Energy shortage and pollution issue are becoming the main obstacles for economic further development around the world thus energy saving and environment protection are the important research themes for economic and social sustainable development these years. Among all the energy consumption, air conditioner was occupied 40% of energy and energy saving issue in AC industry is becoming more and more urgent. In recent years, governments around the world published higher and higher energy efficiency requirements. In USA, 13 SEER standard was required on all residential AC units effective from Jan 06. In China the RAC units which below current energy efficiency rating 2 will not allowed to manufactured and sold from 2009.
Heat exchanger being the key part of AC unit energy saving, will directly affect on the amount of electricity consumption. If only increase the heat exchanger area and circle air volume without any HX structure and process changing, it seems to solve the problem but consequently increase HX manufacture production cost and waste more non- regenerative resource meanwhile increase the consumer purchasing cost.
Conventional air conditioning HX is made of copper tube and in china copper is becoming one of the most shortage metal and 50% of which are imported from outside of China. In recent years, copper price has increased dramatically and had a big impact on AC industry thus also be the burden for domestic economic. On the other hand, aluminum resource is comparatively rich and aluminum industry is well development in China. Thus the price of aluminum is more stable and lower comparing with cooper. Therefore introducing MCHX technology will not only take advantage of domestic rich aluminum resource to decrease material cost but also avoid the impact on AC industry resulting from copper price fluctuating dramatically.
MCHX consists of aluminum flat tube containing several small channels and is welded with louvered fins. Many tests and searches show that MCHX has many obvious advantages comparing with conventional T&F HX as below;
1¡¢High energy efficiency
The biggest advantage for MCHX is lying on higher energy efficiency. Many tests show that under the same test condition and heat exchange area the heat exchange performance of MCHX can be increased averagely by 40% and the COP of AC units which applying MCHX as condenser improved averagely by 30%.
2¡¢Environment friendly
Freon is one of the prime criminal of damaging the atmosphere ozone and earth warming effect. Therefore decrease or avoid the use of? Freon will be significant to environment protection. When applying MCHX, the system refrigerant charge could be reduced averagely by 30% at the same COP. Less refrigerant charge, less leakage for AC unit when running in reality thus friendly to environment. Furthermore, MCHX is also more applicable for more environment friendly refrigerant system such as R410a and CO2.
Comparing with conventional T&F HX, MCHX is easier to recycle as when recycling T&F HX need to separate copper and aluminum first while MCHX avoid the separation process due to same aluminum material. By this way, the recycle cost would be reduced down and it is friendly to environment
3¡¢ High reliability
Comparing with the conventional T&F HX expanding contact between tube and fin, the MCHX flat tube is welded with fin thus enhance the contact of tube and fin and assure that the sustainable high efficiency during long term application.
Furthermore, the structure of micro channel makes MCHX more adapt to high pressure system thus assures the safety and reliability of AC system.
4¡¢Total cost down
As the high efficiency characteristic of MCHX, the dimension and weight could be much small than that of conventional T&F HX. Thus the figure dimension of whole unit could be reduced and all required mental, package material could be accordingly reduced. By this way, the total cost including package, storage, transportation and installation could be dramatically down.?
The reduced refrigerant charge and non-distributor design could also give AC manufacture production cost down.
In a conclusion, MCHX will no doubt be a trend in HVAC/R industry and one of the promising environment solutions.
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