at Nespak and
currently the director at his own
company DEMS Private limited)
 The findings
HXs types and related issues

The two main types of HXs are

Tube bundle heat exchangers
Plate type heat exchangers
 Conclusions
Plate type heat exchanger was found to
be preferable due to the following two
reasons:

Tube type HX was found to be used for humungous

applications which, be default, ruled out the 500W-
1KW range we would be working on
Its small scale usage has not been researched much
so it would have been an endeavor in itself i.e.
studying and/or developing its feasibility for our
project
 Other compelling reasons for
ruling tube type HX out
To make the tube bundle heat exchangers pressure tight, each
tube has to be mated thoroughly into the tube sheets holding the
tubes, which requires a labor intensive manufacturing step
(absorption chillers perform at pressure below ambient and hence
air may seep in which decreases the efficiency).
The tube sheets have to be rather thick to withstand the prevailing
pressure difference, this is not a issue with the bigger scale
applications but is in ours.

In short, every forced attempt to utilize tube type HX was proving

to be costly and we stopped further digging after the first few
compelling reasons to rule it out were found.
Design parameters to get it
going
Mainly, we have to further investigate into the
different types of plate type HXs
gasketed plate heat exchangers
brazed plate heat exchangers

A brief investigation revealed that brazed plate

heat exchangers have a good pressure and
vacuum tightness. Therefore, they can be used in
air conditioning applications, where the operating
pressure usually differs considerably from the
ambient.
 The fabrication
The fabrication would mainly comprise of a plate
type heat exchanger and whatever improvising
it would require for this particular project.

A future plan to replace the input at generator

with solar energy (solar cell use) or, more
preferably, thermal energy (which we plan to harvest
with the use of huge convex lenses converging sun rays and
hence focused on the particular area where the solution
takes in heat from otherwise costly substitutes ).