Evaporatively-cooled condenser with rotating disks

The utilization of evaporative cooling to improve the heat transfer and low er the condensing temperature for a residential heat pump is investigated e xperimentally. A novel bench-scale evaporative condenser is tested for its performance as a function of several parameters, and the design is optimize d using the resulting data. Parallel air flow condenser configuration to tw o thin disks is examined, Moreover several turbulence enhancing devices are tested to improve the heat removal rate. The test data of the bench-scale condenser is then projected by computer simulation to design a full-scale c ondenser for a 9 kW residential air-conditioner application. A full-size pr ototype evaporative condenser with rotating disks was built and tested unde r the ASHRAE rest conditions. The evaporative condenser showed a higher cap acity by 1.8 to 8.1%, a higher COP by 13.5 to 21.6%, and a higher SEER by 1 4.5% than those of the baseline conventional air-coil unit.